Read "Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food" by Eric Schlosser online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
On a hot July morning in 2004, Sam Fabrikant sat on the edge of a bed at the Mirage, a hotel in Las Vegas. He was facing the toughest decision of his life. His mother and his twin brother, Charlie, sat beside him. It was the last day of their family vacation, and before returning home to Buffalo Grove, Illinois, Sam needed to make up his mind. His family wanted him to have gastric bypass surgery. Sam had just turned sixteen years old-and weighed almost 300 pounds. The operation would reduce his stomach from about the size of a football to the size of a golf ball. It would limit the amount of food absorbed by his small intestine. It would make Sam want to eat less and help him to lose weight. But the operation also posed some risks. If something went wrong, it could kill him.
Sam had tried not to think about the operation while on vacation. This trip was supposed to be fun. The Mirage is one of the most famous hotels in Las Vegas. It has swimming pools, game rooms, a casino, Siegfried & Roy's white tiger habitat, dolphins swimming in enormous tanks, and a manmade volcano that erupts every fifteen minutes in the evening, shooting fire a hundred feet into the air. Sam had enjoyed wandering around the Mirage, checking out the stores and eating at the restaurants. For years he'd dreamed of becoming a hotel manager and had even written letters to Steve Wynn, the founder of the Mirage. Although he felt great admiration for Wynn, Sam no longer wanted to run a hotel. Now he wanted to become a high school history teacher. Despite all the excitement at the Mirage, this trip to Vegas was ending on a bittersweet note. Sam realized that he'd gained a lot of weight over the past year, and it made him sad.