Food Politics : How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health

In this fascinating book we learn how powerful, intrusive, influential, and invasive big industry is and how alert we must constantly be to prevent it from influencing not only our own personal nutritional choices, but those of our government agencies. Marion Nestle has presented us with a courageous and masterful exposé.--Julia Child

This remarkable book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand how it has come to be that the richest nation in the world is eating itself to death.... Straight reporting about the shaping of food policy, as this volume makes clear, is certain to offend some very powerful players.--Joan Dye Gussow, author of This Organic Life

Food politics underlie all politics in the United States. There is no industry more important to Americans, more fundamentally linked to our well-being and the future well-being of our children. Nestle reveals how corporate control of the nation's food system limits our choices and threatens our health. If you eat, you should read this book.--Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation

'Blockbuster' is one of the best ways that I could describe this book.... A major contribution to understanding the interaction of politics and science, especially the science of nutrition, it is of extreme value to virtually all policy makers and to everyone concerned with the American diet.--Sheldon Margen, editor of the Berkeley Wellness Letter

A devastating analysis of how the naked self-interest of America's largest industry influences and compromises nutrition policy and government regulation of food safety. . . . A clear translation of often obscure studies and cases, the writing is accessible and lively.--Warren Belasco, author of Appetite for Change
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Foreword by Michael Pollan
Preface to the 2007 Edition First Edition
Introduction:
The Food Industry and "Eat More"

PART ONE
UNDERMINING DIETARY ADVICE
1. From "Eat More" to "Eat Less," 1900-1990
2. Politics versus Science: Opposing the Food Pyramid, 1991-1992
3. "Deconstructing" Dietary Advice

PART TWO
WORKING THE SYSTEM
4. Influencing Government: Food Lobbies and Lobbyists
5. Co-opting Nutrition Professionals
6. Winning Friends, Disarming Critics
7. Playing Hardball: Legal and Not

PART THREE
EXPLOITING KIDS, CORRUPTING SCHOOLS
8. Starting Early: Underage Consumers
9. Pushing Soft Drinks: "Pouring Rights"

PART FOUR
DEREGULATING DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS
10. Science versus Supplements: "A Gulf of Mutual Incomprehension"
11. Making Health Claims Legal: The Supplement Industry's War with the FDA
12. Deregulation and Its Consequences

PART FIVE
INVENTING TECHNO-FOODS
13. Go Forth and Fortify
14. Beyond Fortification: Making Foods Functional
15. Selling the Ultimate Techno-Food: Olestra

Conclusion:
The Politics of Food Choice

Afterword:
Food Politics: Five Years Later and Beyond

Appendix: Issues in Nutrition and Nutrition Research

Notes
List of Tables
List of Figures
Index
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"Combining the scientific background of a researcher and the skills of a teacher, [Nestle] has made a complex subject easy to understand." * New York Times * "The ironically named Nestle does for the entire food industry what Eric Schlosser did for fast food in Fast Food Nation-a scathing and sometimes shocking expose of an industry we have taken for granted. This award-winning book looks at how the sheer volume of food available in North America has created questionable marketing practices, to say the least." * Toronto Globe & Mail * "A solid, important treatise. Taking the health effects as given, it details how food companies undermine public health and infiltrate institutions that are sworn to protect it. If, after Marxism's demise, you need evidence of the pervasive complicity of government in the amassing of wealth by a few to the detriment of the many, look no further." * American Prospect * "Nestle's meticulous, nuanced account traces the connections between North America's immense agricultural surpluses, industrial foods like infant formula and Hamburger Helper, the supersizing of fast foods, and declines in public health." * Women's Review of Books * "In a country that is being targeted by a food industry that will make and market any product that sells, even to children, regardless of its nutritional value or its effect on health, Food Politics is required reading." * Bloomsbury Review * "Nestle is simply one of the nation's smartest and most influential authorities on nutrition and food policy." * Sun-Sentinel * "Nestle covers more ground, wields greater authority, and has concrete, tough-minded recommendations for change." * Seattle Weekly * "Food Politics is a book that deserves to change national and international attitudes, as Carson's Silent Spring did in the 1960s." * American Journal of Clinical Nutrition * "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." * Library Journal * "In her exquisitely researched book, Nestle details how the food industry's tendrils have reached into every aspect of nutritionists' work and are suffocating its public health goals. Food Politics provides rich case studies of how the industry infiltrates nutrition departments at universities and federal agencies and intermingles unabashedly with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)." * Health Education & Behavior * "In the tradition of Upton Sinclair, Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan, Nestle exposes the dark side of food. A life-giving substance, food can kill us, and Nestle never loses sight of the seriousness of this issue throughout the text." * Food Anthropology * "Food Politics is a well-researched, thoughtful, and angry book. Nestle is most eloquent in her analyses of the relationship between government and industry. . . . An invaluable addition to the literature." * Technology and Culture *
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Marion Nestle is Professor and Chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University. Author of Nutrition in Clinical Practice (1985), she has served as a nutrition policy advisor to the Department of Health and Human Services and as a member of nutrition and science advisory committees to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. She is the author of Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism (California, 2003), Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine (California, 2010), and Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics (California, 2012), among other books.
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