Description 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 exposé.
Level: Intermediate ISBN: 0520254031 ISBN-13: 978-0520254039 Format: Paperback, 540pp Edition: Second, revised & expanded Publisher: University of California Press Pub date: 2007
Content Preface Introduction: The Food Industry and "Eat More" PART ONE. UNDERMINING DIETARY ADVICE 1. From "Eat More" to "Eat Less," 1900-1990 2. Politics versus Science: Opposing the Food Pyramid, 1991-1992 3. "Deconstructing" Dietary Advice PART TWO. WORKING THE SYSTEM 4. Influencing Government: Food Lobbies and Lobbyists 5. Co-opting Nutrition Professionals 6. Winning Friends, Disarming Critics 7. Playing Hardball: Legal and Not PART THREE. EXPLOITING KIDS, CORRUPTING SCHOOLS 8. Starting Early: Underage Consumers 9. Pushing Soft Drinks: "Pouring Rights" PART FOUR. DEREGULATING DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS 10. Science versus Supplements: "A Gulf of Mutual Incomprehension" 11. Making Health Claims Legal: The Supplement Industry's War with the FDA 12. Deregulation and Its Consequences PART FIVE. INVENTING TECHNO-FOODS 13. Go Forth and Fortify 14. Beyond Fortification: Making Foods Functional 15. Selling the Ultimate Techno-Food: Olestra Conclusion: The Politics of Food Choice Appendix: Issues in Nutrition and Nutrition Research Notes List of Tables List of Figures Index
Book author 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 s a nutrition policy advisor to the Department of Health and Human Services and as a member of nutrition and science advisory committees to the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. She frequently writes and lectures about a broad range of topic related to food and nutrition policy.
Dietetic professionals CPE Level: 2 Suggested Commission on Dietetic Registration Learning Need Codes: It is the sole responsibility of the dietetic professional to determine the learning need code met by a course. numedix.com provides the following "suggested" codes, but the professional can deviate from them if they feel another need is met. 1080 Legislation, public policy 4000 Wellness and public health 4100 Social marketing 4080 Government-funded Food & Nutrition Programs 5370 Weight management, obesity 8010 Child and adult food programs 8110 School foodservice