Marion Nestle - Safe Food

PRAISE FOR THE FIRST EDITION OF MARION NESTLES
FOOD POLITICS: HOW THE FOOD INDUSTRY
INFLUENCES NUTRITION AND HEALTH

Anyone who cares about what they put in their body ought to read [Food Politics] carefully and think long and hard about the choices. Your life just might depend on it. Newsday

Voting with [our] forks for a healthier society, Nestle shows us, is within our power. Los Angeles Times

Educating the public is a start, and Food Politics is an excellent introduction to how decisions are made in Washingtonand their effects on consumers. Lets hope people take more notice of it than they do of the dietary guidelines. The Nation

Nestle has written a provocative and highly readable book arguing that Americas agribusiness lobby has stifled the governments regulatory power, helped create a seasonless and regionless diet, and hampered the governments ability to offer sound, scientific nutritional advice. The Economist

What a book this is! Of course we have always suspected and known some of the truth, but never in such bold detail! In this fascinating book we learn how powerful, intrusive, influential, and invasive big industry is and how alert we must constantly be to prevent it from influencing not only our personal choices, but those of our government agencies. Marion Nestle has presented us with a courageous and masterful expos. Julia Child

Food politics underlie all politics in the United States. There is no industry more important to Americans, more fundamentally linked to our well-being and the future well-being of our children. Nestle reveals how corporate control of the nations food system limits our choices and threatens our health. If you eat, you should read this book. Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation

Nestle is in a unique position to have seen firsthand how food purveyors, government and academicians end up as bedfellows when it comes to suggesting to people what and how much to eat. Eating Well

Food Politics... has nudged [Nestles] argument into the mainstream of considerationnot quite fodder for an installment of Oprah, but no longer the heady stuff of National Public Radio, either. And that has some restaurant-industry officials more than a little upset. Restaurant Business

Nestle tells us a series of engaging and surprising stories and gives us a lively presentation of the politics, as she perceives them, of advice on diet and health during the past century... This book is thought-provoking, and I recommend it. The New England Journal of Medicine

Some of Nestles shocking revelations about the behavior of Big Food will shock only those who are easily shocked; others will be welcomed less as news than as occasions for those so inclined to make public displays of moral outrage. London Review of Books

Food Politics is written to interest and be accessible to a wide range of readers, whether they have training in nutrition or not. The book has achieved this objective by keeping jargon to a minimum, explaining terms as needed, and being written in a lively, engaging style. Journal of Nutrition Education

A real page turner, this book will give you metaphoric indigestionunless, of course, you believe that McDonalds offers a nutritious addition to a balanced diet (as one U.S. Senator declared in 1977). Natural Health

Regardless of who is to blame for the obesity epidemic, Nestle has laid down a challenge that wont easily go away. It will be interesting to see how the food industry responds. Food Chemical News

The case examples are remarkable and the value here is in Nestles clear, thorough documentation, which provides missing pieces in the puzzle of poor nutrition in a country where food is all too abundant. The Lancet

This superbly documented book encourages readers to think about what they eat and to ask, who profits? Gambero Rosso

Food Politics is an academically scrupulous account of how the food industry in the United States controls government nutrition policies. Its important and eye-opening reading for anyone looking to make intelligent and informed food choices. EarthSave Magazine

Food Politics is a carefully considered, calmly stated, devastating criticism of the nations food industry and its efforts to get people to eat excessive amounts of unhealthy food. Social Policy

CALIFORNIA STUDIES IN FOOD AND CULTURE

Darra Goldstein, Editor

MARION NESTLE

Updated and Expanded

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England

2003, 2010 by The Regents of the University of California

ISBN 978-0-520-26606-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)

The Library of Congress has cataloged an earlier edition of this book as follows:

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nestle, Marion.
Safe food: bacteria, biotechnology, and bioterrorism / Marion Nestle.
p. cm.(California studies in food and culture; 5)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-520-23292-1 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. FoodSafety measures. 2. FoodBiotechnology. 3. Bioterrorism. I. Title. 2. Series.

RA601.N465 2003
363.1926dc21 2002027172

Manufactured in the United States of America

18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is printed on Natures Book, which contains 50% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.481992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper).

WHEN SAFE FOOD FIRST APPEARED IN 2003, FOOD SAFETY HARDLY appeared on the public agenda. American food safety advocates struggled to be heard but generated little public interest or congressional action. I wrote Safe Food to explain the political history of our fragmented and ineffective food safety system and how politics gets in the way of efforts to improve the system. Having no illusions that the book would do what Upton Sinclairs The Jungle accomplished in 1906, I hoped that it would at least generate some creative thinking about food safety problems and their solutions.

I spent the next few years dealing with invitations to speak about the health implications of food marketing discussed in my earlier book, Food Politics. I also wrote What to Eat, a book that uses supermarket aisles as an organizing device for thinking about food issues, safety among them. By the time that book came out in 2006, I thought I was done with food safety. I had nothing more to say about it.

Then came September 14, 2006. On that day, one that California vegetable growers still refer to as 9/14, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the recall of spinach contaminated with