Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Reissues Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, as US Reexamines Ground Beef Quality


NEW YORK -- With news media shining a spotlight on the quality of US ground beef, especially the addition of "pink slime" — beef trimmings treated with ammonium hydroxide — Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced it has reissued Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser with a new afterword, on sale this week. 

In the afterword Schlosser says: "I'd love to report that the book is out-of-date, that the many problems it describes have been solved… That is not the case." Eric Schlosser has studied the changes in our industrial food system for years; in 2001, the bestselling Fast Food Nation first blew the lid off the fast food industry and exposed the abysmal state of food safety regulations. 

"Consumers have a right to know what they're eating," Schlosser said Wednesday. "The sale of "pink slime" as ground beef, with USDA approval and without any labeling, is just one more sign of how the meat industry has gained control of the nation's regulatory agencies, at the expense of the American people." 

Fast Food Nation is as relevant today as it was a decade ago. The book inspires readers to look beneath the surface of our food system, consider its impact on society and, most of all, think for themselves.

Eric Schlosser is a contributing editor for The Atlantic and the author of Fast Food Nation, Reefer Madness, and Chew on This with Charles Wilson.


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