These books were significant, but women hardly feature in them. Perhaps the food is unhealthy, but as far as cleanliness is concerned, the eaters are as sterile as a moon capsule. Whereas Orwell's account is a fascinating insight into a world that in the 1930s was hardly reported on, Wallraff's stories are at times unrealistic, particularly when he tries to convince us that McDonald's restaurants are unhygienic. Orwell's decision to "rough it" for a lengthy period so as to investigate the conditions of the underprivileged was commendable, although his upper-middle-class accent betrayed him, arousing suspicion as to his purpose, and Wallraff, who announced that he was going to establish projects to assist the families of the poor and unemployed, was accused of paying lip service to these schemes and of keeping the proceeds of his tremendously successful book to himself. George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) mainly reported on the male population in his groundbreaking Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), as did German journalist Günter Wallraff, who disguised himself by darkening his features to investigate the plight of Turkish "guest workers" in Germany in Ganz unten ("The Lowest of the Low" 1985). Undercover journalism among destitute people and the so-called "working poor" is not a new phenomenon.
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