Columbia Supplement #1 - meaningful books, publications or cultural events

Here's an incredibly rough draft of the Columbia supplement - Please tell us what you found meaningful about one of the above mentioned books, publications or cultural events:

There is no clear delineation of whether or not a particular is food is good or bad...but I think we can all agree that fast food leans towards the latter. As an athlete, I've followed a certain trajectory to naturally stray from fast food. Sometimes I used fall into lapses of weakness, giving into the forbidden fruit. How can one individual be strong enough to resist the delicious smell of French fries?

Reading Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation would be a start.

Here's a little tidbit to resist the gustatory delight from French Fries: the taste and smell are solely yielded from chemicals harvested in Pennsylvania rather than, oh, I don't know, potatoes. Fast Food Nation managed to sever any connection that lingered.

I'm sure my stomach appreciates it.

The quality of the food (if you use the term loosely) is not the only problem. For instance, workers frequently lose limbs and their lives slaughtering cows. Yet, they receive little to no worker's compensation. Why? The industry exploits the ignorant. Not to mention the environmental impact of confining animals in cramped quarters, resulting in pollution of ground water and feces in the meat. It's a personal preference, but I'm not a fan of fecal matter in my food.

Mistreatment of animals, chemical - based food, and exploitation of immigrants and teenagers all plague the fast food industry. Just one of these misfortunes would be bad, but all of them? I'd call that a tragedy. Thank you, Schlosser, for opening my eyes.

I think you spend a little too long talking about the content of the book instead of what you learned from it. Expand on your experience of giving up fast food. Were you ever tempted by the smell before remembering that it wasn't the smell of potatoes? Something like that. Maybe talk more about how this is going to affect your life in the future, other than creating a lack of fast food in your diet. Will you try to eat more healthily instead of just not eating fast food? Will you try to change the way the meatpacking industry works?

Other than that, this is great. It's lighthearted but not so much so as to make it too informal. Just expand on why this book is meaningful to you and you'll be good to go.