Father Guido Sarducci wants to know...

[usonian]

15. I vaguely remember an Enlish teacher recommending or requiring "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair.

How the processed meat is made.

And to "top it off", most is loaded with nitrites, a highly suspect or proven carcinogen. You have to look for "no nitrites" constantly.

Then again .....

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that sprang to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
—I tell the tale that I heard told.

Mithridates, he died old.

A.E. Housman