Now that her insightful book, “What to Eat,” is coming out in paperback, what is food expert Marion Nestle working on next?
A book on pet food.
Nestle, New York University nutrition professor and author of “Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health,” and “Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism,” has an ability to sniff out the news before it makes headlines. She began working on her pet food book well before the news of melamine-contaminated dog and cat food. “The pet food scandal was a big eye-opener for everyone,” she said during a speech to The Denver Forum last week at the Oxford Hotel.
In her 2002 book, “Food Politics,” and in her recent talk, Nestle outlined how changes on Wall Street and in farm policy since 1980 led to an oversupply of processed food. “Food companies had to figure out a way to sell food in an environment where there was twice as much food as needed. It changed society in ways people didn’t notice, for example, larger portion sizes.”
As she toured the country to promote “Food Politics,” she heard over and over “You didn’t tell us what to eat.”
“I thought most people knew how to eat. But grocery stores know how to get us to buy more food, not less. The store is set up in a very quiet way to get people to buy high-profit foods.”
In researching “What to Eat,” Nestle (pronounced NESS-el) spent a year roaming grocery stores, asking questions like “How long does it take to ship broccoli from California’s Central Valley to a store in New York?” After much pushing, she got the answer: 10-14 days. No wonder most produce doesn’t have much taste, she said.
And as the pet-food scandal turns the spotlight on imported foods and ingredients, Nestle says consumers must become aware of where their food comes from.
“I think it’s bizarre to have blueberries from Chile in New York in winter, or organic apples from New Zealand,” she said. “Locally grown is important. You must have a market for locally grown food.”
When you enter a store and see the glistening produce display, whether it’s local or imported, organic or conventional, “you get the illusion you’re in a place where real food is sold.”
Grocers know most people buy dairy products, so they put them in the back, forcing customers to walk through the whole store. “They know to the inch how long an aisle can be before consumers run screaming from the store.”
Nestle addressed the issue of personal responsibility in the face of savvy marketing and vast food choices: “Supermarkets do have a responsibility to work on obesity, to make it easier to make healthy choices. My advice is: Never buy anything with a health claim or a cartoon on the label. You can vote with your fork.”
That said, and despite her book’s title, Nestle is not about to tell people what to eat. “It is my opinion that Twinkies have a place in American diets. They just don’t have a very big place.”
The most surprising thing she said was about calories and portion size: “If I could teach people one thing, it would be about calories. People don’t have an intuitive feel for calories. Research shows that people believe food in a container has 100 calories, regardless of its size.”
Her advice to the Twinkie makers and others in the food industry: “You just have to make it cheaper and easier for people to eat more healthfully.”
Learn more: Marion Nestle continues the conversation at foodpolitics.com and whattoeatbook.com.
In her words
I like reading the health claims on the processed cereals and wondering what marketers will dream up next. The packages are, in their weird way, fun to look at. They represent the best thinking of marketers about how to get you to eat processed cereals, to believe that they are good for you, and to insist that nothing else will do for breakfast. … The latest trend in kids’ cereals is to emphasize how many vitamins and minerals they have, but many of these are so high in sugar that they are really vitamin-enriched, low-fat cookies.
– From “What to Eat,” by Marion Nestle
