Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
The Atlantic
“As I described in my book Fast Food Nation, published in 2001, the largest companies in the beef industry had recruited immigrants in Mexico, brought them to the meatpacking communities of the American West and Midwest, and used them during the Ronald Reagan era to break unions,” writes Eric Schlosser. “Wages were soon cut by as much as 50 percent. Line speeds were increased, government oversight was reduced, and injured workers were once again forced to remain on the job or get fired.” The same thing has happened in the pork and poultry industries. “What Trump has described as an immigrant ‘invasion’ was actually a corporate recruitment drive for poor, vulnerable, undocumented, often desperate workers.”
White nationalism at the farmers’ market?
The New York Times
After activists dug up information that indicated a longtime vendor at the farmers’ market in Bloomington, Indiana, was involved in white-supremacy groups, the “crunchy college town”—home to Indiana University—has been roiled by protests, counter-protests, and talk among vendors of arming themselves on market day. “Susan Welsand, who sells chiles” at the market, “said the uproar has turned the market into a ‘Trump tweet.’”
A new play tells the story of the women who served as Hitler’s tasters
BBC
“Imagine knowing every plate of food you eat could be your last,” writes Holly Williams. “For a group of young women in the Third Reich, this was their daily reality: they tested Hitler’s food during the last two-and-a-half years of World War Two … in case the Allies, or one of his own, were trying to poison him.” Their story was unknown until 2013, “when the then 95-year-old Margot Wölk revealed her former role to the German magazine Der Spiegel. Now, Hitler’s Tasters, a play by Michelle Kholos Brooks freely imagines what risking your life, fork by fork, was really like.”
How two vegan presidential candidates survived America’s porkiest state fair
Eater
The Iowa State Fair is a meatfest, from corndogs and pork chops to turkey legs and bacon-caramel pie. Every four years it’s also an obligatory stop on the presidential primary campaign trail, which this year included a couple of vegans, Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. Fortunately for them, writes Meghan McCarron, there is “the Veggie Table, a bright yellow stand emblazoned with ‘Home of the Veggie Corndog,’ located on the fair’s main drag. For 38 years, despite a name that evokes the fresh produce of a farmer’s market, the stand has catered to the fair’s vegetarian pioneers with a smorgasbord of hot and greasy and salty fried vegetable dishes, from fried pickles to fried zucchini.”
The pain, and promise, of a ‘fast-mimicking’ diet
MIT Technology Review
Prolon, the five-day, $250 fad diet that promises to “[put your body] into a protective and stress resistant mode; remove damaged cells and tissues; and promote self-repair through cellular regeneration and rejuvenation, “is all the rage in Silicon Valley,” writes Adam Piore. “It’s sold in 15 countries and has been tried by more than 150,000 people.” By eating tiny amounts of foods like kale crackers, olives, and tomato soup powder, and sipping herbal teas and a glycerin-based energy drink, the goal is to “trick the body into thinking you are fasting,” and thereby trigger all the above-mentioned benefits. Piore tried it. This is what he learned.