We all witness, in advertising and on supermarket shelves, the fierce competition for our food dollars. In this engrossing exposé, Marion Nestle goes behind the scenes to reveal how the competition really works and how it affects our health. The abundance of food in the United States--enough calories to meet the needs of every man, woman, and child twice over--has a downside. Our over-efficient food industry must do everything possible to persuade people to eat more--more food, more often, and in larger portions--no matter what it does to waistlines or well-being.

Like manufacturing cigarettes or building weapons, making food is big business. Food companies in 2000 generated nearly $900 billion in sales. They have stakeholders to please, shareholders to satisfy, and government regulations to deal with. It is nevertheless shocking to learn precisely how food companies lobby officials, co-opt experts, and expand sales by marketing to children, members of minority groups, and people in developing countries. We learn that the food industry plays politics as well as or better than other industries, not least because so much of its activity takes place outside the public view.

Editor of the 1988 Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health, Nestle is uniquely qualified to lead us through the maze of food industry interests and influences. She vividly illustrates food politics in action: watered-down government dietary advice, schools pushing soft drinks, diet supplements promoted as if they were First Amendment rights. When it comes to the mass production and consumption of food, strategic decisions are driven by economics--not science, not common sense, and certainly not health. No wonder most of us are thoroughly confused about what to eat to stay healthy.

An accessible and balanced account, Food Politics will forever change the way we respond to food industry marketing practices. By explaining how much the food industry influences government nutrition policies and how cleverly it links its interests to those of nutrition experts, this path-breaking book helps us understand more clearly than ever before what we eat and why.

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.

“A solid, important treatise. . . . 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.”—Melvin Konner, The 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.”—Jan Zita Grover, Women's Review of Books

“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.”—Alison Gzowski, Toronto Globe & Mail

“This provocative work will cause quite a stir in food industry circles.”—Library Journal, starred review

“In her new book, Nestle puts much of the blame for the nation's weight problem on the food industry. The book already is generating controversy even though it doesn't arrive in bookstores until next month.”—USA Today

“If it hasn't yet occurred to you that there are striking and ominous parallels between the tobacco and food industries—Big Tobacco, meet Big Fat—it might be time to pick up a copy of Food Politics.”—San Francisco Bay Guardian

"[A] fascinating new book. . . . [A]nyone who cares about what they put in their body ought to read it carefully and think long and hard about the choices. Your life just might depend on it."—Newsday, 3/10

"Nestle details how the food industry influences nutrition and health and she casts light on manipulations inherent in selling food, unhealthy or not. Must reading."—Newsday, 2/19

"Nestle has thoroughly and carefully documented the food industry's unholy influence over public health policy. Many people's lives and livelihoods are at stake in the conflict Nestle illuminates, and it will take scientific knowledge, political wisdom and leadership, enlightened and ethical corporate management, and consumer education to produce a positive outcome."—Booklist

"Nestle's controversial new book dishes up many of the industry's dirtiest secrets: how multinational companies spend billions to convince us that unhealthy foods are good for us and lobby the government to sway dietary regulations and subsidies in their favor."—feature story in the Village Voice, 3/26

"In this readable, if dense, and thought-provoking narrative, Nestle demonstrates how lobbying, public relations, political maneuvering and advertising by the food industry work against public health goals and have helped create a population that's eating itself sick. Most important, she makes clear the need for better nutritional education among consumers. 'Voting with [our] forks' for a healthier society, Nestle shows us, is within our power."—Los Angeles Times, 4/2

"Dr. Nestle examines what she sees as the industry's manipulation of America's eating habits while enumerating many conflicts of interest among nutritional authorities. Combining the scientific background of a researcher and the skills of a teacher, she has made a complex subject easy to understand."—New York Times food section interview with author, 5/15

"A provocative and highly readable book arguing that America's agribusiness lobby has stifled the government's regulatory power, helped create a seasonless and regionless diet, and hampered the government's ability to offer sound, scientific nutritional advice."—Economist, 5/11

"[A]n excellent introduction to how decisions are made in Washington—and their effects on consumers. Let's hope people take more notice of it than they do of the dietary guidelines."—Nation, 5/6

"In her widely acclaimed book, Nestle explains why the wealthiest nation in the world is eating itself to death. Based on meticulous research, Nestle's book exposes how the naked self-interest of the American corporate food industry compromises nutrition policy, as well as our government's regulation of food safety."—San Francisco Chronicle, 5/26

"Nestle's well-documented study of the ways in which big business influences not only our own food choices but also government nutrition policies will terrify you, even if you thought you already knew it all. A real page turner, this book will give you metaphoric indigestion—unless, of course, you believe that McDonald's offers 'a nutritious addition to a balanced diet' (as one U.S. Senator declared in 1977)."—Natural Health magazine

"Essential reading for anyone seriously interested in addressing the nutritional dilemma facing the United States. Its greatest value lies in the detailed documentation of the ways in which the food industry operates, and nearly everyone will find information that is new and useful. Nestle's account will certainly contribute to informed discussion and, hopefully, effective actions to reduce the burdens of obesity and related conditions."—Science magazine

"Food Politics provides a remarkable insider’s view of the horse-trading and arm-twisting that goes on at US federal level."—The Times (London), 8/27

"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

"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

2002 Award for Excellence in Professional/Scholarly Publishing in the Nursing and Allied Health Category, Association of American Publishers
James Beard Foundation Awards, James Beard Foundation
Harry Chapin Media Awards, World Hunger Year

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