Food politics: Who makes our food choices? Marion Nestle at the Nobel Week Dialogue 2016
Summary
TLDRThe speaker discusses the complex food system, emphasizing the advocacy's role in shaping what we eat. They highlight the irony between the USDA's nutritional advice and its agricultural subsidies, which favor corn and soybeans over fruits and vegetables. The food industry's aggressive marketing, especially of unhealthy processed foods and large portion sizes, complicates individual food choices. The speaker advocates for systemic changes and policies that make healthy choices easier, citing recent soda tax initiatives as a positive step towards social justice and healthier diets.
Takeaways
- 🍽️ The speaker discusses food systems, which encompass science, agriculture, nutrition, public health, and advocacy.
- 🌍 Global public health issues such as food insecurity, obesity, and environmental damage are closely linked to our food choices.
- 🥗 The American dietary guidelines recommend a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and unprocessed foods, while discouraging the consumption of highly processed 'junk foods'.
- 🚫 The food industry's profits often come from the sale of foods that are least recommended by health professionals.
- 🌾 There's a contradiction between the USDA's nutritional advice and its agricultural subsidies, which favor crops like corn and soybeans over fruits and vegetables.
- 📈 The food industry in the U.S. produces a surplus, leading to aggressive marketing and larger portion sizes to increase consumption.
- 📊 Coca-Cola's investment in Africa to promote its products highlights the industry's global marketing strategies and their potential impact on public health.
- 🏗️ The food industry faces challenges due to overproduction and intense competition, which drives the push for increased consumption.
- 🗳️ Advocacy and activism play a crucial role in shaping food policies and influencing corporate practices.
- 🗣️ The speaker emphasizes the importance of individuals voting with their forks and supporting policies that make healthy choices more accessible.
Q & A
What does the speaker mean by 'food systems'?
-The speaker refers to 'food systems' as encompassing everything from science to agriculture, nutrition, public health, and advocacy, which are all interconnected aspects that influence what we eat.
What are the three major public health problems related to food systems mentioned in the script?
-The three major public health problems related to food systems mentioned are food insecurity, obesity, and the environmental damage caused by our diets, particularly those heavily dependent on meat.
According to the American dietary guidelines from 2015 to 2020, what types of foods are recommended and which are discouraged?
-The guidelines recommend consuming fruits, vegetables, and unprocessed meats, while discouraging the consumption of highly processed 'junk foods' that are high in calories, salt, and sugar.
How does the speaker describe the contradiction in the US Department of Agriculture's policies?
-The speaker points out a contradiction where the USDA's nutrition policy advises making half of one's plate fruits and vegetables, but its agricultural policy heavily subsidizes corn and soybeans, which are mostly used for animal feed, promoting a diet higher in meat.
What is the issue the food industry faces regarding the amount of food produced in the United States?
-The food industry in the United States produces roughly twice as much food as the population needs, leading to aggressive marketing and the development of larger portion sizes to increase consumption.
Why does the speaker emphasize the importance of advocacy in the food system?
-The speaker emphasizes advocacy because it can influence food system policies to make the healthy choice the easy choice, which is crucial given the difficulty individuals face in making healthy food choices in the current food environment.
What is the significance of the soda tax initiatives mentioned in the script?
-The soda tax initiatives are significant because they represent a victory for the food movement, framing the issue as a social justice matter aimed at improving health and benefiting both people and the planet.
How does the speaker suggest individuals can influence the food system?
-The speaker suggests that individuals can influence the food system by voting with their fork, meaning they should make choices that align with their values and promote a healthier food system.
What is the role of portion sizes in the food industry's strategy, according to the speaker?
-The speaker indicates that the food industry has increased portion sizes as a strategy to get people to consume more calories and, consequently, more of their products.
What is the speaker's view on the effectiveness of food activists and the food movement?
-The speaker views food activists and the food movement as having a significant impact, particularly in influencing policy changes like soda taxes, which are seen as steps towards making healthier choices easier.
Outlines
🍽️ The Influence of Food Systems on Dietary Choices
The speaker discusses the complexity of food systems, which encompass everything from science and agriculture to nutrition, public health, and advocacy. They emphasize the importance of advocacy in shaping food choices and highlight the global public health issues related to food systems, such as food insecurity, obesity, and environmental damage. The speaker points out the irony in the American dietary guidelines which recommend eating less processed foods, while the food industry profits from the opposite. They also discuss the contradiction in the US Department of Agriculture's policies, which promote a diet high in meat through agricultural subsidies, despite the health guidelines advocating for more fruits and vegetables. The speaker concludes by noting the food industry's aggressive marketing strategies to sell more food, leading to larger portion sizes and increased consumption.
🌍 The Global Impact of Food Industry Marketing
The second paragraph delves into the global marketing strategies of the food industry, using Coca-Cola as an example. The speaker highlights the billions of dollars spent by Coca-Cola to promote its products worldwide, particularly in Africa between 2010 and 2020. This aggressive marketing leads to contradictory messages about health and nutrition. The speaker argues that individual food choices are difficult in such an environment and suggests that systemic changes are necessary. They discuss the role of advocacy in influencing food policies and the success of soda tax initiatives as a social justice issue. The speaker concludes by emphasizing the importance of voting with one's fork and the need for policies that make healthy choices easy and accessible.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Food systems
💡Food insecurity
💡Obesity
💡Environmental damage
💡American dietary guidelines
💡Food industry
💡Agricultural subsidies
💡Portion sizes
💡Advocacy
💡Social justice
💡Food choice
Highlights
The speaker discusses food systems from a holistic perspective, including science, agriculture, nutrition, public health, and advocacy.
Advocacy is emphasized as a crucial aspect of influencing food choices and systems.
Global public health problems such as food insecurity, obesity, and environmental damage are linked to our food systems.
Undernutrition affects approximately a billion people worldwide, while obesity impacts around two billion.
The American dietary guidelines recommend a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and unprocessed foods.
The food industry's profits often come from foods that are not recommended by health guidelines.
The US Department of Agriculture's nutrition policy contradicts its agricultural subsidies, promoting a diet high in meat.
The food industry faces challenges due to overproduction and must market aggressively to sell surplus food.
Larger portion sizes have been a strategy by the food industry to increase consumption.
The soft drink industry, exemplified by Coca-Cola, spends billions on advertising to boost sales globally.
Coca-Cola's investment in Africa between 2010 and 2020 to promote its products is highlighted as a significant marketing strategy.
Contradictory messages from the food industry make individual food choices difficult.
The need for advocacy in food systems is discussed as a means to counteract the influence of the food industry.
The success of soda tax initiatives in the United States is presented as a victory for the food movement.
The importance of voting with your fork and having policies that make healthy choices easy is emphasized.
The speaker shares insights from their books on how to improve food system policies for better health and environmental outcomes.
Transcripts
I'm going to talk about the I'm supposed
to answer the question who decides what
we eat and I do this from the standpoint
of somebody who thinks about food
systems and by food systems I mean
everything from science to agriculture
to nutrition and to Public Health and
then also to advocacy and I'm going to
emphasize the advocacy part because I
think it's really important one of the
things that is seems to me important and
thinking about food choice is that the
largest problems public health problems
in the world and food system problems
are related to food and these are food
insecurity obesity and the environmental
damage that is caused the undernutrition
affects roughly a billion people in the
world
obesity is said to affect maybe two
billion people in the world and
environmental damage effects absolutely
everybody and of course much of that
environmental damage comes from our
diets that are heavily dependent on meat
now what we're supposed to eat is really
pretty well defined I'm an American and
these are the American dietary
guidelines from 2015 to 2020 and they
say that what you're supposed to be
eating is fruits vegetables meat poultry
and other kinds of foods relatively
unprocessed and what you're not supposed
to be eating is what we pejoratively
call junk foods highly processed foods
that have a lot of the nutritional value
removed that are very high in calories
salt and sugar now if you the problem
with that is that if you're going to be
dealing with the question of obesity you
want to eat better and not eat the kinds
of foods that are recommended you want
to eat less in general and you want to
move more but the problem is that all of
those
are not particularly good for the food
industry and we have a food industry
that is very large Nestle very large and
makes most of its profits from the foods
the exact same foods that are least
recommended by public health nutrition
people so this brings us to a lot of
irony's in the food system and
difficulties with thinking about these
things and the particular contradiction
that I like talking about is in the
department of the US Department of
Agriculture's nutrition policy it says
make half of your plate fruits and
vegetables sounds good to me
but if you look at the other side of US
Department of Agriculture policy for
agriculture it does exactly the opposite
and from this particular formulation
which was agricultural subsidies from
2008 to 12 I think the amount of federal
subsidies that went to fruits and
vegetables a manner to less than half a
percent when all the rest of it went to
corn soybeans and other kinds of foods
that are mostly fed to animals thereby
promoting a diet that's higher in meat
so the food industry has a big problem
we produce in the United States probably
twice as much food as is actually needed
by the population and this has led the
food industry to emphasize marketing in
a way that it never has before
and to develop methods to get people to
eat more food one of which is to develop
larger portion sizes and if you look at
what's happened to portion sizes in the
u.s. diet over the last 30 to 50 years
they have gotten much much bigger and as
a nutrition educator if I had one thing
that I could teach the world it would
that larger portions have more calories
it's not intuitively obvious trust me on
this one so the food industry has a
terrible problem in in that it's very
very competitive and it has to do
everything it can to sell foods to get
people to eat more of a company's
products or to eat more in general and
one way to do that is to advertise and
the soft drink industry happens to be
particularly transparent about what it's
doing and this particular formulation
talks about the amount of money that
coca-cola is spending to build new
bottling plants and promote coca-cola
all over the world and most of the
figures that you see here are in
billions and the one that strikes me is
particularly poignant is the 17 billion
dollars that coca-cola has said that it
will spend in Africa between 2010 and
2020 in order to promote sales of its
products there these kinds of things
lead to extremely contradictory messages
this is a real sign it's real the and so
in an environment like this individual
food choice is very very difficult for
individuals faced with a food
environment that's as complicated as
this it's really hard to make healthy
food choices and so we need to look at
the environment or as this cartoon says
you need to eat out of another parking
lot and so this brings me to the whole
question of advocacy which is something
that I'm very interested in and advocacy
is the new threat to corporate food as
this Forbes magazine nor this Ford's
article says that its food activists who
are now the brand managers for major
food companies how I
wish this were true it lists as the food
influencers Public Health nutritionists
celebrity or celebrity nutritionists and
food bloggers I did are they talking
about me I wish I had that kind of power
I really did but it is clear that at
least in some places the food movement
is having a big effect in the United
States in the middle of our rather
peculiar recent election there was one
extremely bright ray and that was that
every single local soda tax initiative
that was proposed passed and the soda
taxes are being framed by food the food
movement people as a social justice
issue one that is going to make poor
people healthier and is going to be
better for people and for the planet so
when it comes to food choice it's very
important for individuals to vote with
their fork but it's also extremely
important that we have food system
policies that will make the Healthy
Choice the easy choice and these are the
kinds of things that I discuss in my
books and I'm very very happy to have
the chance to share this with you today
thank you
[Applause]
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