Marion Nestle, the high-profile, controversial nutritionist, has become to the food industry what Rachel Carson became to the pesticide industry and Ralph Nader became to the automobile industry: a well-informed, accessible watchdog.
Nearing age 70, Nestle, a New York University professor, has stepped up her book writing as if her life, and the lives of many others, depend upon her research. In 2002, she completed the book “Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health.” A year later, “Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology and Bioterrorism” arrived. Now comes what will quite likely stand as Nestle’s magnum opus, “What to Eat.”
Part muckraking journalism, part reference book and part consumer guide, “What to Eat” is organized in the manner suggested by the subtitle: as a walk down each grocery-store aisle with a companionable Ph.D. researcher as a guide. It is a simple yet effective concept for organizing what otherwise could have become a mind-numbing amount of information.
Nestle is never a nag, never a scold. She likes food, including sweets and other obviously unhealthy stuff. She wants food to induce pleasure, not confusion or guilt. She is not trying to turn everybody into an ascetic. Rather, Nestle wants to make sure unhealthy consumption choices never arise from consumer ignorance or food-industry deception.
Confessing that for many decades she misunderstood the relationship between consumers and their food, Nestle wants to make up for lost time with “What to Eat.” The questions she hears over and over include:
Should I worry about hormones, pesticides, antibiotics, mercury or bacteria in the food I buy? What about foods that are raw, canned, irradiated or genetically engineered? What happens if I eat sugar, artificial sweeteners or trans fats? Should I ingest calcium or other supplements? How can I choose the healthiest bread from seemingly countless choices?
The answers are often complicated, difficult even for scholars to sort out. “Eventually, I came to realize that, for many people, food feels nothing at all like a source of pleasure; it feels more like a minefield,” Nestle says. That about 320,000 food and beverage products can be purchased throughout the United States is not entirely a positive development for consumers seeking clarity.
Nestle threw herself into her research, hoping to serve as a surrogate for the tens of millions who could never devote so much time or sophisticated knowledge to the task. She visited supermarket after supermarket, “taking notes on what they were selling, section by section, aisle by aisle. I looked at the products on those shelves just as any shopper might, and tried to figure out which ones made the most sense to buy for reasons of taste, health, economy or any number of social issues that might be of concern. Doing this turned out to be more complicated than I could have imagined.” Why? Mainly because “science and politics make food labels exceptionally complicated, and they often appear in very small print.”
No review of reasonable length can do justice to even one grocery store aisle covered by Nestle, much less all the products on all the aisles. Instead, here is a listing of some aisles covered by Nestle. Every page contains food for thought, just as every grocery aisle contains food for life:
Produce – fruits, vegetables, the hype and hope of organics, the impact of genetic modification and irradiation.
Dairy – milk, whether yogurt is a health food or a dessert.
Dairy substitutes – margarine, soy milk.
She also delves into meats, fish, eggs, frozen food, processed foods, beverages, infant formula and baby food, health food, bread and other bakery items, and salads and other prepared foods.
At the end of the tour, Nestle says “you should be able to walk into a supermarket, a restaurant, a fast-food outlet or any other place that sells food and know why the foods are there, what they are and whether they are worth buying.”
That is precisely how you feel after finishing the book.
Steve Weinberg is a freelance writer in Columbia, Mo.
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What to Eat
An Aisle-by-Aisle Guide to Savvy Food Choices and Good Eating
By Marion Nestle
North Point Press, 611 pages, $30
