Search results: a life in food

Published October 4, 2022.

Ordering options: Amazon,  Barnes & Noble   Bookshop   IndieBound   Powell’s   UC Press

Overview:  Marion Nestle reflects on her late-in-life career as a world-renowned food politics expert, public health advocate, and founder of the field of food studies following decades of low expectations.

Description:  In this engrossing memoir, Marion Nestle reflects on how she achieved late-in-life success as a leading advocate for healthier and more sustainable diets.  Slow Cooked tells the story of how she built an unparalleled career at a time when few women worked in the sciences, and came to recognize and reveal the enormous influence of the food industry on our dietary choices.

By the time Marion obtained her doctorate in molecular biology, she had been married since the age of nineteen, dropped out of college, worked as a lab technician, divorced, and become a stay-at-home mom with two children.  That’s when she got started.  Slow Cooked charts Marion’s astonishing rise from bench scientist to the pinnacles of academia, how she overcame the barriers and biases women of her generation faced, and how she found her life’s purpose after age fifty. Slow Cooked tells her personal story—one that is deeply relevant to everyone who eats and to anyone who thinks it might be too late to follow a passion.

The blurbs

• “Marion Nestle is one of my heroes. After reading her riveting memoir, I admire her more than ever. She is one of the most important voices in the food world, and in this book she gets personal for the first time.”—Ruth Reichl, former editor of Gourmet Magazine 
• “Marion Nestle is a national treasure, and now you can learn how she came to be. Just like Nestle herself, this beautiful memoir is thoughtful, generous, unstinting, and deeply committed to learning from the past to build a better world.”—Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System 
• “I have always had such admiration for Marion Nestle: she is one of our nation’s shrewdest thinkers and has transformed the way all of us think about public health, the industrial food industry, nutrition, and the future of food. With this extraordinary book, I see for the first time how she became the clear-eyed, indefatigable warrior that she is. Her radical self-reflection and honesty is deeply moving—and in telling her life’’s story, Marion is forging a path for the next generation of food activists.”—Alice Waters, chef, author, food activist, and founder of Chez Panisse restaurant 
• “Marion Nestle is a brilliant, courageous champion of healthy food, social justice, and scientific integrity. This poignant and inspiring book tells us how she came to be that way.”—Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal 
• “Extraordinary! Nestle’s story moves me, heart and soul. I have long admired her leadership in awakening us to the crisis of our corporate-corrupted food system. In this work, however, she offers hope in the capacity of humans to transform obstacles and denigration into opportunity and dignity. She shares a gripping, very personal story that will help us discover our own courage. Just what’s needed now more than ever.”—Frances Moore Lappé, cofounder of Small Planet Institute

Media

2022

Aug 15  Kirkus Reviews: (p. 154) “An impassioned reminder to never stop pursuing your interests.”

Sept 6   A review on Twitter from Parke Wilde (US Food Policy): “delightful, personable, and fearlessly open about parents, husbands, university politics, sexism, racism, famous and ordinary people, all before we even get to the influential career in food politics.”

Sept 21  MOFAD Launch event, announcement in the New York Times (at bottom)

Sept 21  Civil Eats interview about Slow Cooked

Sept 27  Review in Forbes: ” “Slow Cooked” is a delight. It’s safe to say that contemporary food studies would probably not exist without the efforts of Nestle, or it if it did, it would resemble the shallow pop culture dreck of the Food Network.”

Oct 9  Excerpt published by Blue Zones: The birth of Food Politics.

Oct 13  Interview with Sam Reiss, GQ: How Marion Nestle changed the way we talk about food

Oct 27  NYU press announcement

Nov 7  Forbes’ The 30 Best Food And Sustainability Gifts Of 2022

Nov 10  Zibby Mag’s Best Books for those Closest to You

Dec 4  Review in New York Times Book Review’s Shortlist

Dec 23  Deborah Grayon’s review in Worth

Winter 2022/2023 Mike Miller’s review in Social Policy: Boss Marion

2023

Jan 1  Jennifer Wilkins’ review of Slow Cooked. J Nutr Educ Behavior. 2023;55(1):81-82. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2022.11.001

Jan 3  De memoires van ‘voedselstrijder’ Marion Nestle.  FoodLog (in Dutch)

Feb 15  A Tweet from UC Press on my six books with them for International Day for Women and Girls in Science

April 7  Review by Serge Hercberg in the American Journal of Public Health

It’s not enough that the meat industry is attacking plant-based alternative meat products (see my post on how the Zombie Center for Consumer Freedom took on that job).

Now, to my amazement, one brand is attacking another and in a full-page ad in the New York Times, no less.

Here’s what it says:

Enough.  Enough with the hyper-processed ingredients, GMOs, unnecessary additives and fillers, and fake blood…People deserve plant-based protein that is developed in a kitchen, not a lab.

Really?  Lightlife burgers taking on Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods?  This so reminds me so much of the sugar industry taking on corn syrup and vice versa.

Does Lightlife have a case?

Food Navigator has a terrific comparison of the ingredients of plant-based burgers.  These are just the ones at issue here (there are more).

OK.  Lightlife has fewer ingredients, but it still looks plenty ultraprocessed.  Like the others, it:

• Does not resemble the foods from which it is derived.
• Is industrially produced.
• Contains unfamiliar ingredients (e.g., pea protein, natural flavors, modified cellulose)
• Cannot be made in home kitchens (unless you happen to have those ingredients as well as beet powder and cherry powder handy).

I don’t buy that there is a significant difference here.

Impossible Foods calls this ad “cynical and disingenuous.”  It also wrote an open letter of rebuttal.

The campaign leans on spurious arguments typically used by the meat industry: Attack Impossible’s products not based on their indisputable quality, nutrition, wholesomeness or deliciousness, but based on the number of ingredients — a logic-defying concept with zero relevance to health or product quality, intended to distract consumers from the obvious inferiority of Lightlife and Maple Leaf’s products.

Beyond Meat sent a statement to Food Dive

If Lightlife were clear on our ingredients, they would see that our food is made from simple, plant-based ingredients. With no GMOs. No synthetic additives. No carcinogens. No hormones. No antibiotics. No cholesterol. Our foods are designed to have the same taste and texture as animal-based meat, giving more consumers more options that are better for them and the planet.

From my standpoint, the differences between these products are minimal.

The real questions are about the relative benefits of meat versus plant-based alternatives.  A recent review in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems addresses those questions.  In my original post, I said “At best, it finds moderate benefits for nutritional vlue, greenhouse gas emissions, and land use, but no to limited benefits for the other measures it evaluated.  It found even less benefit for cell-based meats (which are not yet on the market).”  This, as explained below, misrepresents their findings, which refer only to the state of the research literature.

My bottom line?  These products fall in the category of ultraprocessed and are off my dietary radar.  I can hardly believe that attacking each other does any good for them or anyone or anything else.

Correction

Brent Kim, one of the authors of this study writes:

We wanted to clear up some confusion that seems to have arisen around one of our tables…Table 1, cited in your post, describes the degree to which those different impacts have been characterized in the literature. “Limited,” for example, indicates that there has been a limited number of studies on the topic. It does not reflect our findings about the relative benefits.

To clarify, here’s what we found:

• Plant-based meat substitutes offered substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, water use, and land use relative to farmed beef. The benefits compared to other meats (e.g., pork, chicken, fish) were less pronounced.
• For cell-based meat, the potential environmental footprints were generally lower than those of farmed beef and comparable to or worse than those of other farmed meats and seafood… although further research is needed.
• There has been limited research on nutrition, chronic disease, and food safety implications associated with consuming meat alternatives, and occupational and community health implications associated with their production.
• For example, it is unknown whether replacing farmed meat with plant-based substitutes would offer similar nutritional and health benefits as compared to less-processed plant foods.

I stand corrected and reproduce this with Dr. Kim’s permission.  To my bottom line above, I should have added: more research needed!

I did an interview last year with Rebecca Straus of Organic Life about books of interest to the magazine’s readers.  I never heard what happened to it but learned from a recent tweet that it is now available online.  So consider this a late catch up.

Marion Nestle’s Favorite Organic Books: Eight reads to get you thinking about where your food is coming from.  Organic Life, September 11, 2015.

Food advocate Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University, has long been outspoken in her support of organic farming and opposition to GMO crops. Her books and articles on how science, marketing, and society impact food choices and obesity have influenced everyone from Michelle Obama to Michael Pollen, who named her the second most powerful foodie in America.  Her new book Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning), comes out in October. But even when she’s busy writing, Nestle takes time to review other recent titles on her popular blog, Food Politics. “I’m overwhelmed by the avalanche of outstanding books that I run across or that get sent to me,” she says. But when forced to choose, she settled on these eight as some of the best writing and original research in the bunch, adding, “They deserve much more attention than they’ve received.”

Food, Farms, and Community: Exploring Food Systems by Lisa Chase and Vern Grubinger

“Many people don’t understand what food systems  are, and it’s very hard to explain, so this book is a terrific introduction. The authors take a big-picture approach to explain how our food gets from production to consumption,.They also focus on how we can create food and farming systems that promote the health of people and planet. It’s very readable.”

The End of Plenty: The Race to Feed a Crowded World by Joel K. Bourne, Jr.

“This book takes a look at industrial farming and discusses how food production must change to meet the world’s demands. But if you think the title sounds depressing, you shouldn’t.  The food situation is so much better than it was 20 years ago. There’s so much more organic, local, and seasonal growing. Students are interested in these issues, and that’s inspiring to me. You can make progress without overturning the whole system. My personal measure is that when we started food studies at NYU in 1996, we were the only program like that in the country. Now every university offers food studies and has an organic garden.”

From Field to Fork: Food Ethics for Everyone by Paul Thompson

“Ethical dilemmas impact the way we shop for food. Should we buy orancic or local? Should we care how farm animals are raised? For people who aren’t trained in ethics, it’s sometimes hard to think about these things, and this book can help you delve into them.”

Organic Struggle: The Movement for Sustainable Agriculture in the United States by Brian K. Obach

“For me, the discussion of the development of the organic standards is the most interesting part of this book. It explains why it’s so important to maintain strict organic standards, and why there’s such intense conflict about them. In fact, the biggest issue facing the organic industry is confidence in the standards.”

Afro-Vegan: Farm-Fresh African, Caribbean & Southern Flavors Remixed by Bryant Terry

“Terry is an extraordinary cook. He’s really concerned about the health of African Americans, who tend to have much higher levels of chronic disease, so he sets out to demonstrate that it’s possible to cook a healthier, vegan diet using the ingredients of traditional African cuisine, like collards, grits, and okra. I’ve never seen a book like this before.”

Lentil Underground: Renegade Farmers and the Future of Food in America by Liz Carlisle

“Carlisle is an incredible author (and Michael Pollan’s protégé). To write the book, she simply went to talk to farmers in Montana to find out what they were doing. It’s very lively. I attended her book tour, and she actually brought the farmers with her – it was clear she was really passionate. Everyone is always talking about how farmers are failing, but this is a success story. It’s inspiring.”

Breadlines Knee-Deep in Wheat: Food Assistance in the Great Depression by Janet Poppendieck

“I have special interest in this one – I wrote the foreword. The author is fabulous, and this book is particularly well done. Anyone who wants to really understand the Farm Bill and the fight about food stamps needs to read this book. We’re seeing enormous congressional fighting over SNAP right now, and those same issues were there from the very beginning.”

Lethal but Legal: Corporations, Consumption, and Protecting Public Health by Nick Freudenberg

“This book is compelling because it draws out the parallels between food issues and things like cigarettes, guns, and alcohol. Food producers use the same corporate strategies as these other industries to enrich themselves at the expense of public health. I believe advocacy is the only way to beat the system, and Freudenberg writes about ways for organizing against coporate power to create a healthier environment.  organize against corporate power for a healthier, more sustainable environment.”

The writer Krissy Clark, in a collaboration between Marketplace and SLATE, has produced a remarkable series of articles (with audio and video) on business interests in SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as food stamps.

Here are brief excerpts:

The secret life of a food stamp, April 1

Save money, live better, April 2

 Hungry for savings, April 3  

Like many anti-hunger advocates who receive donations from corporate retailers known for low wages, Elchert is in a tricky spot when it comes to addressing the paradoxes of the food stamp economy. His group gets financial support from Walmart and other food retailers. “When we’re talking a lot with corporations,” he says, “it’s one of those situations where, well, let’s talk about this in some way where we’re not offending them.”

I’ve talked about this issue in previous posts.  Here are some additional resources on the issue:

• The audio version of this series: listen to it here.
• Michele Simon’s report, Food Stamps:Follow the Money
• SNAP to Health policy report
• The Faces of Food Stamps, New York Times, March 31
• Who Uses Food Stamps? Millions of Children, NBC News March 17

Two items about pet food this week.  Today: safety.  Tomorrow: environmental sustainability.

I have a long-standing interest in pet food, which I view as an integral—essential—component of our overall food system , not least because pet food uses food components that would otherwise be wasted.  I co-authored a book about pet food issues: Feed Your Pet Right.

If there are problems with the safety of pet food, you can bet those problems will occur in the food supply for humans.  I wrote a book about that too: Pet Food Politics: The Canary in the Coal Mine.

I am not the only one interested in such topics.  Phyllis Entis has written two books crticizing the safety hazards of pet foods.

• TAINTED. From Farm Gate to Dinner Plate, Fifty Years of Food Safety Failures 
• TOXIC. From Factory to Food Bowl, Pet Food Is a Risky Business

She keeps me up-to-date on the latest problems that arise.

I don’t know how closely you’re watching the pet food industry these days, but I thought this piece I just posted might interest you: When ‘truths’ collide: Darwin’s, ANSWERS, and the FDA

This was an account of an FDA Advisory and its non-consequences: Do Not Feed Certain Lots of Darwin’s Natural Selections Pet Food Due to Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is cautioning pet owners that FDA samples of five Darwin’s Natural Pet Products raw cat and dog food made by Arrow Reliance, Inc. tested positive for Salmonella and a sixth FDA sample tested positive for Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes (L. mono)…If you have any of the Darwin’s Natural Selections pet food product listed above, stop feeding the product to your pets and throw it away in a secure container where other animals, including wildlife, cannot access it. Do not donate the food.

The bigger story here, as Phillis Entis explains, is that the FDA did not force the company to recall the products; it asked Darwin to rissue a recall volunarily.

But in this case, the company resisted.  It voluntarily decided not to do the recall.  Pet Food Industry (an essential source of information) tells this story.

In a September 20, 2024, memo from the company to consumers which was sent to Petfood Industry, Darwin’s Natural Pet Products had this to say given the FDA’s public notice regarding the affected lots of cat and dog food.

The memo is worth a look.  It says things like this:

• At Darwin’s, the health and safety of your pets is our absolute top priority, and we take rigorous steps to support their well-being and to foster strong lines of communication with you and our fellow community members.
• It is also very important to know that the FDA has received no consumer complaints regarding any of these lots.
• We find the FDA’s public notice to be wholly unnecessary, and ultimately, based on flawed regulatory decision-making, and we have taken steps to make this position clear to the agency.

Oh.

Food safety lawyer Bill Marler asks: Will the FDA use its Recall Authority to Mandate a Pet Food Recall due to Salmonella and Listeria?   .The FDA has that authority.  It did not use it.

That leaves you on your own to make sure you do not buy Darwin products for your pet.

The FDA provides plenty of information as a basis for you taking responsibility for such things.

Its advisory asks this question: Why is the FDA concerned about Salmonella and L. mono in pet food?

Pet foods contaminated with Salmonella and L. mono are of particular public health importance because they can affect both human and animal health. Pets can get sick from Salmonella and may also be carriers of the bacteria and pass it on to their human companions without appearing to be ill…The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act requires that all animal foods, like human foods, be safe to eat, produced under sanitary conditions, contain no harmful substances, and be truthfully labeled. Refrigeration or freezing does not kill Salmonella or L. mono.

It provides  these resources:

• Get the Facts about Salmonella
• Salmonella (Salmonellosis)
• Get the Facts about Listeria
• Listeria (Listeriosis)

Do we need more forceful regulation of pet food?  Of course we do.

I first read about this in a daily newsletter I subscribe to, Bakery and Snacks:   The Doritos effect: How tartrazine turns tissues temporarily transparent. When a study draws parallels with H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, you know it’s bound to be captivating. Could this scientific leap bring us closer to achieving a real-life version of Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak?… Read more

An ingredient in Doritos — tartrazine or Yellow 5 — is helping scientists see through the skin of mice. While they can’t see through human skin (it’s thicker and less permeable), this could be helpful in the future for early skin cancer detection. Imagine if it could replace a mammogram? On the other hand, Doritos food coloring is a chemical that the scientists said might not be totally harmless. (And to think so many people are eating it?) Read the Popular Science article about it. It’s fantastic.

Popular Science: The dye in Doritos can make mice transparent.  ‘It’s not magic, but it’s still very powerful.’

Because of a counterintuitive fundamental physics principle [selective absorption and scattering of light], Tartrazine, also known as Yellow 5, can temporarily turn biological tissue transparent to the naked eye, as described in a study published September 5 in the journal Science. 

The Science study: Achieving optical transparency in live animals with absorbing molecules.  Science.  Vol 385, Issue 6713.  DOI: 10.1126/science.adm6869

We next sought to demonstrate the ability of absorbing molecules to achieve tissue transparency in the mouse abdomen. Specifically, when a tartrazine solution was topically applied to the abdominal skin of a live mouse under anesthesia and gently massaged on the skin (Fig. 1, G and H), the abdominal skin not only darkened in color but also became more transparent in the red window (fig. S8). This transparency effect can be readily visualized with the naked eye and does not require any specialized imaging equipment…The transparent abdomen allowed us to directly observe internal organs, including the liver, small intestine, cecum, and bladder (Fig. 1, I and J). Moreover, we could also discern their movements, such as peristalsis, as well as motions synchronized with the heartbeat and breathing (Movies 1 and 2). The achieved abdominal transparency can be reversed by rinsing and massaging the skin with water (fig. S8).

Tartrazine is FD&C  Yellow #5

Tartrazine is a synthetic food colorant classified as an azo dye. It is lemon yellow in color and water soluble. Tartrazine is approved for use as a food colorant in the EU, USA, Canada, and other parts of the world for use in food, cosmetics, and medications. Its use in foods includes dairy products, beverages, desserts, confectionary, spices, dressings, jellies and sauces…It is one of the most commonly used and best known food additives…Of the synthetic food dyes, tartrazine has been implicated most often as a cause of adverse reactions.

Here’s what CSPI says about it.

Yellow 5 can be found in many foods, including beverages, gelatin desserts, candy, and baked goods. It’s the second-most widely used coloring and sometimes causes allergy-like hypersensitivity reactions, primarily in aspirin-sensitive persons, and triggers hyperactivity in some children. It may be contaminated with such cancer-causing substances as benzidine and 4-aminobiphenyl (or chemicals that the body converts to those substances).

CSPI has filed a petition to

Ban the Use of Yellow 5 and Other Food Dyes, in the Interim to Require a Warning on Foods Containing These Dyes, to Correct the Information the Food and Drug Administration Gives to Consumers On the Impact of These Dyes on the Behavior of Some Children, and to Require Neurotoxicity Testing of New Food Additives and Food Colors.

And now here’s another reason not to use it, even though it doesn’t do this in people, apparently.  Our skin is too thick.

Addition

A reader points out that tartrazine is on the list of food dyes now banned in California.  Good idea.

The USDA has released its annual report on Household Food Security in the United States in 2023.

The news is not good.

What’s especially tragic is the reversal of the pandemic decline in food insecurity.

Pandemic income support and higher SNAP benefits did exactly what they were supposed to.  They reduced poverty.

Congress, in its infinite wisdom, stopped those benefits.

The results are entirely predictable.

These, alas, are political choices.

There’s an election coming up soon…

Resources

• Food Security in the U.S.  Food security means access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.
• Food Security in the United States
• Household Food Security in the United States in 2023: An estimated 13.5 percent of households (18.0 million) were food insecure in 2023, meaning they had difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members because of a lack of resources.
• Statistical Supplement to Household Food Security in the United States in 2023: Statistics presented in the supplement are based on data collected in the Current Population Survey (CPS) Food Security Supplement conducted in December 2023.

At last, a presidential candidate interested in food.

The Harris-Walz agenda aims to lower costs for Americans, food costs among them.

Vice President Harris and Governor Walz will work to enact a plan in their first 100 days to go after bad actors to bring down Americans’ grocery costs and keep inflation in check. They will work with Congress to:

• Advance the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries;
• Set clear rules of the road to make clear that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive profits on food and groceries.
• Secure new authority for the FTC and state attorneys general to investigate and impose strict new penalties on companies that break the rules.

Furthermore,

Vice President Harris will also direct her Administration to crack down on unfair mergers and acquisitions that give big food corporations the power to jack up food and grocery prices and undermine the competition that allows all businesses to thrive while keeping prices low for consumers.

And her plan will support smaller businesses, like grocery stores, meat processors, farmers, and ranchers, so those industries can become more competitive….More competition means lower prices for you and your families.

Unfair mergers?  Mars had just proposed to buy Kellanova, and I discussed the Kroger-Albertson’s proposed merger yesterday.

At a campaign event in North Carolina, Vice President Kamala Harris again discussed food prices.

A loaf of bread costs 50 percent more today than it did before the pandemic.  Ground beef is up almost 50 percent.  Many of the big food companies are seeing their highest profits in two decades.  And while many grocery chains pass along these savings, others still aren’t.

…My plan will include new penalties for opportunistic companies that exploit crises and break the rules, and we will support smaller food businesses that are trying to play by the rules and get ahead.

…We will help the food industry become more competitive, because I believe competition is the lifeblood of our economy.  More competition means lower prices for you and your families.

Good, but these are campaign promises that necessarily depend on Congressional support.

As Politico explains,

…it’s unlikely Democrats will have the votes to pass price-gouging legislation in Congress. Her proposal essentially mirrors a bill from Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) that has stalled amid GOP opposition.

And Harris’ pitch, which includes giving the FTC more resources to investigate major acquisition deals in the food sector, would need GOP buy-in so Democrats can swing extra FTC resources via spending fights in Congress.

The food industry, of course, protests.

The Food Industry Association blames higher prices on inflation.

The National Grocers Association says its profit margins are already too thin.

I have no idea how any of this will play out, but it’s terrific to see food issues on the agenda.