A packed audience devoured the words of Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser last night in Memorial Auditorium as he talked about his investigation into the fast food industry.
Schlosser spent several years researching the workings of the fast food industry for the book Fast Food Nation and the documentary Food Inc. as well as for an assignment at Rolling Stone. He spoke about the conditions in today's slaughterhouses and the effects the industry has on health and the economy.
After all of that
I still eat hamburgers and french fries but I won't eat them at McDonalds or Wendy's
or Burger King - and I never eat at KFC
Schlosser said.
As the food industry has grown, secrecy has become more common in an industry driven increasingly by greed, Schlosser said.
Knowledge is power; that's why these companies don't want you to have any
don't want you to know what they're up to
he said.
For David Snider, a senior studying environmental geography, this industry trend was surprising.
I was amazed at the quickness of the industrialization of the food industry
and how rapidly everything has changed
said Snider, who attended the lecture because he had seen Food Inc.
During his research, Schlosser observed animals cooped up in confined spaces for the entirety of their lives and fed steroids to speed up their growth.
The industry is hard on its workers as well, Schlosser said.
You'll find desperate
poor immigrants getting hurt and getting fired (from slaughterhouses)
basically being treated as though they're as disposable as the paper wrapper of a Big Mac that you throw away when you're done
