Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition, and Health, Revised and Expanded Edition
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- ISBN13: 9780520254039
- Condition: New
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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 know more clearly than ever before what we eat and why.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, publicity, 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 plenty (we’ve enough calories to meet every society needs twice over) leads profit-fixated food producers to do everything possible to broaden their market part, 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, go more” message that most nutritionists shout could be heard.
Nestle, nutrition chair at New York University and editor of the 1988 Surgeon All-purpose 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 additional “war tales,” too, that occupy marketing to children in school (in the form of soft-drink “pouring rights” agreements, hallway publicity, and quick-food voucher 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 exposé. –Arthur Boehm
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Weak-willed people will like “Food Politics” – bring shame on on them. Marion Nestle, one of the foremost food nannies in this country, has produced a book that loads the blame for obesity, diabetes, and heart disease on food producers, marketing executives, and even school principals. Everyone, it seems, is reliable for persons like handles except for the very people who are carrying them around.
In Ms. Nestle’s world, there is no willpower, common sense, or personal responsibility. Most overweight people are simply passive “victims” of industry. She writes: “I have become increasingly convinced that many of the nutritional problems of Americans — not least of them obesity — can be traced to the food industry’s imperative to encourage people to eat more in order to generate sales and increase income in a highly competitive market.” Excuse me? Ad campaigns and super-size restaurant specials may “encourage” me to eat but they don’t compel me. That’s because, like most people, I belong to the “a-small-of-what-you-fancy-does-you-excellent” school of eating. There is no Orwellian plot to hook us on certain foods and drinks from cradle to nursing home.
Ms. Nestle’s book reminds me of her real agenda: the promotion of a “stout tax” or “Twinkie tax” on food and drinks, which in moderation and as part of a balanced diet, add fun to everyday life. This policy could really work against the objectives of the food nannies. The aim would be to discourage patrons from buying certain products, yet this “sin tax” could make the goods more alluring to shoppers who are looking for a small indulgence. Of course, the largest reason to oppose Ms. Nestle’s hidden agenda is that patrons don’t need another tax, thank you very much. This nagging book misses the mark. Eat, exercise, be pleased.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Individuals incapable of thinking for themselves will truly appreciate, Marion Nestle’s book – Food Politics. The leader, a professor and of the department of nutrition and food studies at New York University puts much of the blame for the nation’s weight problem on the food industry. Has she ever heard of personal responsibility, exercise, and appropriate dieting?
Nestle takes a point aim at the impact on children and claims that the “food industry targets children and converts schools into vehicles for selling junk foods that are high in calories but low in nutritional value. Clever and polished marketing strategies target patrons from the cradle onward.” She refuses to acknowledge some key facts. Obesity in children is caused in part, to the lack of exercise. Urban and additional limited budget school districts across the country continue to lower daily physical education programs, football, and additional extra-curricular activities. Moreover, the lure of computer games and twenty-four hour cable programs have children sitting still for hours throughout the day.
Nestle’s book only makes the kind of hysteria caused by our litigious society. The Surgeon’s All-purpose’s recent remarks declaring that obesity is a major health problem has greedy examination lawyers considering filing lawsuits against food and beverage companies. This whiny book only helps them “fuel the fire” and reaches their goals.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Marion Nestle’s book “Food Politics” makes clear that the political system she favors is dictatorship – with her in mandate. Marion is just so much smarter than us all, and so much more virtuous, and so much more in self-control, that she can be the meal planner for the world. If you disagree with anything she says, you’re overweight, undereducated and stupid.
The leader’s motto could be “if it tastes excellent don’t eat it.” She rails against foods we’ve all grown up with and delight in, and wants to make us feel like terrible parents if we let our kids have any of these foods. Should we eat like pigs? Of course not. Should people who are obese have stricter diets than the rest of us? Absolutely. But there’s no need for everyone, regardless of their weight and their health, to deny themselves moderate amounts of enjoyable foods. We’d all be better off is we got up off our rear ends and spent less time in front of the TV and playing video games, and more time engaging in sports and exercise to burn up excess calories and erect stronger, in excellent health bodies.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
It’s a piece of cake for Prof. Nestle. The food industry is the only reason why people are overweight and obese. It is only their greed and unscrupulousness that turned us into “Couch-Potatoes”.
This narrow-minded approach is appealing for a scientist. All scientific areas, which deal with the issue of obesity, agree that obesity is a multifactorial problem. Of course, everything we eat does play an vital role, but there are many additional factors which also have a significant impact. One of the most prominent ones is the increasing lack of physical activity that influences the equation energy intake minus energy expenditure – even with constant intake – negatively.
The methods of resolution in this book – if one can find any – are much too fleeting-sighted and do not take additional lifestyle factors into consideration, let alone the personal responsibility all of us need to show. But the latter seems to be a point US trait…
In fleeting: long tales, small essence, not thought through.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Judging from the additional “reviews” of this book, it’s obvious that the mere being of this book strikes a chord in persons “conspiracy-theory”, “huge-business-is-out-to-get-us”, “a name-needs-to-protect-us” Naderite-types.
Is anyone really surprised that the food business is really a BUSINESS? And that the scenery of businesses is to promote their own self-interests, advertise to the end-user, and produce products that the end user wants to buy?
I take exception to the premise that our choices are controlled by the food business. The reality is that our choices are controlling the food industry! Changes in our buying patterns – and that alone – will result in changes in the food industry. Doubt it? Look at the burgeoning organic food industry (yes, it’s a business, too!).
The implication of several additional reviewers is that somehow the food industry needs to be regulated into doing for us what we don’t seem capable of ourselves – building reliable individual choices. This, of course, would place us with no choice, except persons “choices” deemed appropriate by “Huge Brother”. (Socialism vs. Democracy/Free endeavor)
The responsibility for starving children lies not with the food industry, but with governments, churches, and individuals – with emphasis on the individual. The sole responsibility of any business is to – within the law – produce income (earn a living) for its owners and employees.
Whether or not you agree, I’m sure we can all agree that it is incumbent upon both businesses and individuals to behave in a socially reliable manner. I’m sure the leader has establish ample evidence that not all businesses in the food industry have done so. That acknowledged, I contend that it’s incorrect to paint an entire industry with such a broad stroke of a brush dipped in muck.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5