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Fast Food Nation

Eric Schlosser

Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health

Marion Nestle

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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 over-efficient 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.

SYNOPSIS

How does the food industry influence what we eat and, therefore, our health? What are the food industry's marketing methods and what is its relationship to the political system? What can be said about its use of political power to achieve profit goals? A bold, unprecedented behind-the-scenes expose of one of America's biggest and most powerful industries.

FROM THE CRITICS

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.