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The Executives Who Run The Fast Food Industry Are Not Bad Men. They Are Businessmen. They Will Sell Free-range, Organic, Grass-fed Hamburgers If You Demand It. They Will Sell Whatever Sells At A Profit.

-Eric Schlosser

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The Executives Who Run

Eric Schlosser

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The Executives Who Run The Fast Food Industry Are Not Bad Men. They Are Businessmen. They Will Sell Free-range, Organic, Grass-fed Hamburgers If You Demand It. They Will Sell Whatever Sells At A Profit.

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Students Can Do Experiments And Investigate For Themselves What's Going On In Restaurants, In Our Food System, And Begin A Process Of Learning.

Today The U.s. Government Can Demand The Nation-wide Recall Of Defective Softball Bats, Sneakers, Stuffed Animals, And Foam-rubber Toy Cows. But It Cannot Order A Meatpacking Company To Remove Contaminated, Potentially Lethal Ground Beef From Fast Food Kitchens And Supermarket Shelves.

Mcdonald's Has Been Extraordinary At Site Selection; It Was A Pioneer In Studying The Best Places For Retail Locations. One Of The Things It Did Is Study Very Carefully Where Sprawl Was Headed.

I Think There Could Hardly Be A More Important Subject Than Health And Nutrition.

Basically, I'm A Perpetual Student. I Start By Finding A Subject I Really Don't Know Very Much, But That I'm Curious About. I Learn About It Through Books In A Library, By Doing Interviews With People Who Know A Lot About The Subject, And By Going Out On My Own And Seeing For Myself What's Happening.

Kids Have No Idea When They're Drinking Soda What They're Really Drinking, And A Lot Of Them Are Stunned When They Learn That Drinking A Big Gulp Is Like Taking A Big Jar Of Sugar And Just Pouring It Down. There Are 50 Teaspoons Of Sugar In A 64-ounce Big Gulp.

Fast Food Is Popular Because It's Convenient, It's Cheap, And It Tastes Good. But The Real Cost Of Eating Fast Food Never Appears On The Menu.

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I Hate The Word "inevitable" Because I Feel Like Things Don't Have To Be The Way They Are.

The Industry Doesn't Want You To Know The Truth About What You're Eating, Because If You Knew, You Might Not Want To Eat It.

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The Executives Who Run The Fast Food Industry Are Not Bad Men. They Are Businessmen. They Will Sell Free-range, Organic, Grass-fed Hamburgers If You Demand It. They Will Sell Whatever Sells At A Profit.

Most Fast Food Is Fried. Fried Food Tastes Great, And People Dont Seem To Care About The Fat Aspect.

The History Of The Twentieth Century Was Dominated By The Struggle Against Totalitarian Systems Of State Power. The Twenty-first Will No Doubt Be Marked By A Struggle To Curtail Excessive Corporate Power.

Years Ago When I Got Stuck, I'd Start Twirling My Hair. That's Not Possible Anymore. I Can't Prove The Relationship Between Writing And Hair Loss, But I Think I Pulled Out A Fair Amount Trying To Work On Certain Sentences.

Congress Should Ban Advertising That Preys Upon Children, It Should Stop Subsidizing Dead-end Jobs, It Should Pass Tougher Food Safety Laws, It Should Protect American Workers From Serious Harm, It Should Fight Against Dangerous Concentrations Of Economic Power.

The Fast-food Industry Is In Very Good Company With The Lead Industry And The Tobacco Industry In How It Tries To Mislead The Public, And How Aggressively It Goes After Anybody Who Criticizes Its Business Practices.

The Life's Work Of Walt Disney And Ray Kroc Had Come Full-circle, Uniting In Perfect Synergy. Mcdonald's Began To Sell Its Hamburgers And French Fries At Disney's Theme Parks. The Ethos Of Mcdonaldland And Of Disneyland, Never Far Apart, Have Finally Become One. Now You Can Buy A Happy Meal At The Happiest Place On Earth.

A Public Outcry Usually Masks A Private Obsession.

So For Everything I Do, I'm Very Clear About What I'm Doing, And I Tell People What It's About. They Get A Sense Of What I'm Thinking. I Don't Let People Think I'm Going To Write Something In Praise In The Meatpacking Industry, And Then They Read It And It's Actually Attacking The Meatpacking Industry.

Twenty Years Ago, Teenage Boys In The United States Drank Twice As Much Milk As Soda; Now They Drink Twice As Much Soda As Milk.

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Marijuana Gives Rise To Insanity -- Not In Its Users But In The Policies Directed Against It. A Nation That Sentences The Possessor Of A Single Joint To Life Imprisonment Without Parole But Sets A Murderer Free After Perhaps Six Years Is In The Grips Of A Deep Psychosis.

When You Go Into A Fast Food Restaurant, You May Just Think About How Good Your Meal Tastes While You're Eating It. But You're Not Thinking About All The Consequences That Come From That One Purchase - The Consequences For Your Body, The Consequences For Supporting This Company And How It's Treating It Workers, All The Way Back To The Farm Where The Potatoes Were Grown, Or The Ranch Where The Cattle Were Raised.

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I Went Into The Library And Read About Fast Food And Became Amazed By All The Stuff I Didn't Know. I Learned That There Is A Whole World Behind The Counter That, It Seemed To Me, Has Been Deliberately Hidden From The Public.

I Think For Real Change To Happen, It's Going To Have To Come From The Kids, The Community, The Teachers, The Parents.

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A Generation Ago, Three-quarters Of The Money Used To Buy Food In The United States Was Spent To Prepare Meals At Home. Today About Half Of The Money Used To Buy Food Is Spent At Restaurants--mainly At Fast Food Restaurants.

Fast Food Is Inexpensive, Convenient, And It Tastes Good. I'm All In Favor Of That. My Problem Is How Heavily Processed It Is - How Full Of Salt, Fat, And Sugar It Is.

Fast Food Chains Spend A Large Amount Of Marketing To Get The Attention Of Children. People Form Their Eating Habits As Children So They Try To Nurture Clients As Youngsters.

As An Investigative Reporter, I'm Trying To Uncover Things And Expose Them To Create A Dialogue.

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The Way We Eat Has Changed More In The Last 50 Years Than In The Previous 10,000…. Now Our Food Is Coming From Enormous Assembly Lines Where The Animals And The Workers Are Being Abused, And The Food Has Become Much More Dangerous In Ways That Are Deliberately Hidden From Us. This Isn’t Just About What We’re Eating. It’s About What We’re Allowed To Say. What We’re Allowed To Know.

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I Think It's Possible To Have Food That's Healthy, That's Good For You To Eat, That's Also Inexpensive. We Don't Have To Have This Cheap, Unhealthy Food Being So Aggressively Promoted.

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During My School Visits, I Really Enjoy The Feedback I Get From Them Much More Than Anything I Might Tell Say To Them.

There's A Real Strong Link Today Between Soda Consumption And Obesity Among Children.

The Current Fast Food That We Have Is Inexpensive When You Buy It, But The Long-term Costs Of Eating It And The Long-term Costs To Society, Are Much Too High. This Cheap Food, When You Add Up All The Total Costs, Is Much Too Expensive.

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