What we eat has changed more in the last 40 years than in the previous 40,000. The survival of the current food system depends upon widespread ignorance of how it really operates.
Eric SchlosserRead
The executives who run the fast food industry are not bad men. They are businessmen. They will sell free-range, organic, grass-fed hamburgers if you demand it. They will sell whatever sells at a profit.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Business practices are driven by consumer demand rather than moral judgment.
This quote highlights the reality that executives in the fast food industry operate as businessmen primarily concerned with profitability. It suggests that if consumers demand healthier and more ethical food options, businesses will adapt to meet that demand, indicating the power of consumer choice in shaping industry practices.
Themes
BusinessConsumer DemandFast FoodMoralityProfit
In practice
Example use cases
During a business ethics lecture about consumer influence on industry standards.
More from Eric Schlosser
All quotes →Marijuana gives rise to insanity -- not in its users but in the policies directed against it. A nation that sentences the possessor of a single joint to life imprisonment without parole but sets a murderer free after perhaps six years is in the grips of a deep psychosis.
Eric SchlosserRead
Fast food is popular because it's convenient, it's cheap, and it tastes good. But the real cost of eating fast food never appears on the menu.
Eric SchlosserRead
Similar quotes
The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.
C. S. LewisRead
My belief is that the various religious traditions have great potential to increase compassion, the sense of caring for one another, and the spirit of reconciliation. However, I believe that a human being, without religious faith, can be a very good person - sincere, a good heart, having a sense of concern for others - without belief in a particular religious faith.
Dalai LamaRead
Man's chief delusion is his conviction that there are causes other than his own state of consciousness.
Neville GoddardRead
Wherever we direct our view, we discover the melancholy proofs of our depravity; whether we look to ancient or modern times, to barbarous or civilized nations, to the conduct of the world around us, or to the monitor within the breast; whether we read, or hear, or act, or think, or feel, the same humiliating lesson is forced upon us.
William WilberforceRead
But time in only another liar, so go along the wall a little further: if blackberries prove bitter there'll be mushrooms, fairy-ring mushrooms in the grass, sweetest of all fungi.
William Carlos WilliamsRead
When we are at the end of life, to die means to go away; when we are at the beginning, to go away means to die.
Victor HugoRead