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News release: Oregon/WashingtonApril 6, 2005 For more information, call: Author of Fast Food Nation to visit new farmers’ market in north Portland before lecturing on link between marketing to children and nation’s obesity epidemic Eric Schlosser here at invitation of Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research PORTLAND, OR) - April 12, 2005 - The author of a book criticizing American food marketing and its links to the nation’s epidemic of obesity will be in north Portland on May 18 for the opening of a unique farmers market. The Interstate Farmers Market that Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All American Meal, will visit is a unique collaboration between the Kaiser Permanente health care organization and local residents and community groups. Kaiser Permanente hosts the market at its Interstate campus next to Overlook Park , and shares in the market’s governance with representatives of the Overlook Neighborhood Association, the African American Health Coalition, and other community groups. Schlosser will meet with physicians and market administrators before heading into the market to meet Northwest farmers with stalls, and local residents coming to purchase fresh produce. The next evening, May 19, Schlosser will deliver the Center for Health Research’s 16th Saward Lecture at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in downtown Portland . His talk is titled “Fast Food Nation: Marketing to Children and America ’s Obesity Epidemic.” Drawing on what he learned about how the fast food industry transformed food production and people’s tastes, Schlosser will explore: the politics and economics of food in America ; the marketing of high-calorie junk food to children and what parents can do about it; the role that schools play in promoting unhealthy diets; what we can do to change unhealthy eating habits; how we can get healthy, affordable food to more people. Schlosser’s lecture will be from 7:30 to 9 p.m. Tickets are free but required. To order tickets, please call 503-335-2466. Schlosser is a graduate of Princeton University with a degree in American history. After trying his hand at several professions – playwright, novelist, scriptwriter – he became an investigative reporter and joined the Atlantic Monthly as a correspondent in 1996. What began as a two-part magazine article on the fast-food industry for Rolling Stone turned into an international bestseller. Fast Food Nation was on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly two years. It has been translated into more than 20 languages and has appeared on bestseller lists across the United States and in Canada , Great Britain and Japan . Schlosser’s work has also been published in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and The Nation. He is currently working on a book about the American prison system that explores the question, “How does the land of the free come to have the largest prison population in the history of the world?” Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research, founded in 1964, is a nonprofit research institution whose mission is advancing knowledge to improve health. Kaiser Permanente Northwest is a group practice health care organization providing health care services to about 465,000 people in Oregon and Southwest Washington . |
