Search results: sugar policy

I am an advisor to the American Society of Nutrition’s Early Career Nutrition group and was asked to address this question for its spring/summer newsletter (my piece starts on page 9).  Here’s what I said:

As a newly appointed advisor to ASN’s Early Career Nutrition (ECN) group, I am pleased to be asked to explain why I do not think it a good idea for nutrition scientists, practitioners, and societies to be funded by food, beverage, and supplement companies (collectively, the food industry) for research that is in any way related to their products. If we do, we run the risk of appearing as if our interests are conflicted. More than that, we risk being conflicted—influenced to be less critical or silent about nutrition issues related to the donor’s products. There is no getting around it: whatever the reality of the relationship, taking money from a for-profit food company makes us appear to be supporters of whatever products the company sells.

I worry a lot that financial ties between food companies and ASN tarnish its reputation and ours. It troubles me when critics outside our profession view us as “on the take” and publish reports exposing ASN’s financial ties to companies that have a marketing stake in what we study or say about their products. When ASN meetings are sponsored by food companies, it makes these financial ties seem normal. ASN provides a platform for industry-sponsored sessions such as the one this year on the benefits of Stevia, but you can bet they don’t include speakers who might say anything critical. Sponsorship excludes that possibility.

Most of what we know about the effects of sponsorship comes from a very large body of research on funding by the cigarette, chemical, pharmaceutical, and medical device industries. The results of this research are remarkably consistent: they demonstrate that industry funding influences the design, interpretation, and outcome of research. Nutrition is late to this type of investigation, but several recent studies show that studies funded by the food industry almost invariably favor the interests of the sponsor. Publication bias against negative studies explains only a small part of these findings.

Industry funding of nutrition research is an important issue where there are diverse opinions. ASN is a welcoming place encouraging discussion from members with all perspectives on topics including this one. ASN members share a common unifying goal of advancing nutrition science to promote the public welfare. Working together we can and we will continue to disclose potential conflicts of interest and advance the field for the public benefit. Dr. Mary Ann Johnson, ASN President
Investigators who take such funding insist that it has no effect on the design, conduct, interpretation, or publication of their research. This insistence is consistent with another large body of research demonstrating that gifts have a profound influence on attitudes, behavior, and action–but that recipients are blind to these effects. The medical literature shows that even small gifts—pens and pads—are enough to influence prescription practices, and that larger gifts have even greater effects. But the influence occurs below the radar of critical thinking. It is unintentional, unconscious, and unrecognized.

What most troubles me is the lack of questioning of industry penetration into our societies and research. I think we should be raising questions about ASN’s involvement with companies whose profits might be affected by our opinions or research results. Should ASN have competed to manage the industry-funded Smart Choices program that ended up putting a seal of approval on Froot Loops? Does it make sense for ASN to endorse public policy statements promoting the benefits of processed foods or opposing “added sugars” on food labels? Is it reasonable for ASN to argue on social media that it is inappropriate to question industry funding of research? Must ECN sessions at the annual meeting really be funded by companies such as PepsiCo (last year) or Abbott Laboratories? These actions send the message that ASN is an arm of the food industry and that we uncritically support what it makes, sells, or does.

But let’s turn to a more immediate concern: research funding. As early investigators, you face intense pressures to bring in external grants to pay for your studies, overhead, and maybe even your salaries. Government funding for many areas of nutrition research is declining. These pressures are real. But just as real are the effects of industry funding on research.
From March 2015 to March 2016, I posted summaries of industry-funded studies on my blog. During that year, I collected 168 studies. Of these, 156 yielded results favoring the sponsor’s interests. I only could find 12 studies that did not. This was a casually collected convenience sample but it did allow one conclusion: it is easier to find industry-funded studies with positive results than those with negative results. Nevertheless, recent systematic studies come to the same conclusion. Studies funded by Coca-Cola, for example, are far more likely to conclude that its products have no effect on obesity or type 2 diabetes than do studies funded by government or foundations.

Because we are generally unconscious of the influence of financial ties, it is easy for us to deny the influence or argue that nonfinancial interests—preferences for hypotheses and desires for career advancement–are just as biasing. Yes they may be biasing, but all scientists have them. In contrast to financial ties to industry, it is not possible to eliminate nonfinancial biases and still do science.

I am often asked whether there is a way to take money from food companies and maintain intellectual independence and professional reputation. I regret that I cannot think of any viable way to do that. The ASN has appointed a “Truth” commission to examine this issue and I look forward to its report. In the meantime, I am hoping that you will give thought to the potential conflict of interest and reputational loss that you risk with food industry ties. You must figure out for yourself whether you think the risks are worth taking.

If you do decide to engage with industry, you will need to disclose it. Most journals now require authors to reveal who pays for their work, but even when done diligently, disclosure is not sufficient to alert readers to the extent to which industry funding influences research outcome and professional opinion. Yes, disclosure is uncomfortable, perhaps explaining why so many studies identify frequent lapses. It is likely to become more uncomfortable. In response to a petition from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (which I co-signed), the National Library of Medicine has announced that it will henceforth add funding disclosures and conflict-of-interest statements to PubMed abstracts.

It is only fair to tell you how I handle these issues. My disclosure statement says:

Dr. Nestle’s salary from NYU supports her research, manuscript preparation, Website, and blog at https://foodpolitics.com. She also earns royalties from books and honoraria from lectures to university and health professional groups about matters relevant to this topic.” I also on occasion speak to food industry groups. When I do, I accept reimbursements for travel expenses but ask that honoraria be donated to the NYU library’s food studies collection.

This policy, imperfect as it may be, is the best I can do. I ask only that you think seriously about these issues and figure out for yourself how best to deal with them. I am happy to discuss these matters and am most easily reached at marion.nestle@nyu.edu.

References

• Nestle M. Food company sponsorship of nutrition research and professional activities: A conflict of interest? Public Health Nutrition 2001;4:1015-22.
• Nestle M. Corporate funding of food and nutrition research: science or marketing? JAMA Internal Medicine 2016;176(1):13-4.
• Krimsky S. Science in the Private Interest: Has the Lure of Profits Corrupted Medical Research. Rowman and Littlefield, 2004.
• Lo B, Field MJ, eds. Conflict of Interest in Medical Research, Education, and Practice. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2009.
• Simon M. Nutrition Scientists on the Take from Big Food. Eat Drink Politics and the Alliance for Natural Health, Jun 2015.

USDA researchers produce lots of data and sometimes summarize it all in handy charts.

Here are three examples:

1.  Who makes money from food?  Food services—34.4 cents on every dollar.  Farmers?  8.6 cents on average.

2.  How sweet is the food supply?  Less than it was in 2000 but more than in 1990.  Most of this can be explained by the decline in consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages.

3.  What happening with food assistance?  The peak in federal spending for all of the programs came a few years ago, but the amounts are now declining.    SNAP is the big one—about $75 billion last year.

Ag policy in snapshots.  More to come.

It’s pretty depressing to watch what’s happening to the gains in food and nutrition policy so hard won in the last few years.

Nothing but bad news:

Menu labeling:  The FDA is submitting interim final rules, a tactic to delay implementation of menu labeling, which was supposed to start on May 5.  Why?  The National Association of Convenience Stores and the National Grocers Association filed a petition asking for the delay.   Pizza sellers have been lobbying like mad to avoid having to post calories.

Food labels (calories, added sugars): As the Washington Post puts it, the food industry is counting on the current administration to back off on anything that might help us all make better food choices.  At least 17 food industry groups have asked for a delay in the compliance date for new food labels—for three years.  Why?  They are a burden to industry.  The soon-to-be FDA Commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, said this about food labels:

As a general matter, I support providing clear, accurate, and understandable information to American consumers to help inform healthy dietary choices,” Gottlieb wrote, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. “ … However, I am mindful of the unique challenges that developing and communicating such information can pose, particularly on small, independent businesses.”

Definition of dietary fiber: The American Bakers Association wants the FDA to take back its new, stricter definition of dietary fiber, (it excludes synthetic fiber) due to go into effect in July 2018.

School meals: The USDA says it is about to announce new school meal “flexibility” (translation: rollback of nutrition standards).

The score: Big business 4, public health 0

Happy May Day.

For further reading:

• Vox’s Julia Belluz reviews these issues, but also comments on Michelle Obama’s enduring legacy.
• Politico summarizes USDA’s proposed actions.

Addition: It gets worse.  Politico reports that the congressional spending bill:

Contains a rider blocking funds from being used to work on “any regulations applicable to food manufacturers for population-wide sodium reduction actions or to develop, issue, promote or advance final guidance applicable to food manufacturers for long term population-wide sodium reduction actions until the date on which a dietary reference intake report with respect to sodium is completed.”

Politico also points out that the previous draft of the appropriation bill merely encouraged FDA to delay its salt reduction proposal until the reference intake report is updated (this, by the way, will take years).

More documents:

• USDA’ proclamation on school meals
• CSPI’s press release
• Background: the letter from Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) requesting these changes
• The FY2017 omnibus spending bill that includes the school lunch changes
• RWJ Foundation’s statement

Evaluation of the effect of the Berkeley soda tax continues.  The latest results, published in PLoS Medicine, say that one year after implementation of the tax,

Prices of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages (SSBs) increased in many, but not all, settings

• Sugary beverage sales declined by 9.6% in Berkeley stores
• Untaxed beverages sales increased by 3.5% driven by bottled water (up 15.6%)
• Average grocery bills did not increase
• Store revenue did not fall more compared to control cities
• Post-tax self-reported SSB intake did not change significantly compared to baseline

The evaluation was funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies with support from the University of North Carolina’s Population Center and its National grant from the NIH.

The University sent out its own press release.

It also did a short video explaining what the tax is about and its effects.

Michael Jacobson of CSPI says

For Berkeley, Calif., to reduce soda sales by 10 percent—and to raise water sales by 16 percent—is a huge public-health victory.  It shows that the soda tax enacted in Berkeley is working as intended.  And rather than costing the city, the soda tax represents a brand-new revenue stream, which Berkeley is using for important health programs.  We hope voters and policymakers elsewhere in the country will review the findings published in PLoS Medicine and press for soda taxes in their communities.

This study won’t stop Big Soda from claiming that taxes don’t work.  But if soda taxes didn’t make a significant dent in soda consumption, the industry wouldn’t be fighting taxes so hard.

Helena Bottemiller Evich at Politico reports on the response to this study from the American Beverage Association (ABA), which I cannot find online.  The ABA:

pointed out that the reduction in sales of sugar-sweetened beverages in Berkeley yielded a reduction of only 6.4 calories per person, per day. The study also revealed, the group added, that the tax’s first year produced an increase of about 31 calories per person, per day from untaxed beverages. The study’s authors noted the increase appeared to be largely attributable to increased intake of milk and “other” beverages, like yogurt smoothies and milkshakes.

The ABA also argued that Berkeley — a relatively small city with a high median income that wasn’t a soda-consumption hotbed to begin with — is “a challenging place to determine the true impact of a beverage tax, unlike Philadelphia, where the tax has led to significant job losses and economic hardship for working families.”

“This study does, however, confirm that sales of taxed beverages inside the city declined while sales of those same beverages outside the city increased, which is also what is happening in Philadelphia,” the ABA said.

“America’s beverage companies know we must play a role in improving public health, which is why we are taking aggressive actions to help people reduce the sugar and calories they get from beverages,” the group continued, noting the industry has pledged to cut calories from its products across the board — with a special focus on reducing calorie consumption in a few places that have extremely high rates of obesity, including communities in Los Angeles, the Mississippi Delta and rural Alabama.

The soda tax story continues.  It is not over yet.  Stay tuned.

Here are some reports:

• The Daily Mail
• Forbes

The Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut has a new study out on the Howard County Unsweetened campaign.

The study’s key findings:

• Sales of sugar-sweetened soda declined nearly 20 percent
• Sales of 100 percent juice fell 15 percent
• Sales of fruit drinks with added sugars fell a little more than 15 percent

The study attributes the success of the campaign to its policy work:

• Eliminating sugary drinks in school vending machines
• Increasing access to water in schools
• Getting a state law passed to improve healthy drinks in childcare centers
• Getting a state law passed to make healthier drinks available on government sites
• Engaging nearly 50 community organizations to offer healthier drinks

It also notes community-wide public health outreach efforts:

• TV ads, social media messages, and online ads
• Direct dissemination of public health information at community and athletic events, local swimming pools, and health fairs
• Training of healthcare professionals

This was a big effort.  Big efforts pay off.

The documents

• The study
• The editor’s comment

Charles Platkin of Hunter’s Food Policy Center sent me this photo taken on the subway a week or so ago.

A croissant to advertise the school system’s breakfasts?

Charles and a colleague greatly favor the school breakfast program, but the ad?  Not so much.  They discuss it in a post: “Unhealthy Health Advertising May Stimulate Eating and Send the Wrong Message.”

Here’s my quote:

“I’m in favor of kids getting breakfast in schools. It saves lots of problems for parents and ensures that kids start the day with some food in their stomachs. It’s wonderful that the New York City Schools are doing this. With that said, the devil is in the details. I assume that all breakfasts meet USDA nutrition standards.

But croissants? These can be delicious—all that butter–but I wouldn’t exactly call them “healthy” and I’m wondering whose bright idea it was to choose that item to display. Looking at the menus for December, they are largely grain-based—bread, granola, tortillas, bagels, cereals, and the like—along with fruit and milk.   I think they look pretty good—they certainly could look a lot worse–but the proof is in the eating. Some parents will hate these breakfasts (too much sugar, too many packages, not enough protein). Others ought to be grateful. Ideally, cooks would be making delicious hot breakfasts for kids in school but that isn’t going to happen and from my standpoint this is a reasonable compromise. Presumably, kids who ate breakfast at home won’t need or take these items. I’d like to see them in action to really get an idea of how this is working.

This is one of FoodNavigator-USA’s special edition collections of articles on similar themes, in this case food labeling and lawsuits over labeling issues.  These are a quick way to get up to speed on what’s happening from a food industry perspective .  FoodNavigator introduces this collection:

Food and beverage companies have faced a tsunami of false advertising lawsuits over the past five years. But how big of an issue is this for the industry, who has been targeted, and what strategies are working, both for plaintiffs and defendants in these cases? In this special edition, we also look into labeling issues and trends, from healthy, Paleo and grass-fed claims to NuTek’s potassium salt petition.

• FOOD LITIGATION 101: Are you up to speed?  There have been hundreds of class action lawsuits directed against food and beverage companies in recent years over everything from evaporated cane juice to Non-GMO claims. But has the false advertising litigation trend peaked, and if not, what are the new areas of vulnerability for food companies? .. Read
• More farm-related claims to appear on pack, Innova Market Insights forecasts: Now that clean label has moved on from being a trend to becoming “the new rules of the game,” Innova Market Insights predicts more brands will rely on ‘farm to fork’ claims and bucolic imagery as a differentiator… Read
• Paleo certification requests have doubled annually, scheme embraced by ‘household names,’ says Paleo Foundation: Demand for Paleo-certified products are on the rise. But is the diet – and the certification scheme – based on sound science? We chat with Paleo’s critics and proponents to get the inside scoop… Read
• Dairy from cows fed GM feed is not ‘all-natural’, alleges lawsuit vs Dannon – but will it fly?  Has the FDA’s probe into ‘natural’ claims on food labels put a stop to the tidal wave of false advertising lawsuits engulfing food manufacturers? Not if a new complaint against Dannon is anything to go by, which also delves into the thorny issue of GMOs, another area currently being scrutinized by regulators. .. Read
• Future of Nutrition Facts, menu labeling & food safety are unclear under Trump, CSPI says: While President-elect Trump’s position on food policy is relatively unclear still, changes to the exhaustively researched and intensely debated Nutrition Facts label, menu labeling rule and food safety regulations could all be on the chopping block under the new administration, warns a top nutrition policy expert… Read
• Comments in FDA docket reveals consumers’ shifting perceptions of ‘healthy’: If the FDA’s decision to wade into the ‘natural’ debate seemed like an act of sadomasochism, its decision to re-examine the criteria underpinning ‘healthy’ claims on food labels looks set to be equally painful, judging by the first wave of public comments filed in the docket… Read
• FDA hints at how conventional foods can make structure/function claims: For the first time, FDA weighs in on what marketers must have on hand to support claims about conventional foods’ direct impact on consumers’ bodies. .. Read
• Soup-To-Nuts Podcast:The rise & future potential of grass fed claims: Grass-fed claims on products are a beacon for consumers who are health-conscious, want minimally processed food and care about animal welfare, and as such manufacturers increasingly are using them on products across categories and channels to drive up sales sharply… Listen now
• ProTings closes $1.2m financing round, changes name to Protes after spat with Original Tings: Brooklyn-based pea protein chip pioneer Proformance Foods has closed a $1.2m financing round led by a leading CPG company, and changed its brand name from ProTings to Protes following a trademark dispute with B&G Foods, which owns the Original Tings brand… Read
• Vox Pop: Consumers had this to say about GMO labeling…On the heels of President Barack Obama signing into law a federal bill requiring the disclosure of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on packaged food and beverage products, we at Beverage Daily and FoodNavigator-USA asked consumers at a downtown Chicago farmers market what they thought of GMOs… Watch now
• Are ‘GMO-free’ (as opposed to ‘non-GMO’) claims legally defensible? As the Non-GMO Project states on its website, ‘GMO-free’ claims are “not legally or scientifically defensible due to limitations of testing methodology” coupled with cross-contamination risks. In future, however, that could change as testing methods become more sophisticated, predicts Clear Labs, a Californian start-up which recently hit the headlines after identifying human and rat DNA in hamburgers [albeit within safe parameters]… Read
• Label Insight: Your SmartLabel landing pages could become more important than your website or facebook pages: While the SmartLabel initiative has been dismissed by some as an elaborate conspiracy by big food companies to avoid mandatory on-pack GMO labeling statements, it will ultimately have far broader significance – and potentially a huge impact on how consumers view all food and beverage products – predicts product data and image platform Label Insight… Read
• House approves federal GMO labeling bill that nullifies Vermont law: The US House of Representatives has voted to pass a federal GMO labeling bill (306:117 votes) that would pre-empt and nullify all state-led GMO labeling laws including the one that has just come into effect in Vermont. .. Read
• Hampton Creek to settle worker classification lawsuit: Just Mayo maker Hampton Creek – one of a growing number of food companies sued for allegedly misclassifying workers as independent contractors as opposed to employees – is settling its case in order to avoid the hassle and expense of protracted litigation, court documents show… Read
• Kellogg, Post & General Mills urge courts to toss ‘meritless’ sugar lawsuits: Kellogg, General Mills and Post Foods have urged the courts to ditch high-profile lawsuits over the sugar content in their cereals, on the grounds that their claims are pre-empted by federal law and that no reasonable consumer would find their labels to be false or misleading… Read
• Dole Foods 9th Circuit ruling reignites all-natural lawsuit, ’emboldens plaintiff’s bar’: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed (in part) a lower court’s ruling that Dole Foods’ ‘all natural fruit’ labeling likely isn’t deceptive, resurrecting a four-year-old lawsuit, and giving fresh ammunition to plaintiff’s attorneys pursuing ‘all-natural’ cases… Read
• Parties clash over Welch’s ‘made with real fruit’ fruit snack label claims: Reasonable consumers may well be misled by the packaging of Welch’s fruit snacks, a magistrate judge has concluded, prompting a lengthy rebuttal from the defendants in court documents filed this month. .. Read
• Shoppers aren’t confused by our labels, Chobani tells court: ‘Plaintiffs count on a consumer who is a veritable fool’: A false advertising lawsuit alleging that Chobani’s labels are confusing and deceptive, paints American consumers as credulous fools unable to apply common sense when they go shopping, argues the yogurt maker in court documents urging the judge to toss the case… Read
• GMA to FDA: Sodium reduction guidance must be re-worded or industry will face a tidal wave of ‘frivolous litigation’: Two years isn’t enough time for food manufacturers to make the kind of reductions in sodium that the FDA is asking for, says the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), which also urges the agency to tweak the wording of its guidance in order to avoid “a wave of frivolous litigation.”.. Read
• American Bakers Association backs ‘potassium salt’ petition: It sounds more clean label: The American Bakers Association (ABA) has joined the CSPI, Unilever, and other food manufacturers in voicing its support for a citizen’s petition asking the FDA to permit ‘potassium salt’ as an alternate name for potassium chloride on food labels, while the Salt Institute remains resolutely opposed… Read

On Friday December 2 I posted Steve Clapp’s Fixing the Food System in my series on Weekend Reading.  His daughter has just written to tell me that Steve died on December 1 of acute leukemia, which he learned he had just six weeks earlier.

I so hope that he was able to see his book, hold it in his hands, and celebrate its arrival.

Memorial service: January 28 at Wakefield Country Day School, Flint Hill, VA, 2:00 p.m. with reception following.  Doors open at 1:00.

In sadness, I am repeating the post in honor of his memory.

Steve Clapp.  Fixing the Food System: Changing How We Produce and Consume Food.  Praeger/ABC-Clio, 2017  (but published November 30).

I wrote the Foreword to this book.  Here’s what I said:

In this welcome addition to my library of books about food policy and politics, Steve Clapp’s Fixing the Food System reviews the past and current history of calls for a national food policy, the most contentious controversies over food and nutrition issues that have impeded development of such a policy, and the work of advocates to achieve one.   As this book makes clear, this history began decades ago.

I first became aware of the importance of federal food policies in the early 1980s when I was teaching nutrition to medical students at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).  First-year students were eager to learn about nutrition, but for personal more than for professional reasons.  They wanted to know what they—and the patients whose health problems they were learning to treat—should eat.  But by the time they were residents, I could see their dietary concerns vanish under the daily demands of patient care.  Trying to advise about diets was too difficult, time-consuming, and financially unrewarding to be worth the trouble.  It seemed unreasonable to expect doctors to take the time needed to counsel individual patients about the prevention of diet-related conditions—heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and the like.  If nutritionists like me wanted to focus on disease prevention rather than treatment, we would have to advocate to change the food environment to make healthful food choices the easy choices—even better, the preferred choices.  This meant we would have to advocate for food and nutrition policies aimed at promoting public health.

In 1983, I co-authored an article with UCSF colleagues on the need for such policies.[i]  It began:

The U.S. government helps to assure an adequate food supply for Americans by sponsoring a wide variety of food, nutrition, and agricultural support programs.  These federal activities were developed in the absence of a clearly articulated national policy, a situation that has resulted in the fragmentation of government programs and their wide disbursement among numerous agencies and departments.

Our article quoted the earliest calls we could find for a national policy to address these problems.  In 1974, long before the term “food system” came into common use, the National Nutrition Consortium of four leading nutrition and food science societies[ii] argued for a national nutrition policy that would:

• Assure an adequate, wholesome food supply, at reasonable cost, to meet the needs of all segments of the population.
• Maintain food resources sufficient to meet emergency needs and to fulfill a responsible role as a nation in meeting world food needs.
• Develop a level of sound public knowledge and responsible understanding of nutrition and foods that will promote maximal nutritional health.
• Maintain a system of quality and safety control that justifies public confidence in its food supply.
• Support research and education in foods and nutrition with adequate resources and reasoned priorities to solve important current problems and to permit exploratory basic research.

Whether offered as nutrition or food policies, these were and remain highly appropriate goals for an abundant, healthy, safe, and effective food system.

My co-authors and I went on to identify the constraints that then limited government action to achieve such goals.  Despite an emerging consensus on the basic elements of healthful diets—fruits and vegetables, balanced calories, not too much junk food (as Michael Pollan put it more recently, “eat food, not too much, mostly plants”[iii])—the greatest impediment to policy development was the controversy over the science of diet and health.  As our article understated this issue,

The effect on the nation’s health of food processing and other changes in the U.S. diet is controversial.  Salt, sugar, fiber, saturated fats, alcohol, caffeine, calories, vitamins, and food additives all elicit vigorous debate.

Today, more than 30 years later, we are still arguing about that science, and the scientific arguments still impede policy development.  In Fixing the Food System, Steve Clapp brings us up to the minute on federal progress (or the lack thereof) toward achieving a clearly articulated national food policy.  He begins and ends his book with the most recent policy proposals from leading food advocates Michael Pollan, of course, but also Mark Bittman, Olivier de Schutter, and Ricardo Salvador.  Their recent suggestions for improving our current food system reflect the many changes in agricultural production and food consumption that have taken place since 1974 but retain the basic elements of those earlier proposals.  Fixing the Food System explains why a national food policy is so badly needed and matters so much.

Steve Clapp is in a unique position to comment on food policy issues.  He’s been at the policy game for a long time.  I don’t remember when I first met him but I have been reading his work since he reported for the Community Nutrition Institute’s newsletter, Nutrition Week.  For those of us outside the Beltway in those pre-Internet days, Nutrition Week was a lifeline to the ins and outs of food politics in Washington, DC.   Later, when Steve moved to Food Chemical News, also—and still—a lifeline, I continued to read his reporting.  I often ran across him at meetings and hearings in Washington, DC and found it instructive to read what he wrote about those deliberations, not least because he got it right.

I say all this because he has been a keen observer of the food politics scene in Washington for decades and I can’t think of anyone who ought to know it better.  Fixing the Food System reviews the major debates he witnessed—the Dietary Guidelines, of course, but also attempts to set policy for food safety, marketing to children, hunger in America, and humane treatment of farm animals, among others.

Over the years, he also observed the work of policy advocates, and this book includes profiles of many individuals engaged in this work, some likely to be familiar to readers, whereas others may not.  Impossible as it is for me to judge whatever impact my own writing and advocacy might have, I am honored to be included among those whose work he presents.

Fixing the Food System describes political arguments over the kind of food system we ought to have and what an ideal system should accomplish.  But it is also about the importance of personal and political advocacy for a better food policies, those aimed squarely at promoting public health and environmental sustainability.

Advocacy makes a difference.  Advocates are scoring successes in improving one after another aspect of the food system.  In comparison to the 1970s or 1980s, we now have better food in supermarkets, more organic foods, more farmers’ markets, more nutritious food in schools, and impressive declines in consumption of sugary drinks.  My personal favorite among indicators of advocacy success—the change that makes me most optimistic—is the increasing number of college students who care deeply about food issues.  They are demanding local, seasonal, organic, and sustainably produced food in their cafeterias, and campus vegetable gardens.  And they are demanding and getting food studies courses and programs like the ones we started at New York University in 1996 that teach about how food is produced and consumed and the practical and symbolic meanings of food in modern culture and societies.  Today’s students are tomorrow’s advocates for healthier and more sustainable diets for everyone, everywhere, and for fixing what needs fixing in our food systems.  This book is a great starting place for this work.

–Marion Nestle, New York, June 2016

[i] Nestle M, Lee PR, Baron RB.  Nutrition policy update.  In: Weininger J, Briggs GM, eds.  Nutrition Update, Vol. 1.  New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1983:285-313.

[ii] National Nutrition Consortium, Inc.  Guidelines for a national nutrition policy.  Nutrition Reviews 1974;32(5):1253-157.  The Consortium included the American Institute of Nutrition, the American Society for Clinical Nutrition, the American Dietetic Association, and the Institute of Food Technology.

[iii] Pollan M.  In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.  Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual.  Penguin Press, 2008.