Class Action April 2007 Book of the Month!

Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health by Marion Nestle

University of California Press; 2002

Review by Catherine Le

The food industry, like the tobacco industry, is directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of American deaths per year. Initially, this claim sounds alarmist verging on paranoiac but Marion Nestle, an academic nutritionist and professor at New York University, insists on drawing this parallel between the two industries. (It is a coincidental irony that “Nestle” looks like the name of a giant in the same industry the author wishes to examine, but Nestle is unrelated to the Swiss multinational packaged food company Nestlé). Her book, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health is extraordinary in its breadth and depth of scope, honest in disclosing ambiguities in evidence and conflicts of interest, and is meticulously researched, diagrammed and footnoted so as to make a thoroughly convincing argument aimed at the general reader.

Nestle draws from insider experience in the circles of academic research and public policy, including a stint as a Chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University and as a nutrition policy advisor for the Department of Health and Human Services (she was managing editor of the 1988 Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health). From years of experience she “eventually came to the conclusion that food companies—just like companies that sell cigarettes, pharmaceuticals, or any other commodity—routinely place the needs of stockholders over the considerations of public health…food companies will make and market any product that sells, regardless of its nutritional value or its effect on health. In this regard, food companies hardly differ from cigarette companies. They lobby Congress to eliminate regulations perceived as unfavorable; they press federal regulatory not to enforce such regulations; and when they don’t like regulatory decisions, they file lawsuits. Like cigarette companies, food companies co-opt food and nutrition experts by supporting professional organizations and research, and they expand sales by marketing directly to children, members of minority groups, and people in developing countries—whether or not the products are likely to improve people’s diets.” She is convinced that the nutritional problems of Americans can be traced back to the food industry’s agenda to encourage people to spend more and eat more.

The food industry is responsible for obscuring sound nutritional advice that has not changed much in the past fifty years: “scientists consistently have demonstrated the health benefits of diets rich in fruits and vegetables, limited in foods and fats of animal origin, and balanced in calories.” Diet-related chronic diseases are the result of excessive intake of saturated fats, oils and sugars. The cited statistics are staggering: “health experts suggest conservatively that the combination of poor diet, sedentary lifestyle and excessive alcohol consumption contributes to about 400,000 of the 2,000,000 or so annual deaths in the United States—about the same number and proportion affected by cigarette smoking…the diet-related medical costs for just six health conditions—coronary heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, hypertension, and obesity—exceeded $70 billion in 1995. Some authorities believe that just a 1% reduction in intake of saturated fat across the population would prevent more than 30,000 cases of coronary heart disease annually and save more than a billion dollars in health care costs.” It is an uneven analogy to compare the monolithic tobacco industry to the heterogeneous food industry, which includes a vast network of “enterprises involved in the production and consumption of food” (agribusiness, labor, transportation, etc.), companies “that produce, process, manufacture, sell, and serve foods, beverages, and dietary supplements” and the food service sector (restaurants, vending machines, fast-food outlets, etc.). But, the analogy between the tobacco and the food industries is effective because it serves to emphasize the ethical dilemma inherent in trying to balance the interests of research, business and political constituencies with a concern for public health.

According to the text: “food and food service companies spend more than $11 billion annually on direct media advertising in magazines, newspapers, radio, television and billboards.” Compare this to the paltry $300 million (less than 1/36 of $11 billion) that the “USDA spends annually on nutrition education”, of which “most goes for research projects, the educational components of agricultural extension, and other activities that target relatively few people.” Advertising directly impacts consumer choices: “advertising promotes the sales of specific food products and in proportion to the amount spent, as shown for commodities such as milk, cheese, grapefruit juice, and orange juice. Food sales increase with the intensity, repetition, and visibility of the advertising message.” The text points to questionable marketing tactics to highlight the health claims (low-fat, no cholesterol, high-fiber, calcium-added, etc.) of otherwise calorie-dense, nutrition-sparse products. Along with mass-marketing, “convenience, larger portions, and…the added nutrients in foods otherwise high in fat, sugar, and salt all contribute to an environment that promotes ‘eat more’.”

Americans certainly eat more and “66 percent of US adults are either overweight or obese” . The gap between dietary health recommendations and the reality of consumption is particularly evident in the “sharp disparities in diet and health between rich and poor.” Historian Harvey Levenstein referred to these disparities and to the social consequences of American food overabundance as the “paradox of plenty.” As noted by Nestle, “In the United states, low-income groups seem to have about the same nutrient intake as people who are better off, but they choose diets higher in calories, fat, meat, and sugar, and they display higher rates of obesity and chronic diseases.” She accounts for this partially by income and education differences but also to the “social status attached to certain kinds of food—meat for the poor and health foods for the rich, for example.” Ironically, organic and healthy food appeal most to individuals who are already health conscious and are often outside the budgets of the socio-economically disadvantaged groups that would most benefit from steady access to nutritive food.

The issue of “techno-foods” (also referred to as “nutraceuticals,” “functional,” “fortified” or “enhanced” foods) is also brought to the forefront. This is the most insidious example of the food industry’s manipulations of the public’s anxiety about eating and dieting. Nestle’s argument is particularly insightful: “it should be evident that the philosophical rational for techno-foods is flatly reductionist; the value of a food is reduced to its single functioning ingredient…the logic is flawed in that it fails to consider the complexity of food composition and the interaction among food components.” There is no replacement for a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, and eating relatively “healthier” junk food combined with a sedentary lifestyle is only superficially mitigating a serious problem. Marketing is responsible for consumers’ overwhelming confusion about responsible food choices. For example, with Olestra, the fat substitute a.k.a “sugar polyester,” any health benefit may be negated by the fact that it behaves in the body like a non-digestible mineral oil, which has laxative effects and interferes with the absorption of nutrients, phytochemicals and drugs that are soluble in fat. Also, the health claims made by producers of sugary cereals (which are often heavily marketed towards children) about vitamin and mineral enrichment are dubious at best.

Many of the themes explored in Nestle’s book will be further dissected by other exposés: the vertical integration of the food service sector (“Fast Food Nation” by Eric Schlosser), the link between fast food and obesity (the movie “Supersize Me” by Morgan Spurlock), the social and economic components of overeating (“Fatland: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World” by Greg Critser), the rise of obesity in minority populations (“Food Choice and Obesity in Black America” by Eric J. Bailey), and the lobbying efforts, government subsidies and electoral donations of agribusinesses (Michael Moore’s documentaries). What sets Food Politics apart from the pack is that it is a written by a nutrition expert and tries to refrain from unsubstantiated editorializing. Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health by Marion Nestle is satisfying and digestible and delicately breaks through the nutrition confusion with a simple message: “eat less”.

Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Overweight and Obesity: Frequently Asked Questions” http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/faq.htm

View previous Class Action Book of the Month selections...

March Book of the Month: Psychology and Economic Injustice

February Book of the Month : What's My Name, Fool?

December Book of the Month: Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming

November Book of the Month: Awol

October Book of the Month: Class Passing

September Book and Video of the Month: Beyond Silenced Voices and Declining By Degrees

August Books of the Month: Human Cargo and Gathering the Sun

July Book of the Month: The Overworked American by Juliet Schor

June Book of the Month: More Money Than God by Steven R. Leder

May Book of the Month: Global Class by Jeff Faux

April Books of the Month: Classified and Strapped

March Book of the Month: Welfare Brat, A Memoir by Mary Childers

February Book of the Month: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

January Book of the Month: Invisible Privilege: A Memoir about Race, Class, and Gender by Paula Rothenberg

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