Carmen M. Ganser Illinois State University

I found Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation to be illuminating, shocking, and terrifying. I feel that the situation in this country is going to get worse instead of better. We need to develop in our student techniques that instill in them savvy purchasing habits. Unfortunately, the power of advertising is strong in this country, and corporations have the support of our federal and state governments. In light of recent bailouts of the airline industry, workers have already taken severe cuts in wages and benefits, and are now being asked to subsidize their employers who systematically have kept their salaries and bonuses the same through this economic crisis. The same holds true for fast food. American and international consumers are not only subsidizing the development of these corporations, but they are also paying these corporations to kill them (i.e. the exorbitant rates of heart disease and obesity throughout this country, and now throughout China and Japan).

In addition to the ethically bankrupt practice of producing poor health in this country, the meat packing industry, part of the whole fast food package, is unapologetically murdering its workers who are poor and rather defenseless in our anti union economy. I decry this industry, I decry what it has turned our country's urban, suburban, and rural geography and children into, and I decry that our federal policies whole heartedly support them in their endeavors to take over the world, creating an ugly, homogenous world with a McDonald's on every comer. It well may be that in ten years we'll be hardpressed to find a Crazy Planet Kitchen, a Lucca Grill, or a Koffee Kup because of the ubiquitous invasion of McDonald's, Burger King, Subway, and on and on the list goes.

One thing I wanted to add to our discussion on April 4th. At one point during the discussion, I was suggesting that we can model behavior for our students that rejects consumer habits that cater to what I feel are morally corrupt corporations. Choosing local restaurants over fast food chains, shopping at small stores rather than Walmart. I was explaining in particular that I myself had made a decision to never shop at Walmart again, and I haven't for over two years. A gentleman seated next to me wanted to know where I bought my toothpaste (then suggested that I probably made it myself, I can only imagine that he thinks I have adopted a hippie lifestyle since I don't shop at Walmart). What I find incredulous is that our society can't imagine a world where one can buy toothpaste at a store other than Walmart. It seemed to me that several colloquium. participants got defensive, perhaps because they too would like to stop shopping at Walmart but just can't seem to break themselves away from Walmart's great bargains. Of course I cannot weed out all corporations from my life. But at least I have made a start; I don't shop at Walmart and I don't eat fast food. It is possible to choose to purchase goods at other places. I choose to pay a bit more rather than foster the development of an evil corporation (Walmart fires workers who attempt to unionize; the company forcibly makes workers work overtime without pay, and not just time and a half, but nothing, sometimes getting up to 30 to 40 hours of unpaid work a week from some workers; it vends products produced by near slave child labor from poor countries who do not have protective laws for workers, etc.). And believe it or not I make on average $6,000 per year. It is possible.

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