Eric Schlosser

From KCRW, I'm Evan Kleiman, and this is Good Food.

25 years ago, Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation pulled back the curtain on how America's meat gets made.

He's been a longtime critic of food safety practices in the meat industry.

Now he's sounding the alarm again.

Thank you so much, Eric.

Thank you.

That was journalist Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, Command and Control, and many other books.

We've been discussing the state of America's food safety system as well as the controversy over imported and unlabeled beef.

She also writes at kcwgoodfood.substack.com. And what's on your show this week?

You know, I talked to really famed food writer Eric Schlosser about the current state of America's food systems really focusing on meat and And then our In the Weeds series is brother and sister, Zeus Farini and Mercedes Rojas, who are the Arepa stand.

Oh, fantastic.

All right, Evan, thank you.

You know, it's like half the stuff in supermarkets is not even food at this point.

So seeing all that happen and in the late, Late 90s, Fast Food Nation came out, which is really Eric Schlosser's book, really seminal book, still meaningful, terrific book.

Pointed out all the contradictions in the food system that we still see today.

Some of these you covered in your TED Talk.

Marion Nestle wrote her book, Food Politics, very important book.

Eric Schlosser wrote Fast Food Nation.

You had a surge of interest in organic food and local food, and there was a movement forming.

And it was a very heady time.

But is anyone here paying any attention to this or solely focused on the key midterm races across the country? Call or text.

Then we revisit Fast Food Nation with author Eric Schlosser, 25 years after his industry-exposing book.

was first published.

And then we'll get your thoughts on what Eric had to say.

In any case, we're going to talk to Brian McGorry about this, too, and find out how many clicks the stories about local races are getting.

And he's joining us at noon.

Okay, coming up after this quick break, 25 years after Eric Schlosser wrote Fast Food Nation, we'll check in with him about the state of our food system with, you know, RFK Jr. kind of running the show.

I'm Marjorie Egan.

We're gonna talk about that.

And Eric Schlosser, he's the author of Fast Food Nation.

He wrote it, like, 25 years ago.

Yeah.

Uh, and you have to kinda, like, order it special on Amazon, 'cause they don't print it anymore.

Um, but I just finished that on recommendation of a friend of mine, Eric Schlosser, who wrote, um, Fast Food Nation.

Uh, he's like a prominent writer, and he's writing about prisons right now, and, and he...

I, I was just obsessed with this story.

Now that you got to know us a little bit and kinda see what we're doing, who are people that you know personally that you think we should have on as future guests?

I have a couple of people.

Eric Schlosser is great, who I just mentioned.

Uh, he wrote Fast Food Nation.

It's probably environmental impact stuff.

But I want to bring up something else because one of the other books that was brought up was Command and Control by Eric Schlosser, something like that.

And it is about the nuclear era, nuclear age technology.

And they talk about Damascus, Arkansas, which I've been in Arkansas.

We adapt to them, organize our lives around them, and eventually forget that things could have ever worked any other way.

25 years ago, my guest, Eric Schlosser, decided to look closely at one of those systems.

Fast food was by then so thoroughly embedded in American life that most of us barely thought about it.

It was simply there, inexpensive, predictable, convenient, available, almost everywhere, and wrapped in the reassuring familiarity of brands we had known since childhood.

In that sense, the 25th anniversary of Fast Food Nation raises a question larger than whether Americans can eat better hamburger today.

It asks whether fast food was, in some ways, an early version of the country we were becoming.

Eric Schlosser is an award-winning investigative journalist and the author of Fast Food Nation, as well as Command and Control, his acclaimed examination of America's nuclear weapons system.

A new 25th anniversary edition of Fast Food Nation, including a new afterword looking at what has happened to the food industry and corporate power since the book first appeared, is now being published.