Eric Schlosser's inimitable brand of hard-hitting, yet always entertaining - writing looks beneath the surface of American life to examine issues ranging from the black market to burgers. When Penguin published his exposé Fast Food Nation in 2001, it sparked a storm in the fast food industry. This piece on the terrifying true cost of cheap meat show why Schlosser has been instrumental in changing our attitudes to what we eat.

'I have an idea,' Fred Turner, the chairman of McDonald's, told one of his suppliers in 1979. 'I want a chicken finger-food without bones, about the size of your thumb. Can you do it?' The supplier, an executive at Keystone Foods, ordered a group of technicians to get to work in the lab, where they were soon joined by food scientists from McDonald's. Poultry consumption in the United States was growing, a trend with alarming implications for a fast food chain that only sold hamburgers. The nation's chicken meat had traditionally been provided by hens that were too old to lay eggs; Delaware and Virginia lowered the cost of raising chicken, while medical research touted the health benefits of eating it. Fred Turner wanted McDonalds's to sell a chicken dish that wouldn't clash with the chain's sensibility. After six months of intensive research, the Keystone lab developed new technology for the manufacture of McNuggets - small pieces of reconstituted chicken, composed mainly of white meat, that were held together by stabilizers, breaded, fried, frozen, then reheated. The initial test marketing of McNuggets was so successful that McDonald's enlisted another company, Tyson Foods, to guarantee an adequate supply. Based in Arkansas, Tyson was one of the nation's leading chicken processors, and it soon developed a new breed of chicken to facilitate the production of McNuggets. Dubbed 'Mr McDonald,' the new breed had unusually large breasts.

Chicken McNuggets were introduced nationwide in 1983. Within one month of their launch, the McDonald's Corporation had become the second-largest purchaser of chicken in the United States, surpassed only by KFC.But their health benefits were illusory. A chemical analysis of McNuggets by a researcher at Harvard Medical School found that their 'fatty acid profile' more closely resembled beef than poultry. The chain soon switched to vegetable oil, adding 'beef extract' to McNuggets during the manufacturing process in order to retain their familiar taste. Chicken McNuggets, which became wildly popular among young children, still derive much of their flavour from beef additives - and contain twice as much fat per ounce as a hamburger.

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