Food Politics by Marion Nestle, Lecture, Book

Food Politics by Marion Nestle

We all witness, in advertising and on supermarket shelves, the fierce competition for our food dollars. In this engrossing exposé, 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.

WhatsApp, Chobani, Immigrants

America is a nation of immigrants. If you are not a native American, either you or someone in your family earlier moved to the country from somewhere else. Putting aside the issue where the line must be drawn: legal, illegal or various technicalities, we know immigration is one of the key things that have made America unique.

Immigrants have created jobs and brought in revenues from overseas markets. Chobani, Greek-yogurt maker, founder Hamdi Ulukaya moved from Turkey to the US at age 22 and started the company by acquiring a closed down factory by Kraft, which laid off 55 employees then. Chobani has over 1,200 employees today.

WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum moved from Ukraine to the US at age 16. WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook at $19 billion in February with 450 million users worldwide while its Chinese competitor, WeChat had 300 million. Unlike Chobani, the mobile messaging company had 55 employees.

While America is not perfect and needs to solve multiple serious issues such as widening income inequality, obesity, health care cost and budget deficit, it is unheard that immigrants have been such a success story in any other countries. And some of them have really created jobs.

Brown Rice, White Rice, Obesity and Diabetes

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” — Hippocrates

A simple change in diet from white rice to brown rice can reduce the risk of obesity and diabetes according to researchers at Harvard School of Public Health. And they are not alone in believing so.

Brown rice vs white rice (source: USDA)

Dietary 14% vs 7% , Manganese 88% vs 23%, Iron 5% vs 1%, Magnesium 21% vs 2%, Selenium 27% vs 14%, Vitamin B1, Thiamine 12% vs 2%, Vitamin B3, Niacin 15% vs 3%

17 ways to eat brown rice

Learn to cook brown rice

Brown rice, carrot, and cashew pilau

Antibiotics, Bacteria, Obesity

‘The Fat Drug’ from The New York Times is worth reading, whether you agree or disagree.

“In 2002 Americans were about an inch taller and 24 pounds heavier than they were in the 1960s, and more than a third are now classified as obese. Of course, diet and lifestyle are prime culprits. But some scientists wonder whether there could be other reasons for this staggering transformation of the American body. Antibiotics might be the X factor — or one of them…

Of course, while farm animals often eat a significant dose of antibiotics in food, the situation is different for human beings. By the time most meat reaches our table, it contains little or no antibiotics. So we receive our greatest exposure in the pills we take, rather than the food we eat. American kids are prescribed on average about one course of antibiotics every year, often for ear and chest infections. Could these intermittent high doses affect our metabolism?…

In the Blaser lab and elsewhere, scientists are racing to take a census of the bugs in the human gut and — even more difficult — to figure out what effects they have on us. What if we could identify which species minimize the risk of diabetes, or confer protection against obesity? And what if we could figure out how to protect these crucial bacteria from antibiotics, or replace them after they’re killed off?…

It has become common to chide doctors and patients for overusing antibiotics, but when the baby is wailing or you’re burning with fever, it’s hard to know what to do. While researchers work to unravel the connections between antibiotics and weight gain, they should also put their minds toward reducing the unnecessary use of antibiotics. One way to do that would be to provide patients with affordable tests that give immediate feedback about what kind of infection has taken hold in their body. Such tools, like a new kind of blood test, are now in development and could help to eliminate the “just in case” prescribing of antibiotics…”