{"id":419968,"date":"2025-12-02T17:29:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T17:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/419968\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T17:29:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T17:29:14","slug":"food-expert-marion-nestle-on-calories-corruption-and-shredded-wheat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/419968\/","title":{"rendered":"Food expert Marion Nestle on calories, corruption, and shredded wheat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marion Nestle doesn\u2019t understand why people are so obsessed with her diet. Yes, she\u2019s one of the world\u2019s leading nutrition experts, a molecular biologist, and the author of 15 books that cast a withering eye on the ways business interests have conspired to make the foods Americans eat less healthy and less safe. It\u2019s natural that people might be curious about how, and whether, she practices what she preaches. Still, she said, \u201cI just can\u2019t believe people care.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you must know: She enjoys a good bowl of shredded wheat.<\/p>\n

Fueled by fiber, Nestle is one of today\u2019s hardest-working crusaders for food system reform \u2014 an octogenarian with a cloud of curly white hair who retired from New York University in 2017 but maintains a bustling work schedule that includes sending out her Food Politics newsletter<\/a> five days a week. (She travels, too: On a recent trip to Manaus, Brazil, she met with indigenous leaders to talk about the incursion of ultra-processed foods in their communities, then headed off to see the Amazon.) She also spent the past four years putting together her book \u201cWhat to Eat Now<\/a>,\u201d a revised edition of the book she first published in 2006. The new book is much longer, she says, a testament to how much has changed in the past two decades, from the rise of plant-based meat to the widespread availability of cannabis edibles. \u201cIt\u2019s my version of the great Western novel,\u201d she said wryly.<\/p>\n

Leafing through the 700 pages of \u201cWhat to Eat Now,\u201d readers may start to worry that there aren\u2019t many good options available. Unsafe meat makes an estimated 3 million Americans sick each year. Wild fish are disappearing from the world\u2019s oceans, but farmed fish are high in carcinogenic PCBs. Trying to parse out which ultra-processed snack foods are healthier than others \u201cputs you on a nutritional slippery slope.\u201d Even seemingly virtuous blueberries may have been spritzed with pesticides before traveling two weeks to the grocery store, ready to mold as soon as they land in the fridge. Alternatives like organic, locally-grown foods are sometimes available, but at a higher cost.<\/p>\n

The impossibility of navigating these dilemmas is Nestle\u2019s point: Her ambitions with the book go well beyond helping individual people make better choices at the grocery store. She wants Americans to demand better from the food system, voting with their wallets and actively advocating for stronger protections and regulations from their government. (Whatever one\u2019s opinion of the Make America Healthy Again movement<\/a>, its rise shows there are a lot of people in the U.S. ready to mobilize around healthier food.) Food choices, Nestle writes, are \u201cabout democracy in action.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

STAT+ Exclusive Story<\/p>\n

Already have an account? Log in<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"STAT+\"\/<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"STAT+\"\/
\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tThis article is exclusive to STAT+ subscribers
\n\t\t\t\tUnlock this article \u2014 plus in-depth analysis, newsletters, premium events, and news alerts.<\/p>\n

Already have an account? Log in<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tIndividual plans<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tGroup plans<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tView All Plans<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tTo read the rest of this story subscribe to STAT+.\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marion Nestle doesn\u2019t understand why people are so obsessed with her diet. Yes, she\u2019s one of the world\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":419969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[51056,52293,151,210,1182,10943,881,1183,49697,67,132,68,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-419968","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-chronic-diseases","9":"tag-environmental-health","10":"tag-fda","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-nutrition","13":"tag-obesity","14":"tag-public-health","15":"tag-research","16":"tag-rfk-jr","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-weight-loss"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115651161717736485","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}