Five Minutes With: Eric Schlosser
By Timothy Fernholz, Georgetown University, and Ben Adler, Campus Progress
Wednesday June 14, 2006
Is obesity the next big American political issue? With one Republican presidential hopeful, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, gaining national recognition for his personal weight loss and collaboration with former President Clinton to keep sweets out of school, it’s possible. One person responsible for raising public awareness of the issue is Eric Schlosser, an award-winning journalist and modern-day Upton Sinclair who penned Fast Food Nation in 2001, a blistering expose of the dark side of the fast food industry: health risks, horrific working conditions and industry efforts to market directly to children.
Now, Schlosser is back with a fast food follow-up, Chew on This, a similar expose written with Charles Wilson; it focuses particularly on the dangers of fast food for children. But Schlosser is now set to reach an even larger audience: In the coming months we’ll see a film based on Fast Food Nation, directed by Richard Linklater and featuring big name stars like Patricia Arquette, released across the country. Since we couldn’t convince him to sit down with us over a burger, Campus Progress chatted with Schlosser over the phone.
 Fast Food Nation was a dramatic wake-up call for a lot of young people about foods we had all grown up eating. What inspired you to write that book?
Well, I didn’t come to it out of any great hatred for fast food, I used to eat it all the time. I did a big investigative piece at The Atlantic Monthly. It was about illegal immigration, it was about farm labor, migrant farm workers, and I told a very complicated story through something simple and concrete: a strawberry. We love strawberries and we eat lots of strawberries, and we eat lots of strawberries without ever thinking that each one of those strawberries has to be picked by hand. So, you want a lot of strawberries, you need a lot of hands. And that article was read at Rolling Stone magazine, and they invited me in to do the same thing for fast food.
Basically, they wanted me to go behind the counter and show all the complex systems that bring you this heavily processed food. I didn’t jump at the opportunity because I eat fast food, and I didn’t want to write something condescending and elitist putting down the industry, but the more I learned, the more amazed I was, and what was incredible to me was that I would be eating this food all the time without thinking about it, without having any idea where it came from or how it was being made.
As a writer, I have to tell you the lead to that book is just incredible. You start out in a military base…
…Cheyenne Mountain. One of our most top secret military bases, which is inside a hollowed-out mountain in Colorado.
How do you come up with something like that?
You know, it’s not always premeditated. A lot of it comes out of the reporting. I was looking for a place to set Fast Food Nation, and Colorado sounded really interesting to me. It felt like, with the whole conservative religious fundamentalist culture, it was at the cutting edge of change in America. Little did I know how much that culture would take over America.
I decided to set it in Colorado Springs. There are these big military bases, so I applied to visit the base. And while I was there I started talking to them about what they eat there and it just blew my mind that, at that point, and I’m sure its no longer true post 9/11, the Domino’s Pizza delivery guy would come right up to the gate at one of the most top-secret, important military installations in the United States. [If] you can get Domino’s delivered to the Cheyenne Mountain air station, fast food has really infiltrated every part of American life.
Tell us a little bit about your new film based on Fast Food Nation and whether you and Morgan Spurlock have a rivalry.
Firstly, Morgan Spurlock: He made a totally disgusting film, but a really funny film. There’s no rivalry whatsoever. As a matter of fact, we have a standing agreement that I will testify in his behalf when he gets sued by the industry, and he has promised to testify in mine.
The film that’s based on Fast Food Nation is totally different from Super Size Me, and I love Super Size Me. This film is a fictional film, it’s an independent film made by a wonderful director, Richard Linklater, who did Slacker and Dazed and Confused. It takes the title of my book and some of the themes but pretty much puts aside the book. There’s nobody in the book who’s literally in the film. The film is about the lives of some intersecting characters in a small town in Colorado, a lot of the film is in Spanish, some of the crucial characters are illegal immigrants, and in some ways it’s an updating of [Upton Sinclair’s] The Jungle on the hundredth anniversary of the publishing of that book.
Why did you write your new book, Chew on This?
Chew on This is aimed at kids, and it’s aimed at the people who the fast food industry is heavily targeting with its mass marketing. When I finished Fast Food Nation and the manuscript was all done, I hired a fact-checker from TheNew Yorker, Charles Wilson, and his job was to make sure that every fact was right…. He came to me with the idea of doing a children’s book based on Fast Food Nation, arguing that these kids are being targeted by the fast food industry, they need the same sort of information in Fast Food Nation, and they need an alternate view of the world than the one they’re getting from all these ads. So it sounded like a good idea, and I recruited him to help me with it.
What do you think of the recent announcement of several major soda companies, including Coke and Pepsi, to stop selling their products in elementary and high schools come this fall, and why they might be motivated to do that?
I’d like to think that they were motivated solely by concern for the health of American children. But, whatever their motivations are, I think it’s a good thing. The deal was brokered by former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and the current governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, a conservative Republican. I think it’s a terrific step because it shows bipartisan support for ensuring that kids are eating healthy food in schools. I don’t think it’s an ideal agreement; it’s going to be phased in over a number of years [and] it’s a voluntary agreement. But to me it’s a sign of the times, a sign that attitudes are really changing and there’s a real feeling growing that we can’t afford to have these companies marketing unhealthy food to kids in schools. I applaud the move by the soda companies to make voluntary changes, but I also support moves at the state and federal level to put tough restrictions on what kind of food can be sold in schools.
Fast Food Nation sold extremely well; it raised a lot of awareness. Have you seen any improvement in the issues you talk about, like exploitative labor practices at fast food restaurants and the meatpacking plants that supply them?
In the five years since the book was published, a lot has changed for the better and some things have changed for the worse. I’m not going to claim credit for my book being responsible for all this, but nevertheless things have changed. One of the ways things have changed is there’s much more awareness about food. In the last five years there has just been a huge increase in organic production, the sale of organics. Whole Foods is one of the fastest-growing, most profitable food distributors, and they represent a whole different set of values from what McDonald’s and KFC do. So you’re seeing a big change in eating habits among well-educated people and upper middle class people, and that’s good.
There’s also a lot more awareness about obesity and the obesity epidemic, which really didn’t seem to be discussed much five years ago and now is a huge, huge subject of debate and concern. Cutbacks on soda in schools, Governor Schwarzenegger kicking the junk food and the soda companies out of school, all that is good.
When it comes to worker safety and workers rights in the American meatpacking industry, I think things are much worse than they were five years ago, thanks mainly to the Bush administration, which is very close to the meatpacking industry. I went to Texas after Fast Food Nation was published to interview meatpacking workers there; those are some of the worst conditions I’ve ever seen. The food safety issues, I think, have gotten much worse, again, because the Bush administration is so close to the meatpacking industry. This isn’t a Republican or Democratic issue, ideally, it’s a non-partisan issue. Republicans and Democrats both have to eat. Unfortunately, a lot of money flows in Washington from this industry to certain politicians. There’s been a real backslide, I think, in food safety measures.
One thing that I also think is worse is the eating habits of the poor and ordinary working people. As the obesity epidemic is growing in this country, it’s mainly growing among people at the very bottom. These are the main consumers of fast food. Fast food is increasingly the food of the poor. What I’m hoping to see in the next five years is the same changes in eating habits that have occurred among the well-educated and the upper middle class now need to be extended throughout society, especially for the people at the bottom who are suffering the worst health effects of this food.
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Comments
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It’s regrettable that your readers are seeing a such a limited point of view.
Worker safety in the meat industry is better than it ever has been. CDC and USDA data show that food safety and public health outcomes are oustanding—bacteria have declined dramatically on raw meat and poultry and so, too, have the foodborne illnesses associated with those bacteria.
No other industry in American is regulated and inspected as heavily as the meat industry. Our packing plants are staffed continuously with inspectors empowered to stop lines when they see violations. Large plants can have 25 inspectors a day overseeing what they do.
I hope that your readers will take the time to visit www.BestFoodNation.com for the real facts based upon government data.
Eric Schlosser has the right to his own opinion, but he doesn’t have the right to his own facts.
— Janet Riley - Jun 15, 11:31 AM - #Who is Janet Riley and who does she work for? More importantly what PLANET is she living on?
The Numero Uno WORST, MOST DANGEROUS job you can get in the USA is in the meat-packing industry!! It is plagued by BRUTAL CONDITIONS, UNSANITARY WORK ENVIRONMENT, DEADLY TOXINS—offal that is left untended in the plants, NO BENEFITS, HIGH TURNOVER—usually from a PERMANENTLY debilitating injury that is given a PITTANCE in disability awards. They are ALL there in the work histories—Carpal Tunnel, Tendonitis, Neck Injuries, Back Injuries, Amputated Fingers, Hands, Arms, Feet & Legs, Disease from the entrails steaming in the UN-Ventilated hothouses!!! Serious injuries are given patch jobs and then the victim is LEAD back to the line & expected to maintain the same workload as PRIOR to the injury. Feeling warm all over yet?
Here’s good one, it is not UNCOMMON for a plant-worker to sign a PRE-EMPLOYMENT agreement NOT to sue the company in case of an accident. This is de rigeur in Texas and it was instituted by that kindly avuncular figure in the US Senate—Phil Gramm. (He also made sure that trash incinerators were placed next to Mexican-American “communities” and no where near Crawford!!)
All this is well-documented throughtout the history of meat-packing (fish, too!) industry. Bush I had the brilliant idea to stock the agencies that are supposed to WATCHDOG those industries with former LOBBYISTS, LAWYERS & OFFICIALS from within THOSE industries.
The fruit doesn’t fall very far from the tree.
— David T. Gray - Jun 15, 07:49 PM - #Janet Riley is senior vice president for public affairs and professional development at the American Meat Institute, a lobbying group with sponsors that read like a grocery list. Boar’s Head meats, Bob Evans, Sarah Lee, and Tyson Foods are some of the more recognizable of the more than 50 food industry companies that contribute. Industry groups pooling together to support www.bestfoodnation.com (isn’t that just the cutest little turn of phrase?) include:
Cattlemen’s Beef Board
International Franchise Association
National Cattlemen’s Beef Association
National Council of Chain Restaurants
National Pork Producers Council
National Restaurant Association
National Retail Federation
Snack Food Association
Favorite quote from Ms. Riley’s website: “If Upton Sinclair were alive today, he’d be AMAZED by the U.S. meat industry!” Amazed that so little has changed. Janet, you have the right to your own opinion, but you don’t have the right to your own disclosure.
— Pete - Jun 16, 11:50 AM - #I love the way you guys jumped all over the Janet comment about how safe our food is etc. I went right to the “real facts based upon government data” comment and assumed that because she used that term decided she was a shill with a “bone to pick”( I couldn’t resist that one ).
— Dan Freeman - Jun 19, 12:02 PM - #The lesson here is to come to the understanding that if our “government said it and it is in the data” then, at this point in our history, it is a lie, coverup, sales job etc.
It has come to this, for myself anyway, that if the current regime’s, or their toadies, lips are moving then it’s a lie and if they are writing anything that includes “government facts” it’s fiction.
Hey Eric, what happened to the book I heard you were working on about the prison system? I was really looking forward to it following my having read Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness (about the underground economy).
— John - Jun 22, 02:52 AM - #Whole Foods may sell organic produce and products at their stores, but their shipping methods, “price gouging”, and union-busting tactics don’t exactly paint them as angels in the food industry. On top of that, they throw away perfectly good food every night from their deli. We used to take the sealed containers of salads and whatnot to homeless folks, then one day they started locking the dumpsters…
— Jennifer - Jun 26, 09:11 PM - #