How Big Food changed the way we eat

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

Business, News

4.6 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2024

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today we’re talking about food. Specifically, Big Food. In his book, “Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry,” Austin Frerick, agricultural and antitrust policy fellow at Yale, argues the food system is the most consolidated sector in the United States. On the show today, Frerick explains how the American food system became so concentrated, how that’s inflated prices and eroded quality, and what we should do about it. Plus, Walmart’s role as king of grocery kings.

Then, we’ll get into why Boeing can’t keep up with SpaceX. And, an expert on youth mental health (and former guest on “Make Me Smart”) was wrong about how teens curate their social media feeds.

Here’s everything else we talked about today:

- “Lax Antitrust Enforcement Imperils The Nation’s Supply Chains” from Forbes

- “What Is “Big Ag,” and Why Should You Be Worried About Them?” from Union of Concerned Scientists

- “The problem with growing corporate concentration and power in the global food system” from Nature Food

- “Major retailers are offering summer deals to entice inflation-weary shoppers” from AP News

- “US Consumer Confidence Rises for First Time in Four Months” from Bloomberg

- “Inflation now means high prices, not just rising costs” from Axios

- “What do Americans think about inflation?” from The Brookings Institution

- “Boeing Prepared to Fly Crewed Space Taxi With Helium Leak” from Bloomberg

We love to hear from you. Send your questions and comments to makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody I'm
0:06.3	I'm Kyle Rizdall welcome back to Make Me Smart where none of us is as smart as all
0:09.8	us.
0:10.8	And I'm Kimberly Adams.
0:12.4	It's Tuesday, May the 28th. Yesterday was Memorial Day and many of you likely spent the long weekend having food, lots of it. maybe even a classic American barbecue, possibly burgers, hot dogs,
0:27.0	veggies if you were so inclined. So today we are talking about food, specifically big food. We wanted to know more about
0:35.8	how corporate consolidation in the American food system has impacted consumers
0:39.4	and whether something you should be done about it here to make a smart
0:41.8	about all this is
0:43.0	Austin Frerick he's a Yale Agricultural and Antitrust Policy Fellow also the
0:47.0	author of the book Barons money power and the corruption of America's food
0:50.2	industry awesome welcome to the show it's good to have me on.
0:53.0	Yeah, thanks again for having me on.
0:54.0	It's such an honor.
0:55.0	So what is, what does it look like in practical terms, consolidation in American food?
1:00.4	For most people, it usually means higher prices in the grocery store.
1:03.7	I mean we shouldn't be shocked by this concentrated markets gouge that's what they do.
1:08.3	Say more.
1:10.0	To me the best example is the meat industry. I mean it's almost like every month there's a new allegation of price fixing in some protein market.
1:17.5	The meat markets now are more concentrated than they've ever been. It's more concentrated than when Upton Sinclair wrote the jungle and that's why we
1:24.3	mean we see rampant abuse everywhere with labor during COVID and then with the use of child labor
1:29.1	in these slotted houses.
	...

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