1. "Breakfast cereals are supposed to be good for you, and the relatively unprocessed ones still are, but most are now so thoroughly processed and sugared and filled with additives that they might as well be cookies. You can hardly find a cereal without added vitamins, so let's call them vitamin-enriched, lowfat cookies." (339)
2. Any sensible person might think that the Founding Fathers devised the First Amendment to protect political dissent rather than the right of food marketers to use overblown health claims on cereal boxes. (344)
3. Bear in mind that food companies would rather you did not notice how they market their products to your kids. If you did, you might see, as researchers tell us, that much of food marketing seems designed deliberately to undermine your authority and encourage your children to view you as ineffective or stupid... 'Conflicts arise because the foods that are most heavily marketed to children are low-nutrition foods of which parents would like their children to eat less. Marketers count on children wearing their parents down and on parents giving in and purchasing low-nutrition food for their children... [F]ood marketing...forces parents to choose between being the bad guy who says "no" in order to protect their children's health or giving in to junk-food demands to keep the peace.'
Analysis of food commercials aimed at children demonstrate that such advertising often promotes "antisocial" and "anti-adult" behavior designed to make kids think they know more about what they are supposed to eat than their parents do. As a parent, your job is to set limits but you are up against an entire industry devoted to undermining your authority to do so. Marketing to children does more than make them want certain products; it is meant to change society. It aims to put kids in charge of decisions that you should be making. For this reason alone, marketing to children is worth opposing. (381-382)
4. As an individual, your recourse against such manipulation is to vote with your dollars every time you buy food. The better informed you are, the more wisely you can spend them. But it is not easy to oppose an entire food system on your own; it takes strength, courage, and firm determination. The current environment of food choice-- driven by Wall Street as it is-- has come about as the result of history, politics, and business concerns, not public interest." (521)
5. "..Salmon farmers resort to cosmetics. They add dyes to the feed pellets, knowing that the farmed salmon can easily absorb the color and that their flesh will turn as pink as that of wild salmon. This, as it turns out, can be done with amazing precision. In the same way you match paint to color chips at paint stores, salmon farmers can choose the color they want the salmon to be from a chart made by Hoffmann-La Roche, the company that makes synthetic astaxanthin and canthaxanthin. The intensity of color on the Hoffman-La Roche SalmoFan ranges from #20 (pale salmon pink) to #34 (bright orange-red). Focus group tests show that customers prefer the natural color of wild salmon (#33 on the SalmoFan) by a ratio of 2 to 1, equate that color with quality, and say they are willing to pay more for it. When farmed salmon comes in at a pinkish #27, customers reject it. You can bet that salmon farmers give their fish plenty of the dyes." (225)
***
4.5/5. This book was fascinating. It was so hard to choose just 5 quotes. I learned that Albacore tuna is much higher in methylmercury than the cheaper kind, and that food politics is the reason this is not a well-known fact (something I wish I had known when I was pregnant!). Eggs are eggs, and grass-fed beef is higher in some vitamins and nutrients. Organic really is a better choice if you can afford it, and bottled water is basically a big fat waste of money.
I learned how sophisticated and manipulative the food industry is, and I was inspired to rebel against this fact through the choices I make when I decide what to eat. I only wish she would revise and come out with a new edition, because this book came out in 2006.
Marion Nestle is brilliant and delightfully presents her research with a good dose of humor (a necessary thing when you are swallowing the dark side of food politics).
Bravo, Marion Nestle!
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