Food Politics by Marion Nestle (2002)
Marion Nestle is a giant in the food policy and nutrition research sector. Many of us currently in this space have her to thank for inspiring our personal journeys, or for paving the path for our careers with her publications and advocacy. Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (2002), was one of the first mass-audience publications to reveal the implications of significant (corporate) industry involvement in the American food system. The book won awards (including a James Beard Literary Award and an Association of American Publishers Award for Public Health), changed the way many readers think about the food system, and lays a thesis of concern that still resonates today. Professor Nestle continues to speak about the themes from Food Politics on her website, also called “Food Politics,” her Twitter, and at events (she recently presented “Food Politics 2024: An Agenda for Action” at Cornell University).
Food Politics centers a major, contemporary food issue in the United States: there has never been so much food abundance, and it has never been more difficult for consumers to make informed, healthy diet choices. Federal government agencies who are responsible for creating public nutrition advice and regulating food industries are hamstrung by statue and heavily influenced by the very industries they are meant to regulate.
Nestle emphasizes that this current state of over-abundance and choice is historically unprecedented. Even into the 20th century, many illnesses in the US were related to underweight and undernourishment. The Netflix documentary You Are What You Eat, which features Professor Nestle, points out that before WWII many Americans wouldn’t have been eligible to enlist in the military because they were too undernourished. Nestle witnessed a shift in food availability in general in the United States throughout her life and documents the increases in processed and ultra-processed foods in this book. The availability of these foods would not be a huge issue in isolation, but Nestle underscores the interference of ultra-processed food corporations in policy and public opinion. Nestle argues that Americans are at the point where, in general, we should be eating less, but are being lobbied on multiple fronts with bad-faith, industry-generated messaging encouraging us to continue to eat more of the wrong foods.
A great example of this interference occurs early in the book with Nestle’s story of the Food Pyramid. The Pyramid’s development occurred during the transition in the American economy from widespread food scarcity to food abundance. Traditional government messaging - and subsidies to agriculture - encouraged Americans to eat more. Food became cheaper and more abundant. Agricultural interests formed industry associations to protect the government support to which they had become adjusted - and used that cooperative power to lobby for preferential placement on the Food Pyramid. Meat and dairy industries were the heavy players in this saga, pushing back on recently devised scientific and government recommendations for diets high in grains and other plants and relatively lower in animal-based products and added fats and sugars. Multiple releases of the Food Pyramid, each with different recommended number of servings (and some with no quantification of serving size), left much room for confusion by the general public. Industry, especially meat and dairy, continued to combat what it perceived as unfair hierarchical rankings (a pyramid suggests that dairy is not as important or healthful as grains, a stance that government is notoriously recalcitrant to take… though, as Nestle points out often in her book, some foods really, actually, are better than others).
They continued to lobby for variations of the Pyramid that might graphically level the playing field - which, of course, would make it more difficult for consumers to differentiate between food groups. They ultimately succeeded, though after the publication of Nestle’s book, with the Obama' administration’s generally useless My Plate. My Plate emphasizes balance and variety, rather than an emphasis on certain food groups, a position that industry is keen to advance. Nestle discusses this industry position throughout the book, claiming that the complexities of diet - as opposed to the specific harm of over-consumption of specific foods - gives industry significant leeway to act as they do. One candy bar now and again won’t shorten a person’s life, but a diet comprising significant levels of ultra-processed foods and meats at the expense of fruits and vegetables might.
Nestle cites food companies that argue that government tyranny over the consumer’s right to choose their diet is the real danger to be mitigated, not the availability and marketing of specific foods. But this argument leaves little room for the nuance that is required in this policy space. The same companies arguing for freedom of consumer choice spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on marketing tactics for their products - orders of magnitude above and beyond what the government can spend on healthy diet PSAs. These industry marketing tactics, Nestle argues, actually diminish consumer choice in the long run. These companies pay for pouring rights and exclusivity contracts at public schools and colleges to put their products front and center, competing with healthful options that might otherwise be available. By marketing to children, they limit the ability of young people to practice healthful eating habits as they grow up, before they are able to fully rationalize corporate, consumption-focused messages. (Bigger issue: commercialization in schools normalizes commercialization elsewhere.) These companies also infiltrate grocery stores with marketing “spends” that give them preferential placement on shelves and the authority to conduct promotional activities based on neurological studies meant to capture consumer attention and dollars. They also invest heavily in government lobbying meant to manage the regulatory environment in which they play. Their relationships with government often land in a grey area of public-private partnerships, like the USDA’s long standing “collaboration” with Coca-Cola. All of this (and more - seriously, read the book) creates a completely imbalanced environment in which consumers (citizens, people) have few unbiased nutritional resources at their disposal.
Nestle makes another great point here - sound nutritional advice is actually, generally, very simple, and hasn’t changed much over time. Nutritional scientists are in consensus about the broad strokes for healthy diets, something that Michael Pollan put simply in his book In Defense of Food: eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Food (mostly ultra-processed) corporations want things to seem complicated, to leave room for doubt, to squeeze as much consumption of their own products out of that window of uncertainty. Nestle illustrates this point at length in her descriptions of the supplement industry throughout much of the book. She also illustrates this point with the example of breast feeding vs. formula. Breast feeding for most mothers and children is the safest, most nutritious option. Full stop. Of course there are exceptions, but this generally holds true. Formula companies, often owned by powerful food corporations like Nestlé (no relation), push their marketing efforts to the point of being outright dangerous to get an edge, especially in developing markets where under-nutrition can still pose a serious issue.
As with everything and anything written by a real life human, the book is complicated and has some areas of opportunity (unsurprising for a book written in 2000 and being read in 2024). A glaring issue throughout the book is the emphasis on the need for Americans to eat less. Food insecurity in the United States actually rose slightly in the years immediately following this book’s release, declining slightly before the pandemic but never falling below 10% of households (ERS, 2022). In 2022, that meant 17 million American households were food insecure. This is a tragedy. Nestle’s focus on over-consumption and “malnutriton” (a recent term referring to eating too much of the wrong thing, regardless of if a person is consuming enough/ too many/ too few calories) is meant to underscore this particular problem, but perhaps misses an opportunity to discuss the dual-crises of malnutrition AND under-nutrition that the US and many developing countries are currently experiencing. This duality creates a complicated policy situation that deserves space in this conversation.
But overall, this book is a must-read for anyone interested or working in the agriculture or food space. While some of the figures might be a little dated, and some of our current hot-button issues are missing, it is worth knowing the food politics history that Nestle reveals. This book is rich in detail and examples, more than I could hope to summarize here. This richness makes sense in a book that tried to contain and explain an entire system, from producer to marketer to lobbyist to government to consumer, in approachable language and length.
Importantly, Nestle does a great job emphasizing systemic challenges and solutions rather than holding consumers responsible for individual action alone (despite a brief deviance in expressing her support for the “vote with your fork” campaign). She calls for controversial and bold solutions, like drastically increasing the regulation of ultra-processed foods (foods that are their own brand of “quakery,” promising the same benefits as whole foods and more, with no additional detriments… could this be truth in advertising??). She calls for organizational changes at the FDA that could make this possible. She calls for bans on corporate food advertising and agreements with schools (and more support from elsewhere to make up the difference). The challenges that she highlights in her book remain with us today (sad, to be honest - if we had heeded more of her advice 24 years ago, maybe we could have moved on), making this book and Marion Nestle’s continued advocacy to be as relevant as ever.
Professor Marion Nestle is a certified #AgQueen.