Food Politics The Role of Corporate Influence in U.S. Nutritional Policies

With so many ideas circulating about health and nutrition, how do people decide what to eat? We look to magazines and the latest news story for advice, but, importantly, many of our beliefs about how to eat come from information handed down by government agencies. In Food Politics, Marion Nestle exposes a nutritional world many of us do not know exists: the world of food politics, where government regulations become highly influenced by the powerful corporations that bring our food to market. Nestle argues that much of the obesity and related health problems in America can be traced to action or lack thereof on the part of corporate-influenced U.S. agencies answering more to the needs of company profit than to the health of consumers.

Beginning at the turn of the century, the U.S. government undertook the initiative to get Americans to ôeat moreö (31-34). This was a necessary health initiative due to the high death rates from diseases due to malnutrition. However, from the 1960's on it became clear that health concerns had shifted and now the imperative was to ôeat less,ö to combat obesity and the related diseases of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes among others (38-40). The initial advice to eat less went along well with the concerns of food production companies. The USDA, charged with protecting agricultural interests, through loose interpretation of its stated role in food production, became the

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nformation to children. Since this revelation came so far along in the production process, the news media looked into the story and found indications that the meat and milk industry concerns were the cause behind the Pyramid being pulled for review. As stories about the Pyramid appeared in greater numbers before the public, the USDA was forced to create a public study to support its claim that educational concerns prompted the Pyramid's re-evaluation. Over the next year, the USDA and DHHS spent $885,000 to test the capacity of the Pyramid to convey proportionality of food choices to children. However, education of children about nutritional precepts had never before been the goal of the USDA's nutritional campaigns; the targeted group had always been adults. Nevertheless, having used the children's education argument to explain why the original Eating Right Pyramid had been pulled for re-evaluation, the USDA now had to show that it was conducting the further research it claimed was needed. In the final analysis it was determined that the Pyramid could stand substantially unchanged û this coming about many months and hundreds of thousands of dollars after the original Pyramid had been thoroughly approved. Another example of the r
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1552
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)