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Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (California Studies in Food and Culture) |
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Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (California Studies in Food and Culture) |
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by: Marion Nestle
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.850973 EAN: 9780520224650 Edition: 1 ISBN: 0520224655 Label: University of California Press Languages: Manufacturer: University of California Press Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 469 Publication Date: March 04, 2002 Publisher: University of California Press Studio: University of California Press Editorial Review: Product Description: We all witness, in advertising and on supermarket shelves, the fierce competition for our food dollars. In this engrossing expose, 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, and certainly 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. Amazon.com Review: In the U.S., we're bombarded with nutritional advice--the work, we assume, of reliable authorities with our best interests at heart. Far from it, says Marion Nestle, whose Food Politics absorbingly details how the food industry--through lobbying, advertising, and the co-opting of experts--influences our dietary choices to our detriment. Central to her argument is the American "paradox of plenty," the recognition that our food abundance (we've enough calories to meet every citizen's needs twice over) leads profit-fixated food producers to do everything possible to broaden their market portion, thus swaying us to eat more when we should do the opposite. The result is compromised health: epidemic obesity to start, and increased vulnerability to heart and lung disease, cancer, and stroke--reversible if the constantly suppressed "eat less, move more" message that most nutritionists shout could be heard. Nestle, nutrition chair at New York University and editor of the 1988 Surgeon General Report, has served her time in the dietary trenches and is ideally suited to revealing how government nutritional advice is watered down when a message might threaten industry sales. (Her report on byzantine nutritional food-pyramid rewordings to avoid "eat less" recommendations is both predictable and astonishing.) She has other "war stories," too, that involve marketing to children in school (in the form of soft-drink "pouring rights" agreements, hallway advertising, and fast-food coupon giveaways), and diet-supplement dramas in which manufacturers and the government enter regulation frays, with the industry championing "free choice" even as that position counters consumer protection. Is there hope? "If we want to encourage people to eat better diets," says Nestle, "we need to target societal means to counter food industry lobbying and marketing practices as well as the education of individuals." It's a telling conclusion in an engrossing and masterfully panoramic exposé. --Arthur Boehm Related Items:
Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Very Informative, So much information... VERY InterestingI had no idea about the politics behind food, Its a great resource and the information is Life Changing. Read the book "Plenty - Eating Locally on the 100 Mile Diet" by J.B. Mackinnon, Brilliant Addition! Rating: - Informative for 2002Originally published in 2002 and updated in 2007 Marion Nestle's "Food Politics" is an informative if academic read. She explains clearly and patiently how the food industry has co-opted nutritionists, government agencies, and schools, threatening the health and safety of consumers and children. And when they cannot co-opt they choose to misinform, lie, slander, or sue, as when Texas cattlemen sued Oprah Winfrey. Especially frustrating is how, thanks to their successful lobbying and close government connections (there seems to be a revolving door between the Food & Drug Administration and the executive suites of food conglomerates such as Monsanto) the food industry can legally mislabel their products to misinform consumers. This is especially true for vitamin supplements, which can make a lot of outrageous claims without ever having to go through FDA approval. The only problem with the book is that it is perhaps too right. Since the initial publication of "Food Politics," a lot of other books, sometimes based on the original insights offered in "Food Politics," have been published that gives readers a more comprehensive and disturbing look into the manipulations and machinations of the vast and powerful food industry. And this past summer a documentary called "Food, Inc." came out, which puts in stunning and striking visual context the problems with the food industry. Even Marion Nestle's new book "What to Eat" distills all the insights from her first work. Reading "Food Politics" then is slightly redundant. That is not the fault of the author. Indeed, it's a testament to how influential the book has become. Rating: - InterestingHad to read this for a college class on Consumer Science. None the less, this is actually disturbing and eye-opening about the industry. You can really see many of the examples that she points out in current time. If you enjoy nutrition, food or health, this is something to put on your reading list. Rating: - An academic yet engrossing exposéI plowed my way through this book across many late-nights at my favorite 24/7 coffee bar, easily ignoring all of the "local atmosphere." If you can handle heavy academic reading, this book is practically a Woodward & Bernstein thriller -- an extremely engrossing exposé concerning the VERY ugly political underbelly of the American food industry, and how it chugs away to keep all of us as confused as possible about our food choices and what honestly constitutes sound nutritional guidance. If you're boggled by choices that SHOULD be simple, such as trying to figure out whether it's healthier to eat butter or some chemical facsimile which includes ingredients you couldn't pronounce to save your grandmother's soul, the spotlight on politics in this book will salve your frazzled mind. The decades of political insanity and posturing surrounding something so seemingly simple as [what food pyramid version is permitted in schools] says so much about the ENTIRE industry. Don't feel badly if you're a bit confused about "good nutrition," because you are NOT alone. Scores of millions of Americans feel the EXACT same way ... and Big Food likes it that way! Nestle's writing does indeed get rather heady in some sections; however, she's challenging decades of contradiction, confusion, obfuscation, and outright lies that Big Food has tried to sell to America, so it really is necessary for her to preemptively buttress herself against anticipated challenges from Big Food and their seemingly-endless supply of lawyers and lobbyists. Ignore the negative reviews. If heady, heavily-cited reading is NOT your thing, feel free to check out the [similar reading] suggestions, because there will probably arrive some point (or several) at which you REALLY want to throw this book at the wall. Just an honest observation.
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