Critic's Grade: A+

Start with a non-fiction book which exposed the health effects of junk food.After lawyers and Hollywood liberals put it through the meat grinder,it came out as 3 fictional daytime TV soap operas on unrelated issues.The fast food industry is unfair to undocumented immigrants.The meat packing industry is unfair to illegal immigrants.Greedy american managers try to sexually exploit illegal immigrants.The only documentary part is a snuff film about slaughtering cows.
One of the classics of popular science is ON BEING THE RIGHT SIZE,by J.B.S.Haldane.Haldane starts out by saying that in Zoology,academics write as if size were not important to animal behavior.Haldane says that if you dropped a mouse down a mile long mine shaft it would bounce and run off,that if you dropped a cat from 4 stories,it would also suffer few ill effects,while if you dropped a man from these heights he would splatter.
SIZE MATTERS.There is no more important fact about Americans,and no more obvious one,that they are BIG-WAY TOO BIG!!
This is the first generation in American history in which life expectance is falling-due to obesity.A common sight in California is of wealthy parents who are fit,and children who are obese.
Childhood obesity is uniquely American and recent.
Fast Food has been around 50 years,so that is not by itself an explanation of the recent epidemic of Child Obesity.
The real and proovable cause is the toxic combination of Widescreen Tabloid TV shows that terrorize kids and the confort food that is directly marketed to them.
The proof of this theory is what has happened recently in IPanema and Barra Brazil.THere is an epidemic of child obesity in these beach communities.It all started with the recent introduction of 70 channels of US style tabloid TV.What Brazilian kids are exposed to is 24 hrs of live fights between rival drug gangs in the slums,or packs of 100 kids from the slums taking over beaches.It scares people witless.Next home delivery of fast food is sold to confort them.
What Brazilian kids are exposed to on their version of Tabloid TV is 100 times more real and immediate than the car chases and fake terrorist threats that are the staple of US tabloids.
Terrorizing people keeps them glued to the TV and directly marketing fast food is the other half of the money making formula.
To add insult to injury,this sanitized version of Fast Food Nation is brought to you by FOX!

All Reviews by Fred Landis
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