Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (California Studies in Food and Culture)

Customer Reviews

The food industry's assault on your health

Nutrition expert Marion Nestle's "Food Politics" explains how the formula for a healthy diet hasn't changed. She advises that one should eat more plant-based foods (fruits, vegetables and whole grains) and less meat, dairy and sweets. But this message collides with the interests of the food-industrial complex, which makes the bulk of its profits by selling relatively expensive processed foods. The book examines how corporations have successfully fought the health message by using a number of overt and covert tactics to further their objectives at the public's expense.

In fact, this business success story has resulted in a generation of Americans who are significantly overweight compared with their predecessors. Nestle shows that public relations and government lobbying result in obfuscation and mixed messages about the relative values of certain foods; this generally confuses Americans and makes it difficult to get the "eat less" message. Interestingly, she reveals that the amount of sweets and snack foods consumed are in almost exact proportion to the advertising dollars spent promoting these foods, suggesting that limits on advertising junk food to children might be a reasonable first step in addressing this problem.

But Nestle is particularly critical of the criminally poor quality of the nation's public school lunch program and the "pouring rights" contracts struck with soft drink companies by cash-starved school districts. Our country's apparent unwilingness to provide nutritious meals to our schoolchildren is shameful, and Nestle should be congratulated for bringing the situation to light.

Other noteworthy sections of the book address the deregulation of dietary supplements and the invention of "techno-foods", ie foods that have been fortified with vitamins, minerals or herbal ingredients. The overall picture is one of regulators on the defensive and huckster capitalism run rampant. While it was disturbing but not too surprising to learn about relatively obscure supplement makers making absurd claims for products that have little scientifically proven value, it was somewhat amusing to see a reprint of a short-lived advertisement for Heinz ketchup that promoted its supposed cancer-fighting properties. It appears there are no limits to what kinds of food products might be similarly reinvented by marketers in their quest for higher profits.

In the closing chapter, Nestle proposes a number of useful solutions. Her ideas are reasonable and display a maturity gained through many years spent in government and academia. In an environment where food choices and information surrounding food products are increasingly difficult to understand, let's hope that this book inspires us all to demand greater accountability from the food companies that feed us. Highly recommended!

Excellent and thought provoking

This book is up there with "Fast Food Nation" as an excellent expose of a business most of us take completely for granted. We all just assume food suppliers care about what we are eating and what they are selling, but - as in any business, most companies are more concerned with profits and dollars than people and health. I love a good Pop Tart now and then, and probably will continue to do so, but after reading this book I will never take advertisements or food promotions for granted.

What is particularly impressive is that Ms Nestle does not engage in the usual scare tactics professional nutritionists usually use (I think the previous three reviewers read a completely different book!) Nor does she tell us what to eat or what not to eat - it is NOT a book selling dietary advice - rather she looks at the business of marketing food and finds its practices questionable at best.

A balanced "must read" for anyone interested in food or health!

I don't think most of these reviewers read this book

This book is not some stupid Michael Moore-style "expose" of the "food lobby," and anyone simpleminded enough to get that out of it...well...probably thinks Michael Moore makes sense too.

Marion Nestle has a pretty impressive resume, and has good authority to write a book like this. Sure, you might think she's trying to tell you that Great Big Establishment Secret in describing how different manufacturing/producing groups try to make their products appear in the best light at the FDA, USDA and so on. But HELLO, PEOPLE! That is the stuff you learn in Economics or Marketing 101. Who are these simpletons who believe any businessperson wouldn't want to talk up his/her product's good side, and downplay its bad? Are there really people that naive about how commerce works? Apparently so, if this book is shocking to anyone. I weep for our touchy-feely education system sometimes...and reading these reviews is one of those moments.

Anyhow, the book pretty much lays out what anyone who's ever had a weight problem knows. We eat too much, move too little, and rely on high-caloric-density foods in the US. Eat less, and eat fewer junk foods. Duh.