What's in all those hamburgers? They're most likely made from the meat of worn-out dairy cows (generally the least healthy cattle stock), which spend their days packed in feedlots full of pools of manure. Each burger contains parts of dozens or even hundreds of cows, increasing the likelihood that a sick one will spread its pathogens widely.

Until 1997, those cows, by nature designed to be herbivorous, were fed "livestock waste" -- rendered remains of dead sheep and cattle, along with the remains of millions of dead cats and dogs purchased every year from animal shelters. Thank God the law was changed: Now they're fed only the remains of horses, pigs and poultry. And if you think your fries are animal-free, guess again. While McDonald's no longer cooks them in beef tallow, a process that until 1990 gave the chain's french fries more saturated fat per ounce than its burgers, McDonald's still acknowledges that some of the flavor comes from "animal products."

Eric Schlosser, author of "Fast Food Nation," is troubled by our nation's fast-food habit, but what goes into the burgers and fries isn't even half the problem, he says. He admits that most of the fast food he ate while he wrote the book "tasted pretty good." (It should, he notes -- fast-food restaurants rely heavily on the services of the billion-dollar flavor industry, which manufactures and sells the complex chemicals that give distinctive flavors to processed foods such as "smoky" chicken, "strawberry" shakes and even "flame-broiled" burgers.)

The reasons Schlosser sees fast food as a national scourge have more to do with the sheer ubiquity of the stuff -- the way it has infiltrated almost every aspect of our culture, transforming "not only the American diet, but also our landscape, economy, workforce, and popular culture." An estimated one out of every eight workers has at some point been employed by McDonald's, and the nation's 3.5 million fast-food workers are the largest group of minimum-wage earners.

What's more, the values the fast-food industry spreads embody capitalism at its worst: hostility to workers' rights, along with a dehumanizing emphasis on mass production and uniformity at the expense of meaningful worker training and autonomy. At the same time that they invest large sums to design equipment so streamlined that it requires as little skill as possible to operate, fast-food companies accept hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies for "training" their workers, through programs intended to reward companies that teach job skills to the poor.

Schlosser also details the fast-food industry's efforts to market directly to kids. He's especially interested in the unholy alliance between McDonald's and Disney, two corporations united not just in their hostility to unions and their quasi-feudal style of dealing with their workers but also in their determination to infiltrate the imaginations of toddlers. Of the two, McDonald's has been the more successful: Ninety-six percent of American children recognize Ronald McDonald. Only Santa Claus rates higher.

In perhaps the most disturbing section of "Fast Food Nation," Schlosser reports on the rise in Colorado of corporate "sponsorships" to cover shortfalls in school districts' budgets: "Whether it's first graders learning to read or teenagers shopping for their first car, we can guarantee an introduction of your product and your company to these students in the traditional setting of the classroom," reads one chilling brochure for a Kids Power Marketing Conference. Fast-food companies are at the leading edge of this new marketing strategy, placing not just hallway ads and banners in schools but also targeted, branded educational materials in classrooms, produced with tax-deductible dollars.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"