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CALIFORNIA STUDIES IN FOOD AND CULTURE

Darra Goldstein, Editor
 MARION NESTLE

food
POLITICS
HOW THE FOOD INDUSTRY
INFLUENCES NUTRITION AND HEALTH

Revised and
Revised and Expanded
Expanded Edition
Tenth Anniversary Edition

Foreword by Michael Pollan

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley Los Angeles London

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 University of California Press, one of the most distinguished
university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the
world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences,
and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press
Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals
and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

© 2002, 2007, 2013 by The Regents of the University of California

First paperback printing 2003

ISBN 978-0-520-27596-6 (pbk.: alk. paper)

The Library of Congress has cataloged an earlier edition of this

book as follows:

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nestle, Marion.
Food politics: how the food industry influences nutrition and
health / Marion Nestle.
   p. cm. —​(California studies in food and culture; 3)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-520-22465-5 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Nutrition policy—​United States.   2. Food—​M arketing—​
Moral and ethical aspects—​United States.   3. Food industry
and trade—​United States.   I. Title.   II. Series.

TX360.U6.N47 F47 2002

363.8'5'0973—​dc21  2001027678

Manufactured in the United States of America

22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally

responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has
printed this book on Rolland Enviro100, a 100% post-consumer
fiber paper that is FSC certified, deinked, processed chlorine-free,
and manufactured with renewable biogas energy. It is acid-free and
EcoLogo certified.

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 CONTENTS

Foreword
Preface to by
theMichael Pollan
2007 Edition vii
Preface
Preface to
to the
the Tenth Anniversary Edition
First Edition xi
xiii
Preface to the
Introduction: First Edition xvii
Introduction: The Food
The Food Industry Industry
and “Eat More”and “Eat More” 1

PART ONE I
UNDERMINING DIETARY ADVICE 29
1. From “Eat More” to “Eat Less,” 1900–1990 31
2. Politics versus Science: Opposing the Food Pyramid, 1991–1992 51
3. “Deconstructing” Dietary Advice 67

PART TWO I
WORKING THE SYSTEM 93
4. Influencing Government: Food Lobbies and Lobbyists 95
5. Co-opting Nutrition Professionals 111
6. Winning Friends, Disarming Critics 137
7. Playing Hardball: Legal and Not 159

PART THREE I
EXPLOITING KIDS,
CORRUPTING SCHOOLS 173
8. Starting Early: Underage Consumers 175
9. Pushing Soft Drinks: “Pouring Rights” 197

PART FOUR I
DEREGULATING DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS 219
10. Science versus Supplements: “A Gulf of Mutual
Incomprehension” 222

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11. Making Health Claims Legal: The Supplement Industry’s
War with the FDA 247
12. Deregulation and Its Consequences 272

PART FIVE I
INVENTING TECHNO-FOODS 295
13. Go Forth and Fortify 298
14. Beyond Fortification: Making Foods Functional 315
15. Selling the Ultimate Techno-Food: Olestra 338

Conclusion:
The Politics of Food Choice 358

Afterword:
Food Politics:
Politics: Five
Ten Years Later and
and Beyond
Beyond 375

Appendix: Issues in Nutrition and Nutrition Research

Appendix: 395
Notes in Nutrition and Nutrition Research
Issues 407
413
List of Tables 465
Notes425
List of Figures 467
List
Indexof Tables 487
469
List of Figures 489
Index491
 Foreword

On even the shortest shelf of books dedicated to explaining the

American food system, Marion Nestle’s Food Politics deserves a place of
prominence. Whenever I teach a course on writing about food, I include
the book on the syllabus. On my own shelf, its white and fire-engine-red
spine stands next to Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, Wendell Berry’s
Unsettling of America, Harvey Levenstein’s Paradox of Plenty, and Rachel
Carson’s Silent Spring. Pretty good company for a book that, on its publi-
cation in 2002, wasn’t even reviewed by the New York Times—​an error in
judgment the paper has been trying to rectify ever since, chiefly by turning
to Marion Nestle for a salty quote anytime the food industry finds itself
ensnared in controversy. That seems to be happening on more or less a
daily basis, and Marion Nestle is herself one of the primary reasons why:
The book you hold is one of the founding documents of the movement to
reform the American food system.
I first read Food Politics while researching The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
The book helped me connect the dots between what I was observing in
the farm fields (vast monocultures of corn and soy, spreading like a
great lawn across the American Middle West) and what I was finding in
the supermarket (endless aisles of processed foods, most of them sport-
ing improbable health claims). In sentences that were almost breathtak-
ing in their bluntness, Nestle methodically laid out the business model
of the entire U.S. food industry. How? By proceeding like any good
investigative journalist: following the money, rather than listening to
the industry’s self-justifying rhetoric.

vii

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 viii •
F o r e wo r d

Here, in a nutshell, is Nestle’s account of how the whole game works:

Since the 1970s, American farmers have been producing an overabun-
dance of calories—​“one of the great unspoken secrets . . . [and] a major
problem for the food industry” (p. 13). The industry’s dilemma is
that the average American can eat only so much of that food—​about
1,500 pounds per year—​and the total number of eaters in this country
is growing by only one or two percentage points per year. Yet Wall
Street demands that food corporations grow at a considerably faster
rate. What to do? Add “value” to cheap raw ingredients by processing
them (i.e., transform a few pennies’ worth of grain and sugar into five
dollars’ worth of breakfast cereal); spend billions to market these prod-
ucts as aggressively as possible (to children, by using sugar and cartoon
characters, and to their parents, by making dubious health claims); use
every trick of food science and packaging to induce us to eat more of
these products than we should; and then, just to make sure no one
tries to interfere with this profitable racket, heavily lobby Congress and
nutrition scientists to keep anyone in power from so much as thinking
about regulation or officially whispering that maybe we should eat a
little less of this stuff.
It’s pretty much that simple. As Nestle, mincing no words, puts it,
“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” (p. 4).
This strikes me as Marion Nestle’s signal accomplishment in Food
Politics: peeling back the layers of official and corporate obfuscation
to expose the fundamental political-economic reality of the American
food system, and then spelling it all out for everyone in straightforward
declarative sentences. Need I mention that academics have seldom done
any such thing?
What allowed Marion Nestle to write this book is a deep authority
founded on a rare combination of scientific training and life experience.
An academic nutritionist with a degree in molecular biology, Nestle
brings the analytical tools of the scientist and the skepticism of the sea-
soned political observer to the task. The latter perspective traces to her
time spent working deep in the belly of the beast, serving as a nutrition
policy advisor to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
As Nestle explains in the introduction to Food Politics, this proved
to be a disillusioning experience, but in the best way: Illusions—​such as
the one that government nutrition policy is based strictly on science and

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 ix •
F o r e wo r d

is innocent of corporate meddling—​crumbled, and the darker truth of

the matter came clear. Charged with editing the first Surgeon General’s
Report on Nutrition and Health, which was published in 1988, Nestle
writes, “My first day on the job, I was given the rules: No matter what
the research indicated, the report could not recommend ‘eat less meat’
as a way to reduce intake of saturated fat, nor could it suggest restric-
tions on intake of any other category of food” (p. 3).
So Nestle brings an unusual authority to her analysis of the food
industry. She also brings ample documentation. The result is a book
that is utterly convincing and that has proven impossible for the indus-
try to refute. Which probably explains why its response to the book has
relied so heavily on epithets (“the food police”) and threats of litigation
(from the Sugar Association). What other academic nutritionist has
struck such fear in the hearts of Fortune 500 corporations?!
Ten years after the publication of Food Politics, much has changed in
the cultural and political landscape surrounding food, in no small mea-
sure due to the influence of this book. Today, the food industry finds
itself operating in the uncomfortably harsh glare of public scrutiny.
Its marketing methods have been questioned, even by the first lady. Its
culpability in the nation’s public health crisis is no longer a subject of
debate. The industry has responded to its predicament in two seemingly
contradictory ways: by attacking its critics, sometimes ferociously, and
by acknowledging their critiques by promising to reformulate its prod-
ucts to make them “healthier,” often under the rubric of “public-private
partnerships.” No one who has read Food Politics can be anything but
skeptical about these initiatives, having seen in these pages how “food
companies will make and market any product that sells, regardless of
its nutritional value or its effect on health” (p. xviii). The food industry
is surely not done trying to confuse the public about its role in shaping
the way we eat, but the bright light cast on its tactics by Food Politics
has surely made that task much harder.
When Food Politics was first published, a decade ago, I remember
thinking that the marriage of those two words—​food and politics—​
seemed surprising, even radical. What was political about food? Every-
thing, it turns out. But we didn’t really know that then. Now, thanks to
this book and all the work it has inspired, the words food and politics
have become inseparable.
Michael Pollan

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 P r e fa c e t o t h e T e n t h
Anniversary Edition

In 2002, when the University of California Press first pub-

lished Food Politics, the idea that food and beverage marketing might
influence food choices seemed surprising and, to the food industry and
its supporters, alarming. Food choices, the industry said, were entirely
a matter of personal responsibility. Obesity was the evident result of
poor dietary choices and too little physical activity. The solution to the
obesity problem? Get a grip.
As I explained in the 2007 edition of the book, personal choice
erupted as the principal argument against Food Politics before it had
even been published. In February 2002, two weeks before the book first
appeared in stores, three anonymous individuals posted critical reviews
on Amazon.com. The reviewers accused me of blaming the food indus-
try for what ought to be a matter of individual free will.
“Nestle forgot a not-so-little thing called WILL POWER!” said the
first review. “Marion Nestle, one of the foremost food nannies in this
country, has produced a book that heaps the blame for obesity, diabe-
tes, and heart disease on food producers, marketing executives, and
even school principals. Everyone, it seems, is responsible for those love
handles except for the very people who are carrying them around.”
From the second reviewer: “Individuals incapable of thinking for them-
selves will truly appreciate . . . Food Politics. [Hasn’t the author] ever
heard of personal responsibility, exercise, and appropriate dieting?”
And from the third: “Marion Nestle’s book ‘Food Politics’ makes clear

xi

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 xii •
P r e fac e to t h e T en t h A n n i v e rs a ry E d i t i o n

that the political system she favors is dictatorship—​with her in com-

mand. . . . The author’s motto could be ‘if it tastes good don’t eat it.’ ”
Passionate foodie that I am, this last comment suggested that this
reviewer surely had not read my book. But before I could say so, Shel-
don Rampton, the coauthor of Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies,
Damned Lies, and the Public Relations Industry—​whom I still have
never met—​responded on Amazon for me:
For what it’s worth, potential readers of Nestle’s book should note that the
first three “reader reviews” of this book are pretty obviously cranked out
by some food industry PR campaign. To begin with, they were all submitted
on the same date, February 22. . . . For another thing, they all hit on the
same food industry “message points”: that critics are “nagging nannies”
whipping up “hysteria” on behalf of “greedy trial lawyers,” etc. February
22 is also the date that noted industry flack Steven Milloy of the “Junk
Science Home Page” wrote a review trashing Nestle’s book. Milloy is a
former tobacco lobbyist and front man for a group created by Philip Morris,
which has been diversifying its tobacco holdings in recent years by buying
up companies that make many of the fatty, sugar-laden foods that Nestle is
warning about. I haven’t even had a chance yet to read Nestle’s book myself,
but it irritates me to see the food industry’s PR machine spew out the usual
( . . . ) every time someone writes something they don’t like. If they hate her
this much, it’s probably a pretty good book.

This exchange is worth reproducing because similar attacks on my

work and opinions continue to this day. I maintain a blog at www.food
politics.com, in which I write almost daily about current events related
to matters discussed in this book. I welcome comments from readers on
my posts. Most readers send in thoughtful comments well worth read-
ing, whether or not they agree with my opinions. But the blog quickly
acquired resident “trolls,” anonymous critics using pseudonyms and
false, untraceable e-mail addresses who systematically attack what I say
in a tone similar to that of the Amazon “reviewers.”
The exchange also raises many of the issues still hotly debated today:
Is obesity strictly a matter of personal responsibility, or does the food
marketing environment have something to do with it? Do food and
beverage companies bear some responsibility for the food choices of
individuals? Is food marketing—​an enterprise that promotes the social
acceptability of consuming foods and sugar-sweetened beverages in
large amounts anytime and anywhere—​a determining factor in obe-
sity? To what lengths may the food industry go to attack critics and

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 xiii •
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engage in actions to protect sales of its products and growth in corpo-

rate profits? Should the government set limits on food industry actions
in order to make it easier for people to eat more healthfully?
I first began thinking about such questions in the early 1990s, when
I attended a conference in Washington, DC, sponsored by the National
Cancer Institute and chaired by former U.S. surgeon general C. Everett
Koop. The purpose of the conference was to focus attention on behav-
ioral causes of cancer—​cigarette smoking and dietary choices. One after
another, the antismoking speakers showed slides illustrating worldwide
marketing of cigarettes. No region, from high in the Himalayas to the
jungles of Africa, was too remote to be free of cigarette advertising. In
those days of Joe Camel advertising, one speaker showed slide after
slide of cigarette marketing deliberately aimed at young children.
I was well aware of the health consequences of cigarette smoking,
and I had seen such advertisements. But, I realized, I had never paid
much attention to them. These slide presentations were designed
to encourage cancer researchers to notice the ubiquity of cigarette
advertising and to understand its effects. I left the meeting con-
vinced that public health nutritionists like me ought to be doing the
same thing for soft drink and fast-food marketing. We needed to pay
more attention to the effects of food marketing on personal dietary
behavior. I did just that and began to write the articles that form the
core of Food Politics.
My hope was that Food Politics would change the conversation
about obesity, especially childhood obesity. I was tired of going to
obesity conferences at which speakers went on and on about how
parents needed to be better educated to make more healthful food
choices for their children. I wanted to hear speakers talk about the
influence of food marketing on those choices. I hoped that Food
Politics would encourage people to stop thinking about food com-
panies as social service agencies. They are not. The primary goals
of food companies are to sell products, increase returns to inves-
tors, and report quarterly growth to Wall Street. Like my Amazon
“reviewers,” food companies can argue that what you eat is your
responsibility, but their corporate responsibility is to induce you to
buy more food, not less. Eating less—​a principal strategy for manag-
ing weight—​is very bad for business.
We are human. We eat what we buy. Food Politics is about how food
and beverage companies encourage us to buy more and eat more. The

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U.S. food supply provides close to 4,000 calories a day per capita, an
amount roughly twice the average need. To meet Wall Street’s demands
for corporate growth, food companies lobby government agencies,
forge alliances with health professionals, market directly to children,
sell junk food as health food, and get laws passed that favor corporate
health over human health. As part of the normal course of doing busi-
ness, the food industry changed society in ways that encourage us to
eat more food, more often, in more places. Its practices changed society
to actively discourage us from making more healthful choices. Against
such efforts—​and billions of dollars in annual marketing—​personal
responsibility doesn’t stand a chance.
I wrote Food Politics to refocus attention on the environmental—​
that is, the social, commercial, and institutional—​influences on food
choice, rather than on the personal. If poor food choices are a matter of
personal responsibility alone, then public health efforts should focus on
educating people to eat better. But if the food environment makes it dif-
ficult to eat healthfully, public health must focus on political strategies
to change society so that healthful choices are the easier—​the default—​
choices. I wrote Food Politics to help shift the conversation from the
personal to the political. In considering what to do about obesity, I
hoped to focus attention on the societal factors that make maintaining
a healthy weight so difficult, food marketing among them. In March
2002, these ideas were unexpected. Food Politics challenged readers
to think about food companies in a different way: not just as providers
of bountiful food at low cost but also as powerful contributors to an
unhealthful food environment.
Today, such ideas seem self-evident. The role of the food environ-
ment in dietary choice is recognized by public health and government
officials, even at the level of the White House. First Lady Michelle
Obama initiated her Let’s Move campaign to address childhood obesity
by improving the environment of food choice, specifically in schools
and low-income neighborhoods. When I wrote Food Politics, I could
not have dreamed that a first lady of the United States would be inter-
ested in the same issues that I am, or that she would use her position
and leadership to improve the health of America’s children.
Mrs. Obama is the most prominent manifestation of today’s rap-
idly expanding food movement. This movement may be fragmented,
uncoordinated, and spontaneous, but its adherents are united in their

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quest to find morally, ethically, and sustainably healthful alternatives to

our current system of food production and consumption. In the years
after writing Food Politics, I discussed many of these alternatives in my
subsequent books: Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety; What to Eat;
and Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics (this last coauthored
with Malden Nesheim).
Today’s food movement aims to transform the environment of food
choice to promote health, protect the environment, and support per-
sonal responsibility for food choice with collective social responsibility
for making healthful choices easier. The effects of the food movement
can be seen in the removal of junk foods from schools and the intro-
duction of fresh fruits and vegetables into inner-city areas. They can
also be seen in attempts to tax and restrict the size of sodas, remove
toys from fast-food meals for children, and only permit foods that meet
defined nutritional standards to be marketed to children.
The success of the movement can be measured by the intensity of
pushback by the food and beverage industry. As I discuss in the After-
word, the industry’s trade associations are working overtime to deny
responsibility for obesity, undermine the credibility of the science link-
ing their products to poor health, attack critics, continue to market
to young children, fight soda taxes, and lobby behind the scenes to
make sure that no local, state, or federal agency imposes regulations
that might impede sales. Food companies unable to increase sales in
the United States have moved marketing campaigns for their prod-
ucts to emerging economies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, with
predictable effects on the body weights and health of those regions’
populations.
Despite—​or perhaps because of—​this pushback, now is a thrilling
time to be an advocate for better food and nutrition, the health of chil-
dren, and greater corporate accountability. As more people recognize
food companies’ influence on government policies about dietary advice,
school foods, marketing to children, and health claims on food prod-
ucts—​all matters addressed in Food Politics—​even more want to work
to improve the environment of food choice. Plenty of food issues are
worth working on, and plenty of groups are working on them. Join
them. Eating more healthfully—​and encouraging others to do so—​can
improve lives and is thoroughly consistent with the best practices of
democratic societies.

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