Bill Maher Gets Word On The Potential Next Pandemic From ‘Fast Food Nation’ Author Eric Schlosser

deadline.com:

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