Customer Reviews

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

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For what it's worth, potential readers of Nestle's book should note that the first three "reader reviews" of this book are pretty obviously cranked out by some food industry PR campaign. To begin with, they were all submitted on the same date, February 22 -- "reader reviews" of a book that isn't even scheduled to go on sale until March 4! For another thing, they all hit on the same food industry "message points": that critics are "nagging nannies" whipping up "hysteria" on behalf of "greedy trial lawyers," etc. February 22 is also the date that noted industry flack Steven Milloy of the "Junk Science Home Page" (...) wrote a review trashing Nestle's book. Milloy is a former tobacco lobbyist and front man for a group created by Philip Morris, which has been diversifying its tobacco holdings in recent years by buying up companies that make many of the fatty, sugar-laden foods that Nestle is warning about. (...)

I haven't even had a chance yet to read Nestle's book myself, but it irritates me to see the food industry's PR machine spew out the usual (...) every time someone writes something they don't like. If they hate her this much, it's probably a pretty good book.

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!

Here's the thing.

As one reviewer mentioned I think the bulk of negative reviewers have not actually read this book.

The author is a nuritionist, who says that despite the really basic nutritional advice of most nutritionists which has not significantly changed over the course of a half century, the public still views nutritional advice as difficult to understand.

Why?

Because the food industry makes more money when it sells more products. It has a vested interest in getting people to at least buy (if not eat) more food. Most importantly, the least healthy foods (i.e. highly processed foods) have the highest profit margins. To ensure profits, they pressure the government to avoid informing the public in an easily understandable format that they should eat less and avoid processed foods.

Is she saying this is the ONLY reason why americans are fat? No. But the fact that many, many, many americans have problems figuring out what the heck to eat is heavily due to the food lobbyists, a fact which she goes into in nauseating detail.

And therein lies the problem.

Nestle is an Academic and she writes like one. Anyone familiar with non-fiction in the style of Nickle and Dimed, Fast Food Nation, or even Island of the Colorblind will find Food Politics irritating. Not because the book is poorly written, per se, but because it's dull.

She obscures critical points between reams of facts, her narrative style plods along instead of floating or skipping, and I frequently felt like hurling the book across the room screaming get to the point already.

But I did finish the book.

Because the message is far more important then the limited medium. This book is critically important in that it hi-lights the sad reality that billions of dollars being spent vying for a place on the tip of your fork. Sadly very little of this money bears your health in mind.

Eric Schlosser writes about FOOD POLITICS, "If you eat, you should read this book." But while Schlosser revealed to a mass public the disturbing business of fast food, Marion Nestle takes on most of the food industry, and not without consequences (you can view a letter she received from a lawyer representing the sugar industry on the website for this book).

She argues that basic nutrition science is simple. Yet there is mass confusion about what to eat and what effects foods have. And the reason for all of this misinformation is that it benefits food producers to have an innocent flock of customers who are left uncertain of how to judge what is healthy from what is not. She clearly explains what means the food industry uses to influence policies to their benefit, often at the expense of public health. And she gives detailed examples that illustrate the extent to which some companies and industries go to sell their products.

While her suggestions for reform may be somewhat wanting, her descriptions of how decisions about food get made on political levels is masterfully researched and she is always respectful of science. While those people with vested interests in certain industries may label her a communist, she is merely critiquing a history of policies and marketing strategies that have, to be sure, provided us with an abundant food supply, but have also led to increased obesity and high rates of chronic diseases.

Nestle presents a well researched, balanced description of how our market system in the US can hurt its citizens if proper checks and balances aren't applied. Our system only works if consumers are informed and can act on that information. Instead, it is abundantly evident that food producers (who are after all in the business of making money, not protecting our health)are experts at manipulating our food choices by advertising to children, lobbying for food labels that mislead the public, and generally doing everything they can to relax regulations meant to protect us that may stand in the way of increased revenue. Nestle's research in many ways is analogous to the saga of big tobacco, but food as she points out is much more nuanced -- you can't tell people just stop eating food like you can cigarettes. So who is at fault? Its not just industry, its our political system, our regulating agencies, school boards, and advocates. Nestle's writing is fine, just too detailed for some audiences at some points. Her research seems exhaustive (and is exhaustively referenced) and she speaks from first hand experience. Nestle is courageous for writing this and it will surely become a classic in public health literature.

In Sheldon M Rampton's review, above, he hits the nail right on the head (and no, I don't know Sheldon). The food industry is desperate to prevent the kind of backlash that's been visitng McDonald's in the wake of the (easily verifiable) truths revealed by "Fast Food Nation." But they shouldn't.

This book is not one of those "let me show you how yucky the kitchens are" books whose only purpose is to shock you and not really do any good in the end. What this book does is show you the "man behind the curtain" you're not supposed to see (remember the Wizard of Oz?) in terms we can all understand, and reveals the wide discrepancy between the way the food industry works and the way we all (want to) think it does.

Is this a struggle in vain? It might seem so at first. And yet, as mighty as the McDonalds "Goliath" seemed to be before FFN came out, they have quickly responded to the public's outcry, and they're doing wonderful things now that they realize that good citizenship can still be good for business. Let's hope that the rest of the food industry can learn the same lesson as they did.

Read this book, and the food industry will start paying LOTS of attention to the lesson.

You'll be glad you read this book.

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!

This book touches upon issues that everyone is aware of but chooses to ignore. The author makes this obvious but in an non-condescending way which is much appreciated. He ties the biases of the food industry in with other industries such as the pharmaceutical and tobacco industries. Drawing the connections between these three and the governmental regulatory agencies that work with/against them respectively (USDA, FDA, ATF), the author illustrates just how much of a problem this is. Not only was I fascinated by the issue, but I found the writing very accessible. Well done and it's too bad more haven't read it.

It's no surprise that we live in what the social critic Guy Debord calls a "spectacle" culture whose values and symbols increasingly originate from the marketing world. Mega-corporations are in the business of making a profit, and the way they do that is to use media to persuade ... folks into buying their products. Doubt it? Then try to get rid of all the advertizing jingles floating around in your head. Recent studies show that infants recognize manufacturing logos before they recognize their own names. We live in one vast commercial. We are consumer nation.

Marion Nestle has written an excellent and frightening book about the food side of consumer nation, documenting the lengths the food industry goes to manipulate the public, market its wares, and achieve the bottom line. The problem is that we over-stuffed Americans have too many choices about what to munch: food products proliferate. (I mean, just count the number of breakfast cereals available to you the next time you go to the supermarket. Do we REALLY need 43 different kinds of fiber to choose from?) So in order to push its product, the food industry revs up the marketing pressure. The ironically named Nestle exposes the ways that food manufacturers and retailers do this through their lobbying efforts with the FDA, through targeting consumer groups--especially kids--with as much zeal as Joe Camel used to hawk smokes to underagers, by bribing school systems to tout soft drinks and junk foods to students (as, for example, rewards for reading), or by fudging dietary and nutritional information packaged with the product.

The way in which the food industry manipulates us in order to push its products is obscene enough. But what's even more shameful is the fact that people are still starving, both here and abroad, even though there's so much damn food available that retailers are stumbling over themselves trying to sell it. UNESCO reports that between 35,000 and 40,000 kids die each day throughout the world (ncluding the U.S.) of starvation or hunger-related illness. These deaths aren't caused by a lack of food, but by lousy distribution of food. The politics and business of food pursues the bottom line while millions starve.

Read this book, be horrified, get angry, and change your life. Break free of the spectacle society. Mega-corporations can be stopped when we consumers stand up to them in the way they understand best: when we refuse to buy their products and play their game.

I found this book to be very informative about the political workings of the food industry. I agree with several other reviewers that it is a little dull and in an factual style (kind of reminds me of a history book. However I like that kind of reading, so it doesn't bother me.)

This book's basic premise is that the food industry's purpose is to sell as much food as possible. The food industry doesn't care about its consumers and encourages them to eat more than they need, produces lots of useless, cheap, junk food, and will do whatever it can within the political system (mostly legal, but sometimes illegal. The author documents one such example of price collusion) to set up an environment that is the most favorable to its interests.

The book documents how the FDA, Congress, and government agencies are influenced by the food industry. It provides details about the food industry's lobbying, studies and research grants funded by various segments of the food industry, the food industry's attempts to gain brand loyalty though school contracts, conflicts with the school lunch program, and attempts to maximize sales through bonuses for the schools. It chronicles the rise of the supplement industry and their involvement with the FDA.

The author does seem to have a somewhat leftist agenda in the last chapter in giving recommendations; but with that exception, I thought the overall tone of the book was neutral and strictly documentary. It's good solid book which people who are interested in their health or the American food industry should read.