Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health
Author: Marion Nestl
We all witness, in advertising and on supermarket shelves, the fierce competition for our food dollars. In this engrossing exposé, Marion Nestle goes behind the scenes to reveal how the competition really works and how it affects our health. The abundance of food in the United States--enough calories to meet the needs of every man, woman, and child twice over--has a downside. Our overefficient food industry must do everything possible to persuade people to eat more--more food, more often, and in larger portions--no matter what it does to waistlines or well-being.
Like manufacturing cigarettes or building weapons, making food is very big business. Food companies in 2000 generated nearly $900 billion in sales. They have stakeholders to please, shareholders to satisfy, and government regulations to deal with. It is nevertheless shocking to learn precisely how food companies lobby officials, co-opt experts, and expand sales by marketing to children, members of minority groups, and people in developing countries. We learn that the food industry plays politics as well as or better than other industries, not least because so much of its activity takes place outside the public view.
Editor of the 1988 Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health, Nestle is uniquely qualified to lead us through the maze of food industry interests and influences. She vividly illustrates food politics in action: watered-down government dietary advice, schools pushing soft drinks, diet supplements promoted as if they were First Amendment rights. When it comes to the mass production and consumption of food, strategic decisions are driven by economics--not science, not common sense, andcertainly not health.
No wonder most of us are thoroughly confused about what to eat to stay healthy. An accessible and balanced account, Food Politics will forever change the way we respond to food industry marketing practices. By explaining how much the food industry influences government nutrition policies and how cleverly it links its interests to those of nutrition experts, this pathbreaking book helps us understand more clearly than ever before what we eat and why.
Los Angeles Times
In this readable, if dense, and thought-provoking narrative, Nestle demonstrates how lobbying, public relations, political maneuvering and advertising by the food industry work against public health goals and have helped create a population that's eating itself sick. Most important, she makes clear the need for better nutritional education among consumers. 'Voting with [our] forks' for a healthier society, Nestle shows us, is within our power.
Village Voice
Nestle's controversial new book dishes up many of the industry's dirtiest secrets: how multinational companies spend billions to convince us that unhealthy foods are good for us and lobby the government to sway dietary regulations and subsidies in their favor. (feature story in the Village Voice, 3/26)
Economist
A provocative and highly readable book arguing that America's agribusiness lobby has stifled the government's regulatory power, helped create a seasonless and regionless diet, and hampered the government's ability to offer sound, scientific nutritional advice.
Newsday
Nestle details how the food industry influences nutrition and health and she casts light on manipulations inherent in selling food,unhealthy or not. Must reading.
New York Times
Dr. Nestle examines what she sees as the industry's manipulation of America's eating habits while enumerating many conflicts of interest among nutritional authorities. Combining the scientific background of a researcher and the skills of a teacher, she has made a complex subject easy to understand.
Nation
[A]n excellent introduction to how decisions are made in Washington (and their effects on consumers. Let's hope people take more notice of it than they do of the dietary guidelines.
USA Today
In her new book,Nestle puts much of the blame for the nation's weight problem on the food industry. The book already is generating controversy even though it doesn't arrive in bookstores until next month.
San Francisco Bay Guardian
If it hasn't yet occurred to you that there are striking and ominous parallels between the tobacco and food industries-Big Tobacco,meet Big Fat-it might be time to pick up a copy of Food Politics.
Library Journal
Nestle (chair, nutrition and food studies, NYU) offers an expos of the tactics used by the food industry to protect its economic interests and influence public opinion. She shows how the industry promotes sales by resorting to lobbying, lawsuits, financial contributions, public relations, advertising, alliances, and philanthropy to influence Congress, federal agencies, and nutrition and health professionals. She also describes the food industry's opposition to government regulation, its efforts to discredit nutritional recommendations while pushing soft drinks to children via alliances with schools, and its intimidation of critics who question its products or its claims. Nestle berates the food companies for going to great lengths to protect what she calls "techno-foods" by confusing the public regarding distinctions among foods, supplements, and drugs, thus making it difficult for federal regulators to guard the public. She urges readers to inform themselves, choose foods wisely, demand ethical behavior and scientific honesty, and promote better cooperation among industry and government. This provocative work will cause quite a stir in food industry circles. Highly recommended. Irwin Weintraub, Brooklyn Coll., NY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Interesting book: A Documentary Companion to a Civil Action or On scene Guide for Crisis Negotiators
In the Kennedy Kitchen
Author: Neil Connolly
The famed compound at Hyannisport was the Kennedy family's favorite place to relax, and Rose Kennedy's kitchen was the central gathering place. Everyone-including, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, JFK Jr., Caroline, Maria Shriver, and Arnold Schwarzenegger-came wandering in the back door to visit Rose. Her chef, Neil Connolly, always made sure there was lobster salad, potato salad, and a platter of roast chicken in the fridge, and in this book, he brings these and other favorites to your home. Included in this cookbook are Kennedy family photos and anecdotes collected personally by Neil.
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