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American consumers are bombarded with nutritional advice to our detriment argues marion Nestle in her new book food politics it details how the food industry through lobbying advertising and the co-opting of experts influences our dietary choices resulting in epidemic obesity increased vulnerability to heart and lung disease cancer and Stroke this talk from the Harvard coupe in Cambridge Massachusetts is 45 minutes we're very excited to be hosting marion Nestle who'll be speaking about her new book food politics how they food industry influences nutrition and health food is on our minds and not just what we're having for dinner more and more we are paying increased intention to what exactly it is that we are eating and why two weeks ago Michael Pollan published an expose on the beef industry in the New York Times many of you may have read it Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation is the bestseller here and in other bookstores around the nation we've instituted a new food section in our store to house all the books being written about food and its political and cultural manifestations at the same time as we were paying all this attention to food we were flooded with examples of big businesses working hand-in-hand with the government and not necessarily in the interests of regular consumers the importance of food politics is that it addresses both of these topics marion Nestle pursues the question of what the what role the food industry plays in creating an environment so conducive to overeating and poor nutritional practices and so confusing about basic process basic principles of diet and health she exposes a ways in which the food companies use political processes to obtain government and professional support for the sale of their products reading food politics can be overwhelming but reading it is necessary if you want to know the truth about what and why you were eating marion Nestle has devoted her career to issues a food health and nutrition she is professor and chair of the department of nutrition in food studies at New York University author of nutrition and clinical practice she has served as a nutrition policy advisor to the Department of Health and Human Services and as a member of nutrition and advisory communities to the Department of Agriculture and the FDA she frequently writes in lecturers about a broad range of topics related to food and nutritional policy and I'm very excited that she's here to speak with us today the format for this afternoon is follows Professor mon-sol will speak for about roughly a half an hour about her book that will be followed by roughly 20 minutes of question-and-answer discussion time and then we'll have a brief book signing copies of the book are available at the front of the store near the registers on the front table and next to the food and sustainability display that we have in the next room so with that thank you Amanda I'm very pleased to be here my first academic job was at Brandeis University I hate to say how long ago it was and I'm particularly excited to see colleagues from their neighbors and my freshman college roommates and other people who are here thank you so much for coming and I wish I could make it more comfortable for you it's really okay if you kind of hang out and climb the walls I wrote this book not as an expose of the food industry but really because I wanted to point out to people how what the food industry does influences what we eat and I pick the word influence very carefully I don't use a tack I don't use fault and I don't use blame and so the book came out about a month ago and I've the question that I get asked most frequently is what's been the reaction to your book and so I thought I would talk about what the reaction to the book has been and then read you a few sections of what I actually say about the things that people are reacting to because the reactions to it fall into two categories the very small number of people who've actually read the book man thinks it's only been out for a little while and the very large number of people who think that they know what it says without reading it so the the attack on it began on February 22nd when a website called junk science dot-com displayed an article by somebody named Steven Malloy who is identified as the scholar at the Cato Institute who says the food industry so all the way to the bank as it manipulates the system to make us fat and unhealthy that's Marian Nestle's junk science field message in her new book Nestle who portrays herself as an above the fray professor of nutrition at New York University spends more than 400 pages accusing the food industry of influencing the government co-opting nutritional nutrition professionals exploiting children and corrupting schools all in the name of profit the book won't be in stores until March but the marketing campaign was already have started with predictably superficial and uncritical reviews in the New York Times and USA Today despite its length the book was a quick read and disintegrated from a scientific perspective on pages 7 & 8 those two pages are where Nestle tries to establish the American diet as a health problem the necessary foundation for the rest of the book the combination of poor diet sedentary lifestyle and excessive alcohol consumption contributes to about four hundred thousand to two million or so annual deaths in the u.s. about the same number and proportion affected by cigarette smoking rights Nestle I did indeed write that this assertion extends the discredited claim that obesity kills 300,000 people annually the writer then goes on to explain how I have my SIA science wrong how I parrot government claims that rates of overweight and obese children and adults are skyrocketing when we know that's not true he refers to that as folklore and then he talked he makes a lot of then he makes a lot of personal comments which I won't bother to read and says that food politics deftly glosses over in misrepresents the science on diet and health and Nestle's personal bias pardon me if I'm a little skeptical of the rest of her hatchet job on the food industry okay keep that in mind we'll come back to that then the email started lots of people read junk science dot-com on the Internet here's one that came soon after Marian have you ever accidentally even eaten a cheeseburger I know I have not when are you going to hold people responsible for their own decisions and choices do people not have any willpower or self-control this is ridiculous obese people should blame themselves people who smoke they make the choice to smoke are you going to rob some little kid of a great experience who at age four wants to go to McDonald's with his mom and dad well that is where you were going great companies will be afraid to market their products here's another email I would like to know where in the Constitution is the government given the power to regulate what we eat when we are told that our taxes will pay for abortions regardless of our religious belief we are told that the woman has a right to choose what she does with her own body doesn't that same right apply to those who want to put junk food in their bodies I would love to see you try explaining that using the same arguments as for health risks reading your book might raise my blood pressure so in the interest of health I think I'll avoid reading it and go have a cinnamon bun and a cup of tea Dennis Avery who is a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute and director of the Center for global food issues a very conservative person who weighs in often on these things says I am so relieved I thought I was 15 pounds overweight because I indulge in too much good food and too little exercise but marion Nestle tells me it's not my fault at all she says I'm fat because of food ads run by big corporations and he goes on to talk about how ridiculous that is he says dr. Nestle would like us to eat plant-based diets but most of our fats and sugars come from plants and meats give us important macronutrients Marion says the restaurants make the portions too big if they made my sausage McMuffins smaller I'm rich enough to buy - she hates sugared soft drinks but coke offers diet coke with no calories and apple juice has lots of sugar will guards be stationed in grocery aisles besides lawsuits she is pushing for a multi-billion dollar tax on bad foods with the revenue used for government nutrition campaigns sorry Marion but our love for food and relaxation probably can't be tempered by suing big food or banning snack food from our stores governmental edicts that take away our personal choices have never won much success in America we'll have to saw this the hard way now I am NOT without defenders who have also not read the book and this is from Sheldon Rampton who I don't know personally but who's written a very amusing book called toxic sludge is good for you which is a book about the public relations industry and he writes on amazon.com the Public Relation campaign against this book has already begun for what it's worth potential readers of Nestle's book should note that the first reader reviews of this book are pretty obviously cranked out by some food industry public relations campaign to begin with they were all submitted on the same date February 22nd reader reviews of a book that isn't even scheduled to go on sale until March 4th for another they hit on the same message points that critics are nagging nannies whipping up hysteria on the behalf of greedy trial lawyers etc February 22nd is also the date that noted industry flack Stephen Malloy of the junk science homepage wrote a review trashing Nestle's book Malloy is a former tobacco lobbyist and frontman for group created by Philip Morris which has been diversifying its tobacco holdings I didn't know that in recent years by buying up companies that make many of the fatty sugar legen Laden foods that Nestle is warning about I haven't had a chance to read Nestle's book myself but it irritates me to see the food industry's PR machine spew out the usual every time somebody writes something they don't like if they hate her this much it's probably a pretty good book the last comment that i will read is are excerpts from a letter from Venable bethe Howard and civiletti Attorneys at Law via facsimile and certified mail dated March 27th Rea inaccurate sugar statements we represent the sugar Association incorporated an organization that is committed to integrity and sound scientific principles in educating consumers and professionals about the benefits of pure natural sugar we understand that you were a professor at New York University's School of Education and chair of its Department of nutrition and food studies and that you have recently published a book entitled food politics which you are currently promoting it has come to our attention that during the course of this promotion you have made numerous false misleading disparaging and defamatory statements about sugar I'm being mean to sugar while we are perplexed as to why or how a professional educator of your stature would disseminate such distorted and damaging statements we must demand that you stop making such statements about sugar there are numerous examples of some statements some of which we will provide below first you continually repeat the false and inaccurate statement that soft drinks contain sugar for example in any court they quote a radio interview you said soft drinks are really an easy target because their sugar and water and nothing else guilty as commonly known by experts in the fields of nutrition soft drinks have contained virtually no sugar in parentheses sucrose in more than twenty years the misuse of the word sugar to indicate other caloric sweeteners is not only inaccurate but is a grave disservice to the thousands of family farmers who grow sugar cane and sugar beets now I'll just have a little scientific thing here sucrose is a double molecule of glucose and fructose soft drinks are done with corn sweeteners which have glucose and fructose but they're already separated I leave it to you to decide whether they're different or the same then it goes on with a lot of other things that I won't bother to deal with but they end with we also ask that you be more precise and accurate in your definitions and cease making misleading or false statements regarding sugar or the sugar industry if not the only recourse available to us will be to legally defend our industry and its members against any and all fallacious and harmful allegations now I've posted all this on my website food politics.com should anybody want to read what them in their entirety let me read you what the book says about sugar this book is about the politics of food and this is about the politics of sugar and I begin by discussing sugar in the context of Dietary Guidelines for Americans which are the government's statements about what you're supposed to eat to obtain a healthful diet and the guide the current guideline prepared by a committee in 2000 was choose beverages and foods to moderate your intake of sugars okay sugar was one of the more contentious guidelines in the 2000 edition largely because of industry arguments that research on sugar and disease did not support a recommendation to eat less one of the theses of the book is that the food industry has to sell food that's what their job is and that's a need more message the progression of this guideline is especially revealing the committee report in September 1999 said go easy on beverages and foods high in added sugars go easy and added or the operative words in February 2000 the guideline was changed to choose beverages and foods that limit your intake of sugars limit in May 2000 the Department of Agriculture overrode the committee report and changed the guideline to choose beverages and foods to moderate your intake of sugars so limit was changed to moderate and that word added sugars was dropped ok how did that happen go easy means eat less and added distinguishes processed foods from fruits and vegetables that naturally contain sugar the committee report explains that the added sugars displace nutrient containing foods in the diet and that a focus on total sugars is not supported by the literature and causes confusion among consumers although the text of the final version states that soft drinks candy cake cookies fruit drinks and dairy desserts are the major sources of added sugars the guideline itself obscures that point it does as does the positive word choose as opposed to the restrictive go easy the report offers no explanation for the softening of this recommendation leaving readers to surmise that the committee must have agreed with the grocery manufacturers of America that the minimum burden of scientific proof has not been met for more restrictive advice investigative reports revealed fierce in industry lobbying to retain the wording choose a diet moderate in sugars that had been put out in 1995 sugar trade association viewed limit as the disaster for their 26 billion dollar industry and their lobbyists induced 30 senators half from sugar growing states to question whether the USDA had the right to change the sugar guidelines based on existing science the trade associations also objected to singling out individual foods and beverages as major food sources of sugars instead according to another account the grocery manufacturers wanted recommendations related to meals and snacks would avoid creation which would avoid creation of a good versus bad food scenario and would be more in line with the practical advice of health professionals who urged consumers to look at their food in takes over time instead of on a single food or beverage basis let's go on to another section about sugar which is about buying access and influence in which I deal with the question do campaign contributions trips and presents by corporate influence over government decisions much evidence suggests that they do and in proportion to the amounts spent and in this and I have a section here called getting sweet attention this example concerns sugar a top of the pyramid food that provides calories but no other nutrients government dietary guidelines suggest moderation and we know where that came from in sugar consumption nev
rtheless for more than 200 years the United States has controlled the price of sugar first to raise revenue but later to protect the economic interests of domestic producers for this commodity the relationship between agriculture policy and health is unusually complex as a result of an elaborate system of price support programs and import tariffs and quotas codified during the Depression in early years of World War two Americans pay artificially high prices for sugar a practice that cost consumers 1.9 billion dollars in 1998 from a nutritional standpoint higher sugar prices might be a useful disincentive to consuming soft drinks desserts and candy but from a financial standpoint the policy is highly undesirable besides the harm it causes consumers the windfall benefits a surprisingly small number of sugar producers in 1991 for example 15 and farms raves raised sugarcane and sugar beets in the United States but 42% of the sugar subsidies went to went just 1% of these growers those must be the poor family sugar raisers that the sugar Association is concerned about the owners of these few farms give generously to both political parties the fun Ewell family for example controls about one-third of Florida's sugar cane production and collects at least sixty million dollars annually in subsidies the finals contributed more than 350,000 to the two political parties more two Democrats and Republicans this was during the Clinton administration through their flow son companies in 1997 to 1998 in 2000 Alfonso Fanueil hosted a dinner attended by President Clinton that raised more than a million dollars for the Florida Democratic Party sugar cane production is concentrated in two southern states Florida and Louisiana where working conditions of migrant cane field workers from Caribbean countries have raised human rights concerns environmentalists view the Florida cane fields is blocking the free flow of water from the Everglades sugarcane companies in particular those owned by the fine Ewell family have successfully resisted attempts to mandate improvements in working conditions or the return of cane fields to marshland in order to protect the Everglades investigative reporters for Time magazine described how the funnels use their political connections to avoid having to pay for cleaning up the Everglades even if their account misrepresented the family's actions as one critical response has claimed the finals indisputably have unusual access to the highest levels of government the most stunning example of such access is documented in of all unexpected places the Starr report the 1998 account by independent counsel Kenneth Starr of the relationship of President Bill Clinton to a young White House intern Monica Lewinsky remember that according to mr. Starr in the afternoon of the Presidents Day holiday Monday February 19th 1996 and I'm now quoting from the Star report the president told miss Lewinsky that he no longer felt right about there intimate relationship and he had to put a stop to it at one point during their conversation the President had a call from a sugar grower in Florida whose name according to Miss Lewinsky was something like fenoli in Miss Lewinsky 'he's recollection the president may have taken or returned the call just as she was leaving the president talked with Alfonso fan you love Palm Beach Florida from 12 42 to 104 p.m. reportedly and now we're back away from the star report reportedly mr. Vanya had called the President on a federal holiday because Vice President Gore had just announced a plan to tax Florida sugar growers the proposed tax would help pay for federal efforts to restore parts of the Everglades that had been polluted by sugarcane runoff furthermore the house was debating whether to phase out sugar sugar subsidies the time reporters noted that the tax was never past their account concluded that access given that level of connection it's understandable that agency officials would want not want to do battle over a matter so seemingly trivial as the use of the verb moderate rather than limit in guidelines about sugar consumption so much for the sugar Association now as to what I say about personal responsibility which I deal with actually quite extensively in the book because I do believe that diet is a matter of personal responsibility however in context we have seen how the food industry uses lobbying lawsuits financial contributions public relations advertising partnerships and alliances philanthropy threats and biased information to convince Congress federal agencies nutrition and health professionals and the public that the science relating diet to health is so confusing that they not don't need to worry about diets when it comes to diets anything goes representatives of food companies and their trade associations repeatedly make the following claims like and I'm sure you've heard these the keys to healthful diets are balanced variety and moderation especially when their products are included all foods can be part of healthful diets especially there's there's no such thing as a good or a bad food except when their products are considered good dietary advice changes so often that we need not follow it unless it favors their products research on diet and health is so uncertain that it is meaningless except when it supports the health benefits of their products only a small percentage of the population would benefit from following dietary advice if that advice suggests restrictions on intake of their products diets are a matter of personal responsibility and freedom of choice especially the freedom to choose their products advocacy for more healthful food choices is irrational if it suggests eating less of their products government intervention and dietary choice is unnecessary undesirable and incompatible with democratic institutions unless it protects and promotes their products dr. Rona Applebaum of the national food processors Association for example succinctly expresses such views when she says the diet should conform to the three principles of sound nutritional advice balanced variety and moderation and that societal measures to support more healthful food choices are unnecessary changing the environment of food choices possible she maintains only and this is a quote if the federal government in the role of Big Brother mandates what foods can it cannot be produced which is not the role of government in a free market economy controlling limiting and outright banning of products deemed unfit does not work and history attests to the failure of such extremist measures food consumption is not supply driven it is demand driven it's your fault and consumers are in the driver's seat you cannot force people to comply with the dietary guidelines and it is wrong to try it is an unworkable totalitarian approach that brings with it all of the evils associated with such a philosophy with such statements food industry officials appeal to emotion in this case feels that fears of totalitarianism to argue against something that no nutrition is private or governmental advocates nutritionists are simply trying to educate the public that some foods are better from health for health and others the food industry fiercely opposes this idea and uses its substantial resources political skills and emotional Appeals to discourage attempts to introduce eat less messages into public discussion of dietary issues and instead to encourage people to eat more these tactics and the part of food companies are in one sense a routine part of doing business they're no different from those used by other large commercial interests such as drug companies or tobacco companies but sellers of food products do not attract the same kind of attention as purveyors of drugs or tobacco and then I go on to say we're fortunate to live in a free-market economy that gives us an abundant indeed an over abundant food supply at low cost what we choose to make of this supply is of course a matter of personal responsibility as food company officials are quick to argue but we do not make food choices in a vacuum we select diets in a marketing environment in which billions of dollars are spent to convince us that nutrition advice is so confusing and eating healthfully so impossibly difficult that there is no point in bothering to eat less of one or another food product or category we may believe that we make informed decisions about food choice but we cannot do so if we are oblivious of the ways food companies influence our choices most of us if we choose to do so can recognize how food companies spend money on advertising but it is far more difficult to know about the industry's behind-the-scenes efforts in Congress in federal agencies courts universities and professional organizations to make diets seem a matter of personal choice rather than a deliberate manipulation the emphasis on individual choice serves the interests of the food industry for one critical reason if diet is a matter of individual free will then the only appropriate remedy for poor diets is education and nutritionists should be off teaching people to take personal responsibility for their own diet and health not how to institute societal changes that might make it easier for everyone to do so and that's where I'll stop and take questions thank you very much are there questions comments yes oh wait for the boom could you comment on the sweetness Splenda and is it really a good substitute for sugar well I'm actually in favor of eating sugar what's wrong with sugar just do it in moderation sugar but it's a sugar substitute but it's made from carbohydrate and it doesn't have any calories it's an indigestion carbohydrate that's fine but a little sugar never hurt anybody well that's what's so funny about their anger about this is that's really what I believe in moderation of course can i I'm really curious in the introduction of your book you talked about the fact that you said over the years you've had a lot of very genial interactions with people who are representative is the food industry people who work in it and so on I'm really sort of curious if since the publication of food politics who found that your relationship has become less genial and less interactive and less cordial then I would say if the book has done one thing it's improved the quality of my invitations I'm getting invited to much more interesting places and at much higher levels actually the I don't think it's possible to avoid having interactions with food companies if you're a nutrition professional I mean they're in your face all the time and if I didn't have personal relationships and cordial relationships with them I wouldn't be able to go to meetings I would be in my office talking to myself all the time it's still quite civilized I don't think that the more responsible food companies have organized their response yet the books only been out for a month they haven't read it when they've read it I don't know what they're going to say about it the only food industry that I've heard is from the sugar Association for the sugar Association the you know the people who are going to if I don't stop saying mean things about sugar though and I will try to use the word sugars instead of sugar to be more precise yes I wonder if you could comment on I guess what I consider to be the most egregious manipulation of science for food policy by industry which is with genetically engineered food what one of my colleagues refers to as the evil twin it's coming out this time next year but yes I'd be happy to comment on it it's a situation in which the industry made a decision that they were going to do this and get government to collaborate with them in producing these foods without labeling them I think if they labelled them it would have changed a great deal of the interaction between consumers in the industry but the fact that that they're not labeled means that you don't have any choice I know you cannot exercise your consumer right to vote with your fork at the marketplace if you don't know that the foods are genetically engineered and I see that as the crux of the political problem and that was the decision that the industry fought very hard for answer because in a way you're saying that the issue is choice after all which is what the industry has been saying well yes I mean if we have a free market economy let's let's have a level playing field right I mean consumers have have a choice but the industry in that situation has not given the public a choice because the foods are not labeled though and I see that as the crux of the political problem there are other problems too but that's the next book yes I have two questions actually the first one is in addition to genetic modifications do you think there are any there's any other information it's critical to consumers that's missing from food labels today and my other question is do you know of reliable places to get nutrition information since so much of it seems to be biased one way or the other well that's it that's a hard one yeah I think the food label is almost impossible for anybody who isn't a nutritionist to understand we teach nutrition students in my department we spend a lot of time trying to get them to understand how the food label works so they can explain how it works to their clients I mean I don't think that the Food and Drug Administration was being deliberately obfuscating when it set up when it set up the label the way it did but there are other things that you might like to know that aren't on the labels and you have to have a calculator to figure out you know what the percentage of fat is which you might want to know but it's so much of an improvement over what used to be that we have to live with it for a while so that's my answer to that question on the where you get information about nutrition you know so much of nutrition is common sense and if the information that you're getting doesn't fit with common sense it's probably wrong I mean there are textbooks there are lots of very very good textbooks we like concepts and controversies which is a textbook published by wodsworth and we use that in our department it's easy to read it's got lots of pictures and lots of exercises it's I think it's fine but mostly you know you have to read and think it's a thinking person's feel then it requires a lot of critical thinking at every stage it's not so easy yes lines how do you propose that we educate the public especially people from when they're young so that they understand have an interest in food issues and that they have gained an understanding and they can make choices for themselves especially how do you deal with the idea that the problem about especially in the American four are overwhelmingly overweight now especially children and that has to do with education issues and also how much it is to buy fast food yeah I don't actually don't think it's so much a question of Education as I think it is of just difficulties of life you know there aren't any supermarkets in Harlem for example which is the city that I live in but there plenty of fast food places and fast food is cheap there's a reason why fast food is cheap and it has to do with the way federal subsidies are distributed what if we change the way we did federal subsidies to subsidized fruits and vegetables for example that might help but it seems to me that it's a political and you know obesity is not just a problem among the poor it's a problem among everybody and a very difficult one to address if I were you know I didn't talk about the political problem that I think is the most I mean what I think is the most egregious problem is food marketing in schools I mean that's my first choice for if we're going to take political action let's get the commercialism out of schools let's get fast-food out of schools let's get soft drink contracts out of schools and let's start teaching kids about nutrition in health in school where they're supposed to and not undermine it with all of the commercialism that's going on so you know what and that would affect poor kids as well as rich kids I just come back from obesity meeting in Washington where a group of people got together to talk about um some new initiatives to try to do something about the
ising rates of overweight and obesity among young children and these are people who are in the field and our pediatricians and are kind of at a loss as to what to do but where it came down to was let's do for kids what was done for kids for cigarettes maybe 20 or 30 years ago where kids were taught to get their parents to stop smoking maybe kids need to be taught to get their caretakers to choose better diets I don't know anyway it's something that people are thinking about I'd like a lot of thought about these kinds of issues I'm not sure what the solutions are I don't have easy solutions to any of these problems but I think they're worth thinking about and they've been greatly overlooked yes in a free market economy but I wonder if the kinds of things that you're demonstrating is that we don't perhaps we need a more subtle kind of Zurn and a free market economy because it's quite controlled in certain ways I'm almost using it ironically it's a you know there are ways in which the government subsidizes certain kinds of foods and certain kinds of dietary practices that were completely unaware of I mean for example somebody told me and I'm not actually sure this is true so let me just put it out as a as a tentative example but somebody told me that McDonald's could take the money that they spend on advertising their products and subtract that as a business expense if that's a bit add vertices a business expense then taxpayers are subsidizing marketing the McDonald's marketing I don't know whether that's true or not so I'm not I'm a little hesitant about it but there are loads of ways in which the government subsidizes corporate food you know through price supports are only the most obvious ways for sugar and dairy products but there are many many other ways water-rights grazing rights land uses tax subsidies tax abatements that could be altered in a different way to promote a healthier food economy yes is there any hope that we will have changed during this current administration or should we just give up and wait well I never give up I mean I think this is a grassroots situation I mean I'm very impressed by the work of a group in Oakland California called the Center for commercial free public education which has been very effective in organizing communities to get marketing out of schools and to turn down soft drink contracts with schools that's grassroots it's working from the bottom up I'm very impressed with the tremendous outpouring of public support there was for the Organic Standards Act when the Organic Standards Act said it would be okay to label foods that were genetically engineered irradiated or treated with sewage sludge 275,000 people wrote in and said no way and the Department of Agriculture changed that that means there's a huge public support for doing something better about our food supply it's just that it's organized on the internet and not necessarily ston the national level and needs to be local I think I mean I'm greatly in favor of exercising democratic rights as citizens starting local and working with and joining organizations and working way up and voting with your fork making individual choices about what kinds of food you're going to eat and how you're going to eat them know I mean I think they're plenty that individual there's plenty of things that individuals can do yes Ellen we live in an era of public-private partnerships and food industry has been extremely active in promoting the government's monitoring of the hunger situation and also working with anti-hunger advocates could you talk a little bit about what you see is the proper role of the food industry in these efforts well I've kind of given up on the food industry I just don't think that partnerships are possible because the goals of food companies are so completely different than the goals of consumers you know consumers are concerned about health and the food industry is concerned about increasing sales and one of the things I talked about is this is really big business the food industry is a nine hundred billion dollar industry in the United States and it's one of the big dark secrets of the American food economy is how enormously overproduced it is the food industry is so successful that it produces enough food in the United States to feed everybody twice over well this creates a tremendously competitive environment in which companies are fighting with each other for the consumer food dollar and the object if you're a food company is to get people either to buy your product instead of somebody else's or to get people to eat more in general and I see the ways in which companies try to get people to eat more as contributing to the obesity problem whether people realize it or not and there are lots of ways in which they do that and I go into them in great detail and so if you're dealing with food companies you need to look for congruent you need to look for congruence well I tell the story about what I think is the best example which is fruit and vegetable the five a day program which is a federal program to promote consumption of five fruits and vegetables a day it's a great idea it's countable if you only have to count to five you can do it on one and it's really simple everybody can understand it you can keep track of it it's really great but there's no money behind it and in the peak year in which the government and private industry got together to promote public education around five a day they put in two million dollars to do that now two million dollars sounds like a lot of money to me it really does however McDonald's spends about a billion dollars a year to advertise its products just in the United States any soft drink coca-cola any you know big nationally advertised soft drink spends in the order of a hundred twenty million dollars a year any candy bar is 50 to 70 million dollars a year any sweetened cereal is 15 million dollars a year and Altoid mints which for some reason other I love to use as an example has a ten million dollar a year advertising budget altogether there's thirty billion dollars in food advertising so you stacked that very large number with all those zeros up against two million dollars and it's nothing it's nothing there's never been a nutrition education campaign in this country of any kind of stature at all so I don't know Ellen if you're talking about food distribution programs and giveaway programs and all of that kind of thing but for that I recommend Jan pop and eke splendid book Sweet Charity which talks about the role of food companies in food distribution programs to the poor a very complicated issue you give us a peek into the culture of nutritionists I imagine you in your classes you know and teaching people and then some leave to go work for the food industry and some for a PMO's and yeah and will your book be read and you know nutrition schools and I certainly hope so I certainly hope it will be read and will be required reading in a lot of nutrition certainly will be in our classes but the the I think the nutrition nutrition as a profession is going to have to deal with the issues that I raised you know I thought I was stating the obvious that food is a business duh you know I mean it's and it's just something that's never talked about and I give specific examples I have a whole chapter on food companies relationships with food and nutrition professionals in which I do complete disclosure of my own relationships because in doing the research for the book I had to go back and look at for example my 12-year relationship with Procter and Gamble which for trail 12 years tried to bring me on board in a way that was so subtle I didn't even know that it was happening to bring me on board as a promoter of olestra which I never did do but yeah it was I mean I was impressed in reviewing that then it was a 12-year effort that it involved a their head of public relations needs to come to New York quite frequently to take me to dinner it involved going to meetings in New Orleans that were gorgeous lavish hotels I mean I could go on and on I think it's impossible for a nutritionist to not be involved with food companies because they sponsor all the meetings and journals all of them they also sponsor research that's more problematic and I have in the book a table of research studies I had no trouble at all going through the research literature and picking out studies that were done that came out with results favorable to the sponsor of that study I had no trouble at all it took me an hour of just browsing through my files let's find one on sugar let's find one on eggs let's find one on fat and cholesterol let's find one I just notoya let's find one on vitamins i me just had no trouble at all lots of in of food research is sponsored by the companies that make the products that are involved and you know that them if i talk to the researchers should do those studies and say do the companies influence the quality of your research the interpretation of your research how you think about the research of course not you know they're just outraged except for people who take me aside afterwards and say i can't talk to you on the record about this you must never never never quote me but when we came out with these results the company that was sponsoring them asked us to change the data or the company that said we they really didn't want us to publish it or i mean these kinds of things happen they're just not public and it's that kind of thing that it seems to me I mean I have a I had a very deliberate thing that I wanted done I want the American Dietetic Association to get rid of its fact sheets they have Nutrition Facts sheets on their website each one with its own corporate sponsor guess who sponsored the genetic engineering one Monsanto guess who sponsored the one on on soft drinks which says that soft drinks are a good way to quench your thirst my friends of the sugar Association or whoever it is I mean you can name the topic on which you would like advice and then there's a corporate sponsor and when members of the American Dietetic Association challenged that and said gee these things sound like they were written by the public relations offices of these companies guess what they were they work so I want them to stop that or you know issue number one I think that that organization and I'm not taking on that organization particularly except that it does things in some ways more openly than a lot of the other nutrition organizations but I think they should not have sponsored sessions at their annual meetings I gave a talk on biotechnology at a sponsored session a couple of years ago that was sponsored by month by Monsanto it just put me in a terrific quandary what am I supposed to do do I say no to the invitation and then I lose the opportunity to talk to an audience that I particularly want to influence do I not take any money in which case I'm out several thousand dollars because it's a very expensive meeting and the travel cost a lot do I turn down the honorarium that's what that's what I did but the you know I take my policy on this finally after much agonizing is to take travel money from food companies if that's the way you know I'll take travel in hotel and that kind of expenses I'll go to meetings that are sponsored and I will speak it's sponsored sessions and I will go to food companies and speak to people at food companies if they invite me I don't get invited very often but once in a while I do I did speak to Monsanto once a few years ago it was a very interesting experience and but I don't take honoraria personally I asked the companies if there is an honorarium to donate it to our department scholarship account now you may think that that's selling out and I don't know it's the best I can do and it would came after a lot of agonizing about how to deal with it it's a big problem but I do suffer over it then I'll say that in my favor anything else well thank you very much appreciate it I just want to again thank you all for coming and thank you personally for singing we do have copies of the book available at the front of the store I'd love it people could buy some and Professor that's looking signed some maybe I'd be happy marion Nestle is nutrition chair at New York University and editor of the 1988 Surgeon General report she's the author of food politics how the food industry influences nutrition and health it's published by university of california press online at UC press e tu
