Eric Schlosser knows food. Not in the way Bobby Flay or Giada De Laurentiis does, but in a scholarly manner that knows its affects on the health of anyone who eats.
The author of the classic study Fast Food Nation and an EP on several films, Schlosser came to Bill Maher‘s Friday Real Time as a harbinger of potential doom to come, a guest with the credentials to back up his scary predictions with authority.
The next pandemic, Schlosser said, is potentially germinating down in Texas. That’s where it was recently discovered that bird flu had migrated into the cows at mega-dairies, and the federal government has not been allowed in to test the livestock or its workers.
“It’s a perfect example of how the pubic health is being threatened by private interests,” he said, noting, “The food industry spends more money lobbying than the defense industry.”
A handful of “enormous corporations” has basically taken over our food supply in the last 40 years, Schlosser said. “They hide behind these different brands,” he said. “You think there’s choice, but it’s really the illusion of choice.”
Ultra-processed foods can be blamed for many sins, Schlosser said, foods that are enhanced to make them irresistible to human palates. “What will hurt you is there’s all these chemicals that you’d never have in your kitchen,” he said of the new flavor enhancers, additives, and emulsifiers, all things humans have never before consumed.
“We keep creating problems with technology,” he concluded. As far as nutrition, we should get those by consuming 30 different types of plants per week. “It’s better to get them from real food than from supplements and additives.”
The panel portion of the show featured Frank Bruni, contributing writer at The New York Times, whose new book is The Age of Grievance, and Douglas Murray, columnist for the New York Post and author of The War on the West.
There was consensus on many of the topics, including that encampment students seem to ignore what happened in Israel on Oct. 7.
The panel decried the use of such buzzwords as oppressor, victim, and colonizer that have become too common. “We used to celebrate heroism and achievement,” said Murray.
Bruni said he was recently viewing some tapes from the late ’80s to early ’90s and heard the same sort of language, which he described as “wokeness with more syllables.”
They ended with a call for even-handedness in the coverage of the presidential candidates, with Bruni saying the foibles of each candidate need to be examined. “You don’t feed (an audience) baby bird style,” Bruni said.
“The job as a journalist is the same as a dog to a lamppost,” echoed Murray. “You are meant to piss on them. The media is not meant to be the amen chorus to any political party.”
Maher’s “New Rules” editorial focused on the things viewers and readers should focus on when consuming media. Watch the complete editorial above.
“At some point, you need to take a step back,” Maher said after listing his rules. People panicking about the presidential election should know that no matter who wins, “My guess is we keep on living. Is the sky really falling? Or is it just a door from a Boeing aircraft?”
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