Available From UC Press

Winner of the James Beard Foundation Literary Award “[From] one of the influential framers of the modern food movement.”—The New York Times The 25th-anniversary edition of Marion Nestle’s seminal classic reveals how the food industry uses marketing, science, and political power to shape what we eat—and why it matters for our health. We all witness—in advertising and on supermarket shelves—the fierce competition for our food dollars. In her engrossing classic, Marion Nestle goes behind the scenes to reveal how that competition really works, how the food industry plays politics, and what this means for our health. Celebrated for its accessible and balanced account, Food Politics forever changed the way we understand food industry marketing practices. For this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, Nestle has written a new preface and afterword that further expose how food companies spend vast sums on marketing, enlist scientific experts, and lobby policy makers to protect sales of their products. Nestle’s pathbreaking work illuminates more clearly than ever how the food industry influences our food choices and health.

Marion Nestle is Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, at New York University and author of many books about the politics of food, nutrition, health, and the environment.

"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