The Future of Our Food 
and Farms Summit

Marion Nestle, Friday's keynote speaker

Our Future 
Grows Here

A regional summit to promote agriculture, learn about trends in food distribution & and find ways to reduce hunger.
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Read more about Marion Nestle's Food Politics.

We all witness, in advertising and on supermarket shelves, the fierce competition for our food dollars. In the engrossing exposé, Food Politics, Marion Nestle goes behind the scenes to reveal how the competition really works and how it affects our health. The abundance of food in the United States - enough calories to meet the needs of every man, woman, and child twice over - has a downside. Our overefficient food industry must do everything possible to persuade people to eat more - more food, more often, and in larger portions - no matter what it does to waistlines or well-being. 

Like manufacturing cigarettes or building weapons, making food is very big business. Food companies in 2000 generated nearly $900 billion in sales. They have stakeholders to please, shareholders to satisfy, and government regulations to deal with. It is nevertheless shocking to learn precisely how food companies lobby officials, co-opt experts, and expand sales by marketing to children, members of minority groups, and people in developing countries. We learn that the food industry plays politics as well as or better than other industries, not least because so much of its activity takes place outside the public view. 

Editor of the 1988 Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health, Nestle is uniquely qualified to lead us through the maze of food industry interests and influences. She vividly illustrates food politics in action: watered-down government dietary advice, schools pushing soft drinks, diet supplements promoted as if they were First Amendment rights. When it comes to the mass production and consumption of food, strategic decisions are driven by economics - not science, not common sense, and certainly not health.

No wonder most of us are thoroughly confused about what to eat to stay healthy. An accessible and balanced account, Food Politics will forever change the way we respond to food industry marketing practices. By explaining how much the food industry influences government nutrition policies and how cleverly it links its interests to those of nutrition experts, this pathbreaking book helps us understand more clearly than ever before what we eat and why.

Marion Nestle has been Professor and Chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University since Fall 1988. Her degrees include a Ph.D. in molecular biology and an M.P.H. in public health nutrition, both from the University of California, Berkeley. 

Her first faculty position was in the Department of Biology at Brandeis University. From 1976-86 she was Associate Dean of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine, where she directed a nutrition education center sponsored by the American Cancer Society, and taught nutrition to medical students, residents, and practicing physicians. 

From 1986-88, she was senior nutrition policy advisor in the Department of Health and Human Services, with principal responsibility as managing editor of the 1988 Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health. 

She has been a member of the FDA Food Advisory Committee and the USDA/DHHS 1995 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, and chaired the American Cancer Society committee that issued dietary guidelines for cancer prevention in 1996. 

Currently, she is a member of the Science Board to the FDA. Her research focuses on analysis of the scientific, social, cultural, and economic factors that influence the development, implementation, and acceptance of federal dietary guidance policies.

Marion Nestle, Ph.D., M.P.H. 
Professor and Chair
Department of Nutrition & Food Studies 
New York University
marion.nestle@nyu.edu


Future of Our Food and Farms Summit

For more information, contact:

Meredith Stone
215-568-0830 • Ext.10
contact@thefoodtrust.org

www.foodfarm.org