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The big food companies would love to see
author Marion Nestle shut up.

By Carol Ness ,   The San Francisco Chronicle
Posted March 30 2006

She's been called a "diet scold," a "food cop" and "one of the country's
most hysterical anti-food-industry fanatics." Google her name and that's
what pops up on three of the first seven Web hits -- the food industry
sites activistcash.com and consumerfreedom.com.

Marion Nestle seems to have touched a nerve.

"Me? I'm harmless. I'm a professor at a university, for heaven's sake,"
Nestle says coyly. And she is -- a nutrition professor at New York
University, currently doing a guest gig at UC Berkeley.

What's made the food industry so mad is what's made her a hero to
people trying to figure out what they should be eating, how to stop eating
themselves into obesity and illness, and why the government isn't giving
them better advice.

Nestle is simply one of the nation's smartest and most influential
authorities on nutrition and food policy.   Nestle's first book, Food Politics
(The University of California Press,   2002, $39.95 hardcover, $19.95
paper), put her on the map by documenting precisely how the food
industry influences what we eat and sways government food policy.

The future of food can seem grim when Nestle talks about the marketing
of junk food to kids, the rising tide of obesity and Type 2 diabetes,
especially among kids, and policy issues such as the limits Congress has
placed on the Food and Drug Administration's ability to restrict health
claims on labels.

The popularity of organic foods is a hopeful sign, she says, though she
worries that food industry efforts to weaken the national organic
standards may destroy their credibility.

The food industry, too, is taking small steps. Manufacturers have added
some whole grains to breads and cereals, reduced trans fats in cookies
and crackers, lowered salt levels in some soups and packaged meals, and
are selling snack foods in 100-calorie packets.

"I see what's happening in food now as a social movement in its early
stages that might be as important as what happened here," she says.
"Every time you buy a food, you're voting with your fork."