At the Natural Products Expo, 43,000 attendees had the opportunity to attend the keynote by Erik Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the American Meal and Chew on This: Everything you Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food.

Erik spoke about the factors that created the fast food mentality: America’s car culture and belief in speed, convenience and efficiency and aerospace’s values around science and technology. He also emphasized how “Fast, cheap food isn’t affordable.” While it’s what is fast and efficient for our companies, it isn’t so for the overall society. One third of children today will acquire diabetes.

He also spoke about the size of companies and how large companies have power over their market places. Though no company is pure and all companies have something to improve on. Erik said that we should judge a company not by it’s size, but by its actions. He spoke of his admiration for Costco, offering health care for employees and Johnson & Johnson, founded with the priorities of 1) Customers 2) Employees 3) Community 4) Shareholders.