Rating: 
Summary: Stunning!
Review: If you want to know about the ins and outs of food science or the food industry, this book will be disappointing. But if you're interested in how the food induatry (agriculture, food processing, retail and restaurant) influence and dominate our governments' approach to food, this book is the one for you.Dr. Nestle, a nutrition scientist, has spent years consulting with the USDA and other government agencies dealing with food. She had a lot to do with creation and publication of the famous "food pyramid." In this work, she was subject to relentless lobbying by food companies determined to prevent the government from recommending that people eat less of their products. They sent whole armies of lobbyists, not just to Washington, but to state governements, universities, and anywhere else they could influence food science. They donate money to universities, fund studies of their own, give gifts to legislators and woo regulators. They frequently get their own corporate representatives appointed to regulatory and administrative positions. As a result, they have watered down or changed any attempt to advise eating less fat, less sugar, or less of anything. I think the great value of this book is revealing how our government works. This is not just about food. Every facet of government is subject to corporate influence and domination. You can really see this in the insurance companies' ability to derail health insurance reform, and the drug companies' blocking drug purchases from foreign countries. Perhaps we can take our government back, step by step. Food Politics is a good teaching tool for those who want to fight back. David Spero RN...
Rating: 
Summary: More About Politics Than Food
Review: If you want to know about the ins and outs of food science or the food industry, this book will be disappointing. But if you're interested in how the food induatry (agriculture, food processing, retail and restaurant) influence and dominate our governments' approach to food, this book is the one for you. Dr. Nestle, a nutrition scientist, has spent years consulting with the USDA and other government agencies dealing with food. She had a lot to do with creation and publication of the famous "food pyramid." In this work, she was subject to relentless lobbying by food companies determined to prevent the government from recommending that people eat less of their products. They sent whole armies of lobbyists, not just to Washington, but to state governements, universities, and anywhere else they could influence food science. They donate money to universities, fund studies of their own, give gifts to legislators and woo regulators. They frequently get their own corporate representatives appointed to regulatory and administrative positions. As a result, they have watered down or changed any attempt to advise eating less fat, less sugar, or less of anything. I think the great value of this book is revealing how our government works. This is not just about food. Every facet of government is subject to corporate influence and domination. You can really see this in the insurance companies' ability to derail health insurance reform, and the drug companies' blocking drug purchases from foreign countries. Perhaps we can take our government back, step by step. Food Politics is a good teaching tool for those who want to fight back. David Spero RN...
Rating:
Summary: This little book can change the way they feed us
Review: In Sheldon M Rampton's review, above, he hits the nail right on the head (and no, I don't know Sheldon). The food industry is desperate to prevent the kind of backlash that's been visitng McDonald's in the wake of the (easily verifiable) truths revealed by "Fast Food Nation." But they shouldn't. This book is not one of those "let me show you how yucky the kitchens are" books whose only purpose is to shock you and not really do any good in the end. What this book does is show you the "man behind the curtain" you're not supposed to see (remember the Wizard of Oz?) in terms we can all understand, and reveals the wide discrepancy between the way the food industry works and the way we all (want to) think it does. Is this a struggle in vain? It might seem so at first. And yet, as mighty as the McDonalds "Goliath" seemed to be before FFN came out, they have quickly responded to the public's outcry, and they're doing wonderful things now that they realize that good citizenship can still be good for business. Let's hope that the rest of the food industry can learn the same lesson as they did. Read this book, and the food industry will start paying LOTS of attention to the lesson. You'll be glad you read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Food Hysteria
Review: Individuals incapable of thinking for themselves will truly appreciate, Marion Nestle's book - Food Politics. The author, a professor and of the department of nutrition and food studies at New York University puts much of the blame for the nation's weight problem on the food industry. Has she ever heard of personal responsibility, exercise, and appropriate dieting? Nestle takes a specific aim at the impact on children and claims that the "food industry targets children and converts schools into vehicles for selling junk foods that are high in calories but low in nutritional value. Clever and slick marketing strategies target consumers from the cradle onward." She refuses to acknowledge some key facts. Obesity in children is caused in part, to the lack of exercise. Urban and other limited budget school districts across the country continue to reduce daily physical education programs, football, and other extra-curricular activities. Moreover, the lure of computer games and twenty-four hour cable programs have children sitting still for hours throughout the day. Nestle's book only creates the kind of hysteria caused by our litigious society. The Surgeon's General's recent remarks declaring that obesity is a major health problem has greedy trial lawyers considering filing lawsuits against food and beverage companies. This whiny book only helps them "fuel the fire" and reaches their goals.
Rating:
Summary: Hurray, we found the culprit!
Review: It's a piece of cake for Prof. Nestle. The food industry is the only reason why people are overweight and obese. It is only their greed and unscrupulousness that turned us into "Couch-Potatoes". This narrow-minded approach is interesting for a scientist. All scientific areas, which deal with the issue of obesity, agree that obesity is a multifactorial problem. Of course, everything we eat does play an important role, but there are many other factors which also have a significant impact. One of the most prominent ones is the increasing lack of physical activity that influences the equation energy intake minus energy expenditure - even with constant intake - negatively. The methods of resolution in this book - if one can find any - are much too short-sighted and do not take other lifestyle factors into consideration, let alone the personal responsibility all of us need to show. But the latter seems to be a specific US trait... In short: long stories, little essence, not thought through.
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Summary: The obscene side of what we eat
Review: It's no surprise that we live in what the social critic Guy Debord calls a "spectacle" culture whose values and symbols increasingly originate from the marketing world. Mega-corporations are in the business of making a profit, and the way they do that is to use media to persuade ... folks into buying their products. Doubt it? Then try to get rid of all the advertizing jingles floating around in your head. Recent studies show that infants recognize manufacturing logos before they recognize their own names. We live in one vast commercial. We are consumer nation. Marion Nestle has written an excellent and frightening book about the food side of consumer nation, documenting the lengths the food industry goes to manipulate the public, market its wares, and achieve the bottom line. The problem is that we over-stuffed Americans have too many choices about what to munch: food products proliferate. (I mean, just count the number of breakfast cereals available to you the next time you go to the supermarket. Do we REALLY need 43 different kinds of fiber to choose from?) So in order to push its product, the food industry revs up the marketing pressure. The ironically named Nestle exposes the ways that food manufacturers and retailers do this through their lobbying efforts with the FDA, through targeting consumer groups--especially kids--with as much zeal as Joe Camel used to hawk smokes to underagers, by bribing school systems to tout soft drinks and junk foods to students (as, for example, rewards for reading), or by fudging dietary and nutritional information packaged with the product. The way in which the food industry manipulates us in order to push its products is obscene enough. But what's even more shameful is the fact that people are still starving, both here and abroad, even though there's so much damn food available that retailers are stumbling over themselves trying to sell it. UNESCO reports that between 35,000 and 40,000 kids die each day throughout the world (ncluding the U.S.) of starvation or hunger-related illness. These deaths aren't caused by a lack of food, but by lousy distribution of food. The politics and business of food pursues the bottom line while millions starve. Read this book, be horrified, get angry, and change your life. Break free of the spectacle society. Mega-corporations can be stopped when we consumers stand up to them in the way they understand best: when we refuse to buy their products and play their game.
Rating:
Summary: Actually reading the book not a prerequisite for a review?
Review: Judging from the other "reviews" of this book, it's obvious that the mere existence of this book strikes a chord in those "conspiracy-theory", "big-business-is-out-to-get-us", "someone-needs-to-protect-us" Naderite-types.
Is anyone really surprised that the food business is actually a BUSINESS? And that the nature of businesses is to promote their own self-interests, advertise to the end-user, and produce products that the end user wants to buy?
I take exception to the premise that our choices are controlled by the food business. The reality is that our choices are controlling the food industry! Changes in our buying patterns - and that alone - will result in changes in the food industry. Doubt it? Look at the burgeoning organic food industry (yes, it's a business, too!).
The implication of several other reviewers is that somehow the food industry needs to be regulated into doing for us what we don't seem capable of ourselves - making responsible individual choices. This, of course, would leave us with no choice, except those "choices" deemed appropriate by "Big Brother". (Socialism vs. Democracy/Free Enterprise)
The responsibility for starving children lies not with the food industry, but with governments, churches, and individuals - with emphasis on the individual. The sole responsibility of any business is to - within the law - produce income (earn a living) for its owners and employees.
Whether or not you agree, I'm sure we can all agree that it is incumbent upon both businesses and individuals to behave in a socially responsible manner. I'm sure the author has found ample evidence that not all businesses in the food industry have done so. That acknowledged, I contend that it's wrong to paint an entire industry with such a broad stroke of a brush dipped in muck.
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Summary: Marion Nestle's a true scholarly hero!
Review: Marion Nestle has walked onto the stage of public discourse and claimed a great victory for scholarship with her heroic effort, Food Politics. Her argument is clear, concise, devastatingly accurate, and--most important--based on first-rate research. Bravo! Her courageous book does exactly what its title indicates--she provides the details on how the food industry, especially the large corporations, may provide economies of scale in producing food for general consumption, but that also, in its rush to compete in the marketplace, seduces us all, especially our children, into eating more than we need. The excellence of her approach and, yes, her metadiscourse as well, has much to instruct a wide range of people on effective ways to present argumentation on any issue.
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Summary: Nestle needn't look down on John Q. Public
Review: Marion Nestle's book "Food Politics" makes clear that the political system she favors is dictatorship - with her in command. Marion is just so much smarter than us all, and so much more virtuous, and so much more in self-control, that she can be the meal planner for the world. If you disagree with anything she says, you're overweight, undereducated and stupid. The author's motto could be "if it tastes good don't eat it." She rails against foods we've all grown up with and enjoy, and wants to make us feel like bad parents if we let our kids have any of these foods. Should we eat like pigs? Of course not. Should people who are obese have stricter diets than the rest of us? Absolutely. But there's no need for everyone, regardless of their weight and their health, to deny themselves moderate amounts of enjoyable foods. We'd all be better off is we got up off our rear ends and spent less time in front of the TV and playing video games, and more time engaging in sports and exercise to burn up excess calories and build stronger, healthier bodies.
Rating:
Summary: Read Before You Eat!
Review: Marion Nestle's book Food Politics is fantastic! This book may be the biggest expose in the food industry since Upton Sinclair's The Jungle! Nestle's fresh perspective on the food industry and the goverment's influence on our eating habits is sure to be the most popular and talked about controversy since the tobacco industry was targeted by health officials! It's huge! And, Food Politics is written in a very clear and concise manner. The style in which it is written will interest a wide audience - not only will people in the nutrition and food fields enjoy the book, but it will also captivate people in the business and healthcare industries, consumers, federal workers, advertising, public relations and marketing industries, people in agriculture, public policy makers, and basically anyone who buys and eats commercial foods. This book totally changed the way I view not only the food industry and government but how I am choosing my own foods on a daily basis. I found the book to be insightful and interesting. This book is a must read!
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