"The U.S. food industry displays the ugly side of capitalism, manifesting numerous examples of what Thorstein Veblen termed "industrial sabotage." The evolution of agricultural production from small family farms to huge industrial agribusinesses has been accompanied by toxic pesticide and herbicide use, unsafe industrial meat, and unsustainable farming practices. Meanwhile, industrial food production shifted diets from primarily whole foods to mostly ultra-processed food-like substances. Ultra-processed food is designed to be addictive by incorporating copious amounts of sugar, salt, fat, and flavorings, fueling the obesity crisis in the process. The solutions to our food problems lie along the lines suggested by Veblen, and involve putting the productive people of society, especially farmers, back in charge of production, while empowering the common people and their communities."

"Previous research found that conspiracy beliefs were usually activated when individuals faced different types of psychological threats and that they led mainly to maladaptive individual and societal outcomes. In this research, we assumed that potential harmfulness of conspiracy beliefs may depend on the context, and we focused on the link between food industry conspiracy beliefs and conscious food choices. We hypothesized that food industry conspiracy beliefs may allow for a constructive attempt to protect oneself against real or imagined enemies (i.e., food industry companies) by conscious food choices (e.g., paying attention to how much the food products are processed)..."

"Our results particularly reveal that firm size and industry market structure (i.e. concentration) are key determinants of how firm‐level markups respond to import competition. "