Marion Nestle, New York University Professor of Nutrition and Food Studies, is furious at the food industry for making Americans fat and sick. And she has written a book, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, documenting her charges.
Dr. Nestle (who, among other accomplishments, was managing editor of the l988 Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health) is appalled that food corporations are focused on their economic bottom line and care more about profits and making their shareholders happy than they do about keeping consumers healthy.
She is apoplectic about the facts that a) food companies advertise and promote their foods, particularly good tasting foods which do not meet all the criteria for nutritional correctness and b) they even turn to modern-day food technology to allow us to consume desserts and snacks, which she considers to be junk, at reduced caloric levels (she strenuously objects to fat substitutes like Olestra).
Indeed, if we were to take Marion Nestle's arguments at their face value, we would be advocating that food companies be run not by businesspeople but by academic physicians and scientists who were committed to creating a nutrition utopia whether consumers wanted those foods or not and regardless of whether corporations succeeded economically.
We must at least agree with one of Dr. Nestle's basic premises: Americans, both adults and children, are more overweight than ever and being overweight carries with it some very serious indeed life-threatening adverse health effects. It has been said that we Americans now suffer from malnutrition of affluence. We have more economic resources to purchase food, so we eat more. But of course, that is only half of the nutrition equation. We also utilize fewer calories through exercise, and the result is excess weight. With these extra pounds we face increased risk of myriad ailments, including diabetes, heart disease, even breast cancer (obesity in middle-aged women is an established risk factor for breast cancer).
But who is to blame for the fattening of America? Dr. Nestle points the finger of blame directly at the "food industry," which she regards as a monolithic, profit-hungry, health-be-damned economic force over which we, as individuals, have no control. But we are hardly helpless victims here, captives of the psychological power the "food industry" holds over us through advertising, lobbying, and promotion. Indeed the "food industry" is anything but monolithic, with a dizzying array of competitive products out there for us to buy. We make choices, and sometimes those choices in the long run are unhealthy. If we are eating more calories daily than we need to maintain an ideal weight and if we do not make time in our schedule for regular exercise, we are to blame, not the corporation who may spend millions advertising Cheese Doodles.
Indeed, a stronger case could be made that current economic pressures and the need for multiple bread-winners in the family are responsible for our failure to eat prudently and make time for swimming, jogging, or other calorie-burning activity. With fewer hours available for meal preparation and family time, processed foods, often more calorically-dense than a home-cooked meal, are appealing. How is this the fault of the food industry, which is, after all, giving the consumer what he/she wants?
Dr. Nestle is correct in arguing that our health would improve if we replaced some of the empty calories in our diet with more fruits and vegetables. And yes, sugar-and-fat laden snacks in vending machines in elementary schools, where access is unsupervised, could well jeopardize a pattern of balanced nutrition for young children.
But making so-called "junk food" (which might better be characterized as "fun food") available for teenagers and adults is simply a matter of choice and when used in moderation as part of a balanced diet, such "junk food" as soda, candy, popcorn, and snacks pose no health problem at all. (Perhaps the most infuriating references in Dr. Nestle's book are those equating the advertising and promotion of food with those of cigarettes, as if one could ever legitimately compare anything about a spectrum of foodstuffs essential for long life and good health with a physiologically addictive, inherently life-threatening product.)
Marion Nestle calls upon the government to take a more "serious approach to obesity prevention." If the end results of her quest were simply to have the government provide basic information on healthful diets and tips on avoiding health-threatening extra pounds, perhaps we would all benefit.
But the broader thrust of Food Politics is more disquieting than mere government-sponsored education. Beware the day that Dr. Nestle and her colleagues succeed in restricting advertising for their long list of forbidden foods, or perhaps, as some nutrition activists have already proposed, slapping "sin taxes" on foods that do not fit perfectly in the national nutritionists' permissible menu slots. Our prospects for long life, good heath, and the pursuit of happiness are far brighter in the hands of competitive, profit-driven food corporations than they are in those of national nutrition-nanny know-it-alls.
Editor's note: Dr. Whelan's book review was written for the Washington Times.