THE POLITICS OF FOOD
Dr Marion Nestle speaks with the Abolitionist-Online
Interviewer: Claudette Vaughan

Capture for us the kind of environment you were subjected to while researching Food Politics while interacting with the lobbying groups for the salt, sugar, vitamin, and omega-3 fatty acid industries routinely plugging their product, trade info, public relation and scientific staff funded by these companies such as Proctor and Gamble and Unilever. How ruthless was this environment?

Dr Marion Nestle: All the interactions with lobbyists took place before I wrote Food Politics so I didn't have any direct dealings with them. In fact, I didn't have any direct dealings with anyone while I was writing the book, mainly because I could not get anyone to talk to me on the record. People would leak stories to me but if they didn't allow me to quote them, or steer me to a corroborating document, I couldn't use the information. But, as I explain in the book, every food and food product--no exceptions--has its very own lobbyist or trade association whose job it is to make sure no federal agency ever suggests that people would be healthier if they ate less of that product.

Who is controlling the world's food supply in your view?

No one entity--food is produced in too many places by too many people for any one entity to control the food supply. But in many countries, food production and distribution have become increasingly centralized and large companies and agribusinesses control more and more of the food that gets to us. The biggest food companies, Nestle (no relation) for example, sell more than $50 billion a year.

Is food safety a non-issue to the FDA? Put another way, why is food safety so uncontroversial in their literature as they are always careful not to advise a total shift away from saturated fats (meat) and the need for life altering dietary changes?

Food safety is a huge issue to the FDA. Its job is to protect the public from unsafe food. But food safety in the FDA sense has to do with contaminating toxins and microorganisms. The FDA isn't in the business of issuing dietary advice. That task belongs to the FDA's parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Americans are eating more animal-based foods to the point where obesity is a real problem for both adults and children alike. Who is reining in the fast food companies and why all the confusion - deliberate or not - about poor nutritional practices arising in the first place?

I don't think it's true that people are necessarily becoming obese because they are eating too much animal-based food. Most of the increase in calorie intake has come from carbohydrates--sugars and processed starches. Public outcry about obesity has caused food companies to re-examine their marketing practices, especially those directed at children. But food companies really can't do much. To reverse obesity, people have to eat less, and eating less is bad for business. This causes an impossible dilemma for food companies.

Name some of the ways in which the food industry practices distort and often lie about what people are told about nutrition.

Food companies are in the business of selling food products, not public health. They will do anything they can get away with to increase sales. My main concern is how they market junk food to children, these days in electronic ways that parents don't notice. I'm also troubled by how they use health claims ("no trans fat," "contains whole wheat") to make junk foods look like health foods.

The vegan Neil Barnard from PCRM tried to get the four food groups pyramid (Illuminati type design with a cap top) design changed to a bowl shaped design where meat and dairy played no role what-so-ever in insuring health. There was an up roar!

The PCRM pyramid was a trapezoid--a pyramid chopped off below the meat and dairy sectors. PCRM had four food groups, none of them derived from animal products. PCRM argues, correctly, I believe, that vegetarian and vegan diets are healthful and that you don't need to eat meat or dairy products to eat healthfully (as long as you take care of vitamin B12 and eat a variety of foods).

How much does food science take a back seat to food marketing these days and does the food industry limit what people are told about nutrition because it would limit or compromise food choices in the market place?

The food industry actively sponsors nutrition research. By an amazing coincidence, research sponsored by food companies invariably produces results favourable to the sponsor's product. Most people get their information about nutrition from food companies--that's where the money is.

When and how did the shift occur that consumers rather than food producers or processors bear primary responsibility for protection against food-borne illnesses and who is addressing the risk factors?

Most food-borne illness in the United States is due to food contaminated before it gets to home cooks. Everyone involved in producing, preparing, or serving food ought to follow standard food safety procedures, but we do not have a farm-to-table food safety system in the United States. We should.

What comes to mind when I say "Starting early and pushing products on children?"

Food companies market junk foods to children practically from the day they are born. Even diapers have food company logos on them. They have three reasons for marketing to kids--instilling brand loyalty, getting kids to pester parents for foods, and convincing kids that they know more about what they are supposed to eat than their parents do.

**Marion Nestle’s new project "Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine." book will be out in September but is already listed on Amazon. She is blogging about such matters at www.whattoeatbook.com.