Brendan had read this book called Fast Food Nation a few years back (and that more or less coincided with our decision not to eat hamburgers from fast food chains anymore). I never read the book, but I was quite interested in watching the movie, which Brendan had recorded recently.
The Wikipedia article about the book makes for stark reading about the fast food and soft drink industries. Note that there is a request for more third-party references in the article - was that put up by a representative from those industries to somehow discredit the article or is it a genuine comment? We don't know, of course, but between that and the movie, I can safely say I will never eat another burger (any time I've been to a MacDonald in the last few years, I've eaten a Filet O Fish - not sure if it's any better). I don't drink soft drinks - I think that they are just empty calories (calories but no nutrition) and I don't like anything with aspartane or other sweeteners in them. Plus my body doesn't like fizzy drinks. So, what do I drink? Filtered water, orange juice, apple juice (both made from concentrate) and green tea. And the occasional cranberry juice.
The movie Fast Food Nation was very good. It's a low-key kind of movie - not sure if it's supposed to be a documentary or a work of fiction - apparently, the story in the book is based on interviews with real people. There are plenty of fairly big stars in it, mostly in secondary roles - Bruce Willis, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawkes, Greg Kinnear (the father in Little Miss Sunshine), Kris Kristofferson, Avril Lavigne, and a good few unknowns in the main roles (playing mostly Mexican illegal aliens working in a meat-processing plant). It's a movie where you care about what happens to the people, a good movie in my book
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