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Food Industry
Food Politics:
How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition, and Health, Revised and Expanded Edition (California

Studies in Food and Culture)
Publication Date: October 15, 2007

Marion Nestle (Author)

===

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 understand more clearly than ever before what we eat and why.

===

Nutrition expert Marion Nestle's "Food Politics" explains how the formula for a healthy diet hasn't

changed. She advises that one should eat more plant-based foods (fruits, vegetables and whole

grains) and less meat, dairy and sweets. But this message collides with the interests of the food-

industrial complex, which makes the bulk of its profits by selling relatively expensive processed

foods. The book examines how corporations have successfully fought the health message by using a

number of overt and covert tactics to further their objectives at the public's expense.
In fact, this business success story has resulted in a generation of Americans who are significantly

overweight compared with their predecessors. Nestle shows that public relations and government

lobbying result in obfuscation and mixed messages about the relative values of certain foods; this

generally confuses Americans and makes it difficult to get the "eat less" message. Interestingly,

she reveals that the amount of sweets and snack foods consumed are in almost exact proportion to the

advertising dollars spent promoting these foods, suggesting that limits on advertising junk food to

children might be a reasonable first step in addressing this problem.

But Nestle is particularly critical of the criminally poor quality of the nation's public

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