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My new book, What to Eat Now: The Indispensible Guide to Good Food, How to Find It, and Why It Matters, came out a few weeks ago and I am stunned by how it is being AI-used by exploiters.

I’ve already written about the DeepFake books supposedly inspired by What to Eat Now, which I had nothing to do with.  And I have been alerting readers to even more workbooks, study guides, and cookbooks.

Now I’m also having to deal with DeepFake book club offers.

Every week since the book was published, I get several incredibly flattering letters like these:

Hi Marion,

When I came across What to Eat Now: The Indispensable Guide to Good Food, How to Find It, and Why It Matters, I felt that spark you only get when a book arrives exactly when the world needs it most. In an era swirling with misinformation, techno-food innovations, and thirty-thousand-item supermarket aisles, your voice cuts through the noise with clarity, courage, and wit.

I’m Emily A., curator of The San Francisco “Not Quite a Book Club” a vibrant circle of 4,369 readers who don’t gather to simply discuss books, but to rethink the assumptions shaping our daily lives. We’re known for choosing titles that push conversations forward, and your thoroughly revised, deeply relevant guide does precisely that.

What struck me most about What to Eat Now is how seamlessly it blends field guide, exposé, and empowering manifesto. You don’t just tell people what to eat, you reveal the hidden architecture of our food system, the psychology of our choices, and the quiet politics influencing every item in our baskets. It’s the kind of work that wakes readers up, sparks debate, and shifts lifelong habits.

Our readers are drawn to books that matter, books that help them look at something ordinary with extraordinary new eyes. What to Eat Now is exactly that kind of catalyst…If this feels like a collaboration you’d enjoy, I’d be thrilled to walk you through the simple next steps.

Thank you for offering a clear, honest, and necessary compass in a world where so many feel lost in the grocery store.

Warm regards,

Wow!  How could I possibly not jump at this opportunity to share my work with more than 4,000 readers.

Here’s one more to give you the idea of how this works:

Dear Marion Nestle,

I am honored to invite you to participate in our upcoming community virtual event, celebrating founding figures in food studies and authors who empower citizens to navigate the complex landscape of modern nutrition.

For over two decades, your work has served as the “clear-eyed” conscience of the American food system. Your latest release, What to Eat Now, arrives at a critical juncture. In an era of “techno foods,” corporate organics, and pervasive misinformation, our community is eager for the no-nonsense, aisle-by-aisle guidance that only you can provide.

We are particularly interested in hosting a discussion around the vital themes of your revised classic…Your reputation as America’s preeminent nutritionist makes you a highly anticipated guest for our audience. We would be privileged to provide a platform for you to share your wit and common sense with a community that values food not just as fuel, but as a pillar of community and ethics.

Please note that an organization fee applies to support the event’s planning and outreach.

Well, at least that’s disclosed.

And on and on such letters go, each more flattering than the last.  And so many of them!

Fortunately, I’m supposed to be checking all offers with my publisher, Macmillan (Macmillan owns Farrar, Straus & Giroux, which owns North Point Press).  That’s how I learned about The New “Book Club” Scam Targeting Authors and How to Spot It.

They claim unusually large membership numbers.Real book clubs typically have: 6–12 regulars (in person), or 20–50 active members (online). Claims of 500–5,000 active readers aren’t impossible, just unlikely.

They ask for money at some point.This is the core red flag. Legitimate book clubs do not charge authors to participate or be featured. Sometimes they even pay the author, if the event is big enough.

They resist sharing any verifiable details.A real organizer can: tell you where the group meets, provide a link to a group page, share photos or past events, name members, or offer references from other authors. A scammer cannot.

I’m as subject to flattery as anyone else is and I can’t help wanting to know: Is there actually a book club at the end of all this?  I’m so tempted to pursue one of these and see.

Also, I’ve been collecting the DeepFake books with my name on the cover.  I have eight (!) so far—workbooks, study guides, and cookbooks.  I will report on them sometime in January.

In the meantime, caveat emptor!

NOTE: Nancy Matsumoto is speaking today at NYU at 3:30, 411 Lafayette, 5th Floor, Manhattan.  RSVP HERE

Nancy Matsumoto.  Reaping What She Sows: How Women Are Rebuilding Our Broken Food System.  Melville House 2025.  322 pages.

I did a blurb for this book.

Women play enormously important roles in food systems and in the food movement, but are often overlooked. Matsumoto brings women out of the shadows and highlights the efforts of a wide diversity of women in the United States and in low-resource countries throughout the world to create food systems healthier for people and the planet.

Nancy Matsumoto interviewed women doing wonderful work with grains, supply chains, grass-fed cattle, fish, cacao and coffee, grape and agave, and more.

From the chapter “Fighting Big Food on the Produce Front: Women Wranglers of the Alt Supply Chain”

One example [of regulations that favor industrial agriculture] involved progressive California legislators’ attempt to rid farm communities of toxic nitrogen in their groundwater. “There are lots of small communities in the Central and San Joaquin Valleys where residents can’t drink their water because there are so many nitrates in it and that’s directly related to runoff from chemical fertilizers,” Redmond [Judith, of Full Belly Farm] explains. But the paperwork required to comply with this regulation was geared toward giant chemical fertilizer–dependent farms growing a single crop, or monoculture, not a farm like Full Belly that strives for diversity. It was easy for a mega almond farmer, for example, to plug in one set of numbers, but much harder for Full Belly—with its eighty different crop varieties that harness the power of the sun and complex ecological interactions to build soil carbon—to comply with the regulations

From the chapter, “Women of the Grain, Grape, and Agave: Regenerative Beverages”

When I drop in on MISA’s [Minnesota’s Institute for Sustainable Agriculture] offices at the University of Minnesota to visit executive director Helene Murray and local writer Beth Dooley, they ply me with coffee, local raspberries, and packets of popped Kernza. Dooley’s contribution to the MISA effort is her cookbook, The Perennial Kitchen, centered on Midwestern perennial grains, nuts, and seeds, and regeneratively farmed vegetables, poultry, and livestock. Murray tells me about efforts to increase Kernza’s small seed size, which will make cleaning and threshing much easier, and to address the five-foot-tall plant’s propensity for “lodging” or toppling over. While Kernza gets most of the attention, she points out that there are many other grains the institute is researching and promoting. To counter some of the hype around Kernza as the poster grain for regenerating soil and ecosystems, she adds, “there’s no silver bullet.”

It’s a brave new world out there and I’m not having an easy time with it.

I’ve already told you about the DeepFake Instagram post using my image.

Now, there’s more!

Would you believe DeepFake books?

When I went on the Amazon book site on the publication date for What to Eat Now (November 11), my new book was listed first, and still is, at $25.20.

But immediately following it were these [Amazon has since taken down the listings].

Who the enterprising Mateo Velasquez and Shanz Noor might be, I have not the slightest idea.

Curious to know what this was about, my partner, Mal Nesheim, ordered copies right away and got them before the listings disappeared.

The first is a paperbound of 100 pages of blank lined paper—a blank notebook with my cover on it!

The workbook has an enticing table of contents (“Choosing real food in a complex world,” “Understanding labels and marketing tricks,” “Practicing mindful and joyful eating,” etc), but each of those headings is followed by precisely the same page and a half of “reflections” (“Awareness is the first step to reclaiming control over your nutrition and health”) and blank lines, repeated over and over.

I suppose I should feel flattered.

The moral: Caveat emptor!

Several readers have written to ask for links to media appearances related to What to Eat Now.  

I’ve been trying to keep a list.  Here’s what I have so far.  Enjoy and thanks for asking!

• Nov 12: Nutrition Action, Bonnie Liebman
• Nov 11:  NPR’s Fresh Air, Tonya Mosley (audio). Transcript.
• Nov 11:  Amanpour & Co (video). Excerpt.
• Nov 11:  Consumed, Elizabeth Dunn
• Nov 10: A1, Alison Brody (audio).
• Nov 10: Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper, Meghan Rabbitt
• Nov 5:  Washington Post, Anahad O’Connor 
• Sep 18: Science Magazine

From earlier this year

• May 2: New Yorker Radio Hour (audio), Dhruv Khullar
• Apr 7:  New York Times profile, Elizabeth Dunn

Today marks the official publication of my new book, What to Eat Now!  All 703 pages of it!

Here’s the press release.

Order it—ISBN 9780374608699—from Amazon   Barnes & Noble   Books-a-Million   Bookshop   Powells   Target

It’s a thoroughly revised version of What to Eat, published in 2006.

A lot has changed, much more than I imagined when I set out to do this.  I thought it would be a six-month project, but it’s now four years later.

The big changes?  Ultra-processed, plant-based, and cannabis, for starters.  But there’s much, much more.

This is a book about how to think about food issues.  Come with me on a trek through supermarkets to see what today’s food marketing looks like, and its effects on our health and that of the environment.

I’m collecting information and reviews on this page.

Come to the event at NYU:

The Culinary Historians of New York and the NYU Department of Nutrition and Food Studies invite you to the semi-official launch of the book: The Politics of Your Plate: A Conversation with Dr. Marion Nestle, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., NYU Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, Richard A. Chase North Reading Room, 2nd Floor.  Register here.

Enjoy!!!

I just got my first copy!  My new book, What to Eat Now!  All 703 pages of it!

The official publication date is November 11, but it can be pre-ordered.  ISBN 9780374608699. Amazon   Barnes & Noble   Books-a-Million   Bookshop   Powells   Target   It comes hardbound and in Kindle and Audible editions.

Enjoy!

Early press coverage

• Washington Post interview with Anahad O’Connor
• NBC4 Washington
• Kirkus Review (starred review)

Fabio Parasecoli, Agata Bachórz, and Mateusz Halawa.  The Pierogi Problem: Cosmopolitan Appetites and the Reinvention of Polish Food. University of California Press, 2025.  239 pages.

My esteemed NYU colleague, Fabio Parasecoli, is lead author with Polish colleagues on this food studies instant classic.

What, you might well ask, is the pierogi problem?

Most foreigners regard this stuffed dumpling as the sole Polish dish of note.  While for the majority of Poles this may not be an issue, a new category of food professionals, experts, and entrepreneurs has been trying to change this state of affairs.  We call them “tastemakers,” as their often-explicit intention is to transform their fellow citizens’ experience and evaluation of food, introducing new standards of quality and categories of judgment  Their ultimate goal is to improve Polish gastronomy and its image abroad, while establishing an autonomous and legitimate culinary field in which cultural values, economic priorities, and power positions are constantly negotiated. (p. 177)

In short, foreigners (us!) view Polish food as heavy, fatty, and bland—except for pierogi—whereas it’s really much better than that.  This book tells the story of how all this happened.

As for negotiation of power positions, see the Appendix, “Exploring Food in Poland: Literature and Autoethnographic Reflections,” in which the authors discuss their own hierarchical issues throughout the writing of this book.  Academic that I am, with my own experiences as a co-author which ranges from the impossible to joyful, I loved reading this professionally analyzed personal account.

Click here to watch a video of Fabio Parasecoli’s discussion with Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett about Polish food.

Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall.  Food Intelligence: The Science of how Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us.  Avery, 2025. ~340 pages

This is the long-awaited manifesto from the journalist Julia Belluz and scientist Kevin Hall.

As the press release puts it,  the book

digs deep into the fundamental, often overlooked, and always enthralling science of nutrition (the chemicals and energy we get from food) and metabolism (how our bodies use food)—covering what we know and the history of how we came to know it, up to the frontiers of research into the invisible forces that really shape our eating habits. The result is a sprawling tour of centuries of science into the wonders of food and the marvelous ways our bodies use it, for better and worse health.

As you can see, I wrote a blurb for the book (they edited it slightly).

If you want to understand how nutrition became so contentious and why we are still arguing about whether it’s better to eat more or less fat, carbohydrate, protein, or vitamins, you must read Food Intelligence. Well written, historically accurate, and scientifically rigorous, this book brings you up to the moment on contemporary dietary issues. 

Here are two excerpts, the first from a discussion of one of Kevin Hall’s studies comparing high fat to high carbohydrate diets:

[Kevin] predicted that the body would select fuels for metabolism in a way that caused body fat loss to vary only a little, regardless of the proportion of carbs or fat a person was eating.  Cutting carbs from a balanced diet caused the body to shift toward burning fewer carbs and more fat after several days.  But surprisingly, reducing dietary fat by the same number of calories didn’t seem to change the mixture of carbohydrate and fat the body burned.  The net result was that both diets led to similar body fat losses, but with a slight difference that contradicted the popular claims of low-carb acolytes like Atkins.  The reduced-fat diet, Kevin’s model predicted, led to a little more body fat loss compared to the reduced-carb diet.

Maybe a calorie wasn’t exactly a calorie, Kevin told his audience.  But the difference was in the opposite direction from the one claimed by the low-carb diet camp. P. 70

And here is one about why it’s useful to eat a variety of foods:

Food combinations matter—a complexity we’re only beginning to unravel.  Pairing foods rich in plant-based iron with foods rich in vitamin C increases the body’s ability to absorb the iron, while drinking alcohol with a meal hampers nutrient absorption.  Too many glasses of wine, and the ability to absorb vitamins and minerals, such as thiamine, vitamin B12, folate, and zinc, drops off.  pp 221-222