Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition, and Health, Revised and Expanded Edition (California Studies in Food and Culture) | 
 enlarge | Author: Marion Nestle
Publisher: University of California Press
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  38 reviews
Sales Rank: 13147
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 510
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 5.9 x 1.3
ISBN: 0520254031
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.4764130973
EAN: 9780520254039
ASIN: 0520254031
Publication Date: October 15, 2007
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Condition: No markings inside or outside. Excellent condition! (A1)
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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 expose. --Arthur Boehm
Product Description
An accessible and balanced account, Food Politics laid the groundwork for today's food revolution and changed the way we respond to food industry marketing practices. Now, a new introduction and concluding chapter bring us up to date on the key events in that movement. This pathbreaking, prize-winning book helps us understand more clearly than ever before what we eat and why.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 33 more reviews...
Food Policy September 24, 2008
I purchased this book for a course I am taking in food policy and find it a very readable companion to the course. I think it provides a firm grounding in the underlying structures that shape our food landscape, namely the powerful influence of industry over government.
 Amazing September 23, 2008
Amazing, well thought out and researched book. I found it to be an interesting book as well. One of the best in the type of genre.
Marion Nestle: Knows her Political Facts about our food! February 10, 2008
Marion Nestle is an amazing researcher that worked diligently to unravel the truth about Lobbyists for the food industry, and their effect on the Food Pyramid. Americans are eating today based on the misnomers of a politized Congressional debate. It is the most fascinating read I have ever had. It will not only inform you, but change the way we eat and the way we feed our families. This book has had a tremendous impact on my life and I'm sure it will have the same effect on yours. Since the "Super Size Me" experiment of Morgan Spurlock, who called Marion Nestle his mentor, Americans are more concerned about our food source. Marion Nestles research will not oly help you to understand the problems of food labeling, but teach you what questions we should be asking our selves before we choose what we eat. I have attached a copy of the link to her book. It is a must read. So, be sure to treat yourself and your loved ones to a whole new understanding of how "Political" food truly can be. http://www.amazon.com/Food-Politics-Influences-Nutrition-California/dp/0520254031/ref=cm_cmu_up_add_glance
The same people pushing to "empower individuals" do all they can to disempower you January 11, 2008
There's much to say about Nestle's "Food Politics" and "What To Eat," but the overarching message is that the food industries lie compulsively in order to maximize profits. There's no reason to assume that food-company profit maximization would lead to any desirable outcome: they will produce more food every year in the quest for profit growth, and that food will be as artificial and toxic as the laws will allow them. They will resist any food labeling that might harm their sales. This includes:
* "organic" (which implies that some foods are better than others)
* warnings about toxicity (e.g., methylmercury in tuna)
* the USDA food pyramid, which explicitly places junk food at the top and low-profit vegetables near the bottom
They offload the regulatory burden onto consumers: if you're getting fat, it's your own fault. Of course, they say this while they fight tooth and nail against any labeling requirement that might help you choose. And they fight against any regulation that might make you safer at their expense.
And of course there's the advertising. The same companies that tearfully demand your 'freedom to choose' with hand over heart are the same ones that target your children: everything from Saturday-morning cartoon ads to McDonald's sponsorship of Teletubbies to Coca-Cola branded baby bottles. In-depth psychological research understands exactly what will make your child tug at your sleeve in the grocery store and beg for the most profitable sugary cereal. So you have the 'freedom to choose', defended by companies that do all they can to deny it.
Marion Nestle's magisterial books prove these points in extraordinary detail, yet they pull off the trick with an eloquence that makes them read like novels. The basic premise, though, is beyond dispute: food companies exist to maximize shareholder return. Their investors demand growth every year. There's no reason to expect that this demand will work in your favor.
 Good information in a dull format November 22, 2007
Marion Nestle has a lot of useful and important information in this book; however, her style is very clinical and mundane. I found myself working to stay awake whenever I read the book. I did finish it, because I think it's good knowledge to have, but a better writer could have made the material pop.
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