Dr. Marion Nestle: Unveiling the Intersection of Nutrition, Health, and Food Politics

Embark on a thought-provoking journey with Dr. Marion Nestle, a trailblazer in the intersection of nutrition, health, and food politics, who joins us on Chef Sense to share her profound insights and personal evolution. Witness the transformation of a molecular biology educator into a dynamic nutrition crusader, driven by a stark realization of the parallels between tobacco marketing, and the food industry's strategies. Marion Nestle takes us through her illustrious career, including her pivotal role in shaping government nutrition reports and her impactful tenure at NYU. Her dedication to improving food systems resonates deeply, reinforcing the significance of education and awareness in advancing public health.

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Transcript

Chef James 0:14

Hey everyone, welcome to Chef Sense. I'm your host, Chef Massey. So today on the podcast we have Dr. Marion Nestle. She is Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies in Public Health. She holds her emeritus status also at New York University, in the department which she chaired from 1988 to 2003. She retired in 2017, but she also has earned her PhD in Molecular Biology and an MPH in Public Health and Nutrition from the University of California, Berkeley. She has been an author, a co-author and a co-editor of 15 books total. She has been named among the top 10 in Health and Science by Time Magazine, Science Magazine and the Guardian. Very excited to have her on.

Chef James 1:04

There's some of these books that I have used over my time as a piece of, you know, inspiration and knowledge and more understanding of our big food system here in the United States. Food Politics is one of my favorites, along with Soda Politics. Her most recent was her memoir that she did, which was slow cooked, and I believe she is also working on another one for 2025, which is a revised edition of what to Eat All right. So thank you, Dr Nestle, for joining us here. Well, thank you. Can you share with us your beginning? What drew you into the field of food nutrition?

Dr. Marion Nestle 1:43

I got handed a nutrition course to teach. As I've often said, it was like falling in love it was. I had been teaching cell and molecular biology, which is extremely. It's interesting but it's extremely abstract. Students have to work very hard to relate to it because you can't see it, taste it, feel it.

Dr. Marion Nestle 2:05

You have to deduce everything that happens from the kinds of experimental results that you get. And here I was being handed a nutrition course that was about food and about politics and about history and about anthropology and everybody eats and students related to it very, very strongly and I thought it was the best way of teaching biology that you could ever think of.

Dr. Marion Nestle 2:31

It was just a fabulous way to teach biology.

Dr. Marion Nestle 2:34

You could teach about the composition of food, what happens to it in the body, what happens to each of its components in the body, how food is related to health and then how food is related to absolutely everything else in society, which it is.

Dr. Marion Nestle 2:49

After Brandeis, I went to the University of California, san Francisco okay, 10 years and I was teaching nutrition to medical students. When that all fell apart which it did quite dramatically, so I think I discussed in my most recent book, which was a memoir, slow Cooked I had to retrain myself and I went to public health school in public health nutrition, and as a result of the work that I did in public health school, I was able to get a job in the federal government in the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, editing the search and generals report on nutrition and health, which came out in 1988. This is really a long time ago. So I worked for the government for two years during the Reagan administration, amusingly enough, and then went from there to NYU where I've been ever since, living happily ever after. So I retired officially in 2017, but I kept my office and I'm still going into the office and hanging around. I'm still hanging.

Chef James 3:57

What an honor and a great opportunity to keep your.

Dr. Marion Nestle 3:59

Oh, I'll say Nice, it is, it is.

Chef James 4:04

You know, as we kind of dive into this in the sense of our food history, that we've kind of gone along in the United States. Can you discuss some points for you and how you kind of became that voice of concern and hopeful redirect on working the system?

Dr. Marion Nestle 4:18

Yeah, I tell this story in the memoir too which was that when I had been at NYU for a couple of years, I got invited to speak at a meeting in Washington at NIH actually at the National Cancer Institute and it was a meeting on behavioral causes of cancer. Mostly the speakers were talking about smoking and lung cancer, and then there were a couple of us who were talking about diet, and it was kind of an amazing experience because I knew that smoking caused lung cancer. I really did know that, but I had never heard the people who were actively involved in anti-smoking advocacy speak about it before. One after another after another of these speakers showed slides of cigarette marketing.

Dr. Marion Nestle 5:14

This was the days of Joe Campbell, of advertising that was clearly aimed at young boys, and they showed slide after slide after slide of cigarette marketing all over the world everywhere you could think of. Joe Campbell was absolutely everywhere. It was kind of astonishing, it was ubiquitous, and I knew that cigarette companies were marketing to teenage boys, but I never paid any attention to it. And what this did was it got my attention Because, in particular, there was one talk absolutely memorable of cigarette marketing to children. I knew that this was going on, but I never paid any attention to it. And here they were showing pictures of Joe Campbell in sports arenas, near schools, in places where kids hang out. It was kind of amazing and it was like a revelation to me and I walked out of that meeting saying to the other food speaker we should be doing exactly this, coca-cola.

Chef James 6:27

Okay.

Dr. Marion Nestle 6:28

And it was just this revelation. And so after that I started, when I was traveling, I would take pictures of Coke, pepsi ads, mcdonald's ads, chicken ads, whatever. I took pictures of food marketing everywhere. I went quite a collection of them and started paying attention to how food companies were marketing, particularly to children. And then I was going to in the 1990s. I was going to meetings on childhood obesity. Childhood obesity was being recognized as an increasing problem, and I would go to these meetings and every single speaker at the meetings would say something like how are we going to teach mothers how to feed their kids better? And I thought why is this a mom problem? Why isn't every single speaker saying how are we going to stop food companies from marketing junk foods to our kids in ways that are absolutely insidious? And so that kind of was what got me started on this. I started writing articles about these kinds of things and eventually I had enough articles so I thought I could put them into a book, and that was the genesis of food politics, which came out in 2002.

Chef James 7:56

Okay, and which is an amazing book you talk about so much in there and I think, like you're saying, it's a multifaceted machine that we're dealing with on a very complex, large scale. It seems to be very interweaved between food and marketing to children in the schools and catching ahold of that and them bringing it home to the parents and influencing the parents at home. I mean, that's pretty startling.

Dr. Marion Nestle 8:27

Well, what you want to do I mean, I'm always saying this you need to understand that food companies are not social service agencies, they're not public health agencies, they're businesses, right, they're businesses, which, in our present business environment, requires them to put stockholder interests above all other considerations. And once you understand that and get your head around it, everything they do makes sense. Sure, because they're just trying to protect their products and promote sales of their products and keep government agencies from doing anything that might reduce sales of their products. And so, of course, they're going to go after children. Why wouldn't they? If they can get kids to ask their parents to buy their product, they've got to win.

Chef James 9:15

Right, and the other thing, too, that I think I've heard you mention is, once they hook that child in the school system, they could have them for a lifetime potentially.

Dr. Marion Nestle 9:26

Yeah, I mean, people love what they ate as kids.

Chef James 9:29

Right, we have food memories.

Dr. Marion Nestle 9:31

Everybody does and you know I mean. You could certainly change your diet later on as an adult, and lots of people do.

Dr. Marion Nestle 9:38

What they realize that they're eating a lot of junk food and shouldn't, or if they start gaining weight and want to do something about that. But I think from the standpoint of food companies, kids are fair game. And you know, I tell this story too. When Michelle Obama was in the White House, I went to a meeting that she ran on food marketing to kids and there were a lot of representatives of food companies there, and after all the speeches, which were quite eloquent, we broke up into smaller groups and in the group that I was in there was a high level official of a food company unnamed, unnamed mainly because I can't remember which one it was, but we're not supposed to talk about it anyway, so it's just as well. But he said, you know, he said I wish we didn't have to market to kids.

Dr. Marion Nestle 10:37

I don't think it's the right thing to do. I wish we could stop, but our stockholders won't let us. Ok, right. I had never heard it stated quite so boldly. I had to do this and I really thought, in writing food politics, that I was just stating the obvious. Anybody who was looking could have seen it. It never occurred to me that I was creating a groundbreaking book or you know, or cutting, or cutting edge or anything like that, and I thought I was stating the obvious. But it must have been good timing.

Chef James 11:15

Oh yeah, and it's very, very enlightening on that side of it. In looking at food. You know, addiction and obesity, I mean those are hand in hand. I mean it's pretty prevalent in our country and with the system you know.

Dr. Marion Nestle 11:31

Oh, pretty prevalent is an understatement.

Chef James 11:34

Yeah.

Dr. Marion Nestle 11:34

Seventy percent, seven zero. More than two thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. Forty two percent meet criteria for obesity, but seventy percent of American adults are overweight and twenty or thirty percent of kids. Right. So it's become normal. That's normal in our society, and if you look at pictures of classes, school classes now as compared to school kids 20 or 30 years ago, there's just no comparison.

Chef James 12:08

Kids are much bigger now. Right. And the other thing is also the food engineering. You know that these, these companies do, do they invest in, you know, trying to hit those markers that attract people to the food and continue consumption. Right, I mean, it's called the bliss point. Okay.

Dr. Marion Nestle 12:26

It's the point at which you can't stop eating. It's just so good, you can't stop.

Chef James 12:32

The point of no return.

Dr. Marion Nestle 12:33

The point of no return. And we now have a specific name for this category of products, that called ultra processed. And there is now, I don't know, more than a thousand studies that link ultraprocessed foods to poor health, and there's even one very, very well-controlled clinical trial that shows that ultraprocessed foods induce people to eat more of them. That's where the addiction comes in, if it's addiction, but you just can't stop eating them. And these are deliberately formulated to encourage people not to stop eating them. Eat as much as they possibly can, regardless of the consequences, because these are among the most highly profitable products in the supermarket.

Chef James 13:25

Right, and I mean even down to supermarkets. I mean they've done a great job of how they organize their store. I mean it's not like when you're checking out you've got celery sticks and carrot sticks and blue cheese dressing. Well, candies, I should say, lined up and caffeine drinks and everything.

Dr. Marion Nestle 13:43

Yeah, and companies pay a fortune to place their products at exactly that spot.

Chef James 13:48

Right, and that's just unbelievable.

Dr. Marion Nestle 13:51

It's. One of the ways that supermarkets make money is through what are called slotting fees, which are payments that companies make to place their products where they can be most easily seen, because supermarket rule is the more you see a product, the more you are likely to buy it.

Chef James 14:08

Right, exactly.

Dr. Marion Nestle 14:10

Which is why drinks are everywhere. Drinks are enormously profitable. Right, I don't know whatever happened to tap water, but you're right. Drinks are enormously profitable and if you go into a store and look at the amount of supermarket real estate devoted to drinks, it's absolutely vast.

Chef James 14:29

Well, and there's also. You have your book Soda Politics too, which, going into beverage, that's soda, that's huge.

Dr. Marion Nestle 14:38

Right, although I'm sort of, I'm doing a new edition of my book what to Eat, which came out in 2006. And this new edition will come out in 2025. But the you know, 20 years later it's waters. Morning. Sugar sweetened beverages. The amount of sugar sweetened beverages is declining and that people are consuming is going down, and waters are being substituted, and these waters have everything you could possibly think of, including CBD and alcohol, but there must be water and you're paying a fortune for them.

Chef James 15:15

Right, and that's you know. That's just tragic as well. The other question I have too and when these companies are coming in, you know there's there is what I see as a challenge is mislabeling, or kind of construing how they label their products too, all natural and some of these other things.

Dr. Marion Nestle 15:33

Well, they label them so they'll sell Right, and everybody wants to buy something that's healthy. So if there's something on the label that says that the product is healthy, people are going to buy it Right. I just picked up a. Cheerios is my current favorite product because it used to be that. Cheerios was this boring cereal that you gave little kids. Right, because it wasn't particularly harmful and kids and it dissolved so it didn't choke little babies. But now Cheerios come in more than 20 different options. Right. And my current favorite is veggie Cheerios.

Chef James 16:18

Oh my gosh, I've never okay.

Dr. Marion Nestle 16:20

Which claims to have a quarter of a cup of vegetables in each serving, and what they've done is they've taken vegetables and powder and converted them to powder and added the powder back.

Chef James 16:33

Oh my gosh.

Dr. Marion Nestle 16:35

But if you're somebody walking down an aisle and you think, oh, I'm going to have vegetables, Right. And they, oh dear.

Chef James 16:43

And yeah, you just, it's the psychological box checker, right.

Dr. Marion Nestle 16:47

Oh yeah, and it absolutely works.

Chef James 16:50

Right, right, it totally works, Wow, unbelievable. You know and I guess talking about Cheerios and manufacturers that may have more of a global presence when you compare it to a broad, or ingredients are much different in other countries and they have their foot down on it, or they they're better screening this. I mean, can you give advice as to why? That's just? It's all about money.

Dr. Marion Nestle 17:18

It's because we're Americans Right, exceptional Americans we have much less stringent regulation of the food industry than other countries do, in part because the food industry is not, because the food industry is so effective at lobbying, because our electoral system is so completely corrupt that corporations can give money to elect to candidates and then candidates are beholden to them and they're not going to do anything that's to offend them. And if they try to do anything, the companies are just on them right away. Right. So nobody wants to take on the food industry.

Chef James 17:58

No, not at all.

Challenges of the Food System

Dr. Marion Nestle 18:00

They just Seems anyway they avoid it. So and then we have this First Amendment stuff that you know. It's very hard for me to believe that the founding fathers developed the First Amendment to protect the right of food companies to market to children. But that's how our courts have been interpreting it, and that's very difficult to deal with.

Chef James 18:22

That's very hard, Well you know. And the other thing is too, eating, well, eating balanced, I mean.

Dr. Marion Nestle 18:29

It's expensive, yeah that's food policy in action.

Chef James 18:35

It funnels you. It's not the dollar menu anymore, but families can go to that. They can't afford quality foods.

Dr. Marion Nestle 18:48

And those are so concerned, or they think they can't. If they bought foods and cooked them, they could do much better. But, if they think that fruits and vegetables are expensive, it's because they are. Right. If you look at Department of Commerce figures from 1980 to the present, these figures show very clearly that, while the price of food in general has increased, the price of fruits and vegetables has increased far more than the price of food in general, whereas the price of ultra-processed junk foods has increased much less. Right and that's federal policy. Right.

Dr. Marion Nestle 19:27

And we could fix that in an instant if anybody was willing to take it on. Right, right. But we don't have elected leaders who are willing to take that on.

Chef James 19:36

That's very hard to do, especially with a system that it just seems like it's evolved from generation to generation, just continues to snowball into what we have today, from our beginning a long time ago, many years ago. So how we combat that, it's very hard to do. Like you said, people can invest in certain things. For people that may have areas where they can do a home garden or they can do certain things. It's hard to try to build that in but it won't have the time to do it.

Dr. Marion Nestle 20:10

Well, I explained to parents who are having difficulties getting their kids to eat healthfully that they're fighting an entire food system on their own. Right. That's pretty hard to do and the food system is big. It's more than one and a half trillion dollars in the United States if you count restaurants and alcohol.

Chef James 20:30

Right In production.

Dr. Marion Nestle 20:32

Oh, it includes production.

Chef James 20:34

I found it very interesting. You had mentioned, like the production of I don't know if that was food and beverage to, what a typical nutritional intake is for somebody like calorically.

Dr. Marion Nestle 20:47

Oh yeah, we have twice the calories that we need as a population. Food is enormously overproduced in the United States, to the extent of being twice what we need, which means that there's an enormous surplus of food. And remember, the purpose of food companies is to sell that food. So they're doing everything they possibly can to sell that food and one of the strategies is to get people to eat more.

Chef James 21:17

Right, and that comes down to portion.

Dr. Marion Nestle 21:19

It's not that hard to do.

Chef James 21:20

Right. Well, and again, talking about, on my side, being a chef, I get concerned because my commitment to the person coming into my establishment using local, knowing my farm or knowing the food and portion size, is a commitment on my end that I'm serving clean, it's a state of more products and kind of being that voice, because otherwise, you know, I don't want to shame it, but you almost kind of feel like a food drug dealer in a way, because I know how to add acid fat, sweet texture to my plates where people really they thrive off of it, you know. And not to mention some of the foods, when you call it on each your menu Like I think we talked about before, it was its food memories you can pull people emotionally into a dining atmosphere and they're off to the races, you know. You throw some alcohol in there and you're really winning the game.

Dr. Marion Nestle 22:21

You know the races right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah Well, food is one of life's greatest pleasures, you know. It's one you get to have several times a day. It's pretty great.

Chef James 22:32

Oh well, yeah, it's fantastic, of course. So there's things that you know. They've gotten smaller too.

Dr. Marion Nestle 22:37

Yeah, and that's food. Companies are doing that for price reasons rather than anything else, yeah, exactly. But anything that would reduce portion size would help. I'm always saying you know, if there's one concept I could get across, it's that larger portions have more calories. It's hard to say it with a straight face, but in fact it's not intuitively obvious. People are eating more and there's lots and lots of evidence that people started eating more in response to food industry marketing efforts in the 1980s and 90s and we're seeing the results of that now.

Dr. Marion Nestle 23:17

People are overweight.

Chef James 23:19

Right. Can you describe, in the sense of you know, comparing a meal plan from what a typical American male or female would eat, compared to maybe a broad, like certain countries where that balance for them is completely different? I mean, we do overeat, we eat heavier here.

Food Marketing's Impact on Eating Habits

Dr. Marion Nestle 23:38

Oh, is there any question about it? People come to the United States. They can't believe the size of the portions. They just can't believe it. I mean I've been, you know, okay, I don't eat so much anymore. I'm in the stage where my metabolism is really declined, but I'm astounded by what goes for a single portion, even if I buy a salad, If I buy a prepared salad, I can have that salad for three days.

Dr. Marion Nestle 24:09

Right, yeah, they're massive Because it's so big and if I go to a restaurant I couldn't possibly order an appetizer in an entree. Right. That would be far too much to eat, and if I order an entree, I'm still going to be taking some portion of it home. I just can't believe that there are people who eat that much. And yet I go to restaurants and I see people eating 23-ounce steaks.

Chef James 24:38

Yeah.

Dr. Marion Nestle 24:39

I couldn't imagine what they are, and you know, a 23-ounce steak has a lot more calories than a 3-ounce one.

Chef James 24:49

Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Marion Nestle 24:50

What can I say?

Chef James 24:52

It's unfortunate. Right, right. And it seems so logical and the answer seems so easy. You know, eat less, move more, look at the center of your plate, focus on that, have balance. And you know, I think with social media too, they've. Just food is in a whole another realm now.

Dr. Marion Nestle 25:13

Yeah, but I mean, the idea of eat less, move more is absolutely impossible in today's food environment. So to advise somebody to do that without giving them a lot of social support is really difficult. And you know, I think it's essential for people to understand that they're being marketed to constantly. Right Marketing is so good that they don't notice it, just like I didn't notice it. Right.

Dr. Marion Nestle 25:39

You know, if I didn't notice it, lots of other people didn't notice it either, and you are constantly barraged not only by advertisements, which are easy to see, but also by subtle, much more subtle, cute way that supermarkets are organized the fact that food is absolutely everywhere. The example that I just love to give is when I came to NYU in the late 1980s, there were signs all over the library saying you can't bring food in here. Now there are two cafes and, and you know, vending machines everywhere.

Dr. Marion Nestle 26:18

And even looks bookstores, remember. I mean, you have to be able to remember when bookstores wouldn't let you in. Right For the coffee. Now they have coffee bars or Starbucks inside a bookstore. That's a huge change and that's a marketing strategy. Right. Food is there. You'll eat it. Clothing stores Yep, I mean it's. It's astounding.

Chef James 26:44

And you used to never be able to do that. And now you have Door Dash, you know, have all this access that you don't even need to leave your house, and the pandemic did that. Right, right. Everything's in a to-go box and it's right there for you.

Dr. Marion Nestle 27:00

Right, and you know constant delivery, so it couldn't be easier. And if you're not, you know. And if you're not cooking your own food, you really are not controlling the amount that you're eating or what's in the food or the quality of the ingredients. You know for that you have to do it yourself, and a lot of people find it just as easy. And because of the way the pricing goes, a lot of people have enough money to eat out all the time.

Chef James 27:29

Right, right and you're just, you're kind of buying into that system. You know, and what's interesting too on my side that I and I know that you guaranteed aware of it, but I found it coming along that a lot of the food manufacturers, on the hospitality side of things, these large brand hotels and corporate systems that I used, had buying programs and they were linked, they're linked right into you know perks, you know compliance percentage, rebate percentages, where if I am compliant at 80% or higher with this large, this large distributor and those contracts are signed, then I get a kickback, not to mention a manufacturer rebate. So if I'm going to use this pork product or this major, you know chicken product from this huge company, so everybody's like linked into this thing.

Dr. Marion Nestle 28:24

Well, you know, as I said, everybody's in business. This is business, you know, and public health is not a goal of the business. You know, there are some businesses that are these big corporations, but I don't think they're very credible. I mean, I have my doubts about how well they work. But you know, and the world economic form is always saying things like, corporations have to take social values into consideration.

Dr. Marion Nestle 28:52

Yeah, right, yeah you know this requires a big, a big change in the way that Wall Street evaluates corporate health and the effect of what is called the shareholder value movement, which started in the early 1980s and has absolutely taken over in the United States. Those effects are well documented. That's when manufacturing moved out of the country, okay. That's when everybody started using imported cheap labor. That's when you know a lot of things happened that have been very bad for the country, I think. Yeah it's bad for the Midwest.

Chef James 29:35

Right, exactly, wow, they're not going to embrace some level of change in the sense of these. You know the complex ag system, when you know they have to change their systems, the way they treat poultry and livestock, the way they, you know, treat illnesses and how that all happens in those. Those you know those feed lots and everything like that it's there's a huge shift all the way up that would have to take place.

Dr. Marion Nestle 30:00

Well, you would think there would be more pressure for that shift, because we need to have agriculture done more sustainably. The climate change impact of the way we're producing food is much too high and these things are going to have to change. And that's not going to be easy for the companies that have been making money doing things the way they are, but that's what we have to do. You just wish you had a government that would push this along a little bit more.

Chef James 30:27

Right and that would protect the people more. Sure, you know, looking at foreign countries, was that in Latin America or Mexico, where they were starting to, actually, governments were stepping in to kind of protect the people and actually put labeling on?

Dr. Marion Nestle 30:42

Yeah, it's all over Latin America, because the countries in Latin America can see what happened in the United States and they are terrified that if their population gains weight, they're going to be dealing with type 2 diabetes at a level at which they cannot afford.

Dr. Marion Nestle 31:02

They don't have the healthcare system that will take care of it. They don't have enough money for hospitalizations. The idea of dealing with that level of type 2 diabetes in the population is just absolutely terrifying, and so their public health. People are trying to do preventive measures Now, I think 8 or 10 countries in Latin America that have warning labels on ultra-processed food products. I was in Mexico last fall. I was kind of amazed to go into a supermarket. Half the products in the supermarket have black warning labels on them. Wow.

Dr. Marion Nestle 31:42

Saying that they're high in sugar, salt or saturated fat or calories or artificial sweeteners or other things that they would prefer that people not eat. So what that tells you is you can't go into a packaged food aisle and buy that stuff unless you're putting your health at risk. And these warning labels are so obvious that even people who are illiterate or kids who can't read or people who don't read food labels.

Dr. Marion Nestle 32:13

You just see them. The education is out that you should avoid these products and that's working to some extent, but some of the countries also have restrictions on marketing to children. Mexico has just passed a law that the foods that are sold in schools have to be levels of nutrient quality, something we've never been able to do here very well. There's a lot going on in Latin America. That's very exciting.

Chef James 32:43

That's great, I guess for me, here we are in the United States, there's a lot of pride involved and maybe some smokescreen involved over the years, and it's like we take pride in saying we're the best or we're going to come to the rescue, and we're not really even coming to the rescue of our own food system here in our own country.

Dr. Marion Nestle 33:01

No, and we don't have a healthcare system. That's the part that's really alarming is that we don't have a functional healthcare system so that when people develop these chronic diseases that are related to diet not just type 2 diabetes but heart disease and cancers and more higher susceptibility to things like COVID-19, they're more talented. I mean, it's really bad and you want to prevent that, if you can prevent that.

Chef James 33:32

They seem like they're pretty good bedfellows between our food system and medical.

Dr. Marion Nestle 33:38

The medical system. Yeah, yeah, I mean in the sense that there are food companies that make products that make people sick and then they also make products to make them healthier, so they get it both ways.

Chef James 33:52

Right, yeah, okay.

Dr. Marion Nestle 33:55

But yeah.

Chef James 33:55

I mean.

Dr. Marion Nestle 33:56

I think if you were looking ahead and saying what do we need to do to make Americans healthier, which it seems to me would be good for everybody, Absolutely. Everybody would benefit for that, then you would have to completely redo the food system so that we have an agricultural system that focuses on public health rather than corporate health.

Chef James 34:18

Yeah, exactly Right.

Dr. Marion Nestle 34:20

Is that politically feasible? I doubt it.

Chef James 34:23

Yeah, I agree. Wow, well, and I know, as we're talking about combating this and its portion size, and flip that container over and really look at your ingredients. Do you have any other ways that people can combat this and be a part of constructive change for themselves?

Dr. Marion Nestle 34:43

and their community. Yeah, I mean, there are thousands, literally thousands of organizations in the United States that are working on food issues. They're very easy to find. You just type in food advocacy and whatever the name is of your location and they pop up. I mean, and they're really literally thousands. So you pick your issue and you can join organizations that are working on these issues. You can advocate yourself, you can write your congressional representatives. That really works, by the way.

Chef James 35:18

Oh wow, that's great.

Dr. Marion Nestle 35:20

Yeah, I mean not that many people do it, and if people do, then they pay attention, and I think starting at the local level is really useful because you can see immediate returns, whereas trying to deal with federal government is pretty tough these days.

Chef James 35:37

Right, yeah, exactly Okay.

Dr. Marion Nestle 35:40

You can join a school board, you can join a city council. You can do a lot at the local level to make sure that people have enough food, that people have healthy food. Okay. But there's an educational campaign that school food is done. Well, School food. Even though there are federal rules about what can and cannot be served, the implementation of those rules is extremely local in my experience. Wow Okay.

Dr. Marion Nestle 36:11

So on a school basis, if you've got cooks in the school who want to make healthy food for kids, they're doing it and the kids are eating it. Right. But if you don't care about it, then the kids are getting junk food. It varies a lot, so I think there's lots that can be done at the local level. That's great and it's worth doing. It's absolutely worth doing.

Chef James 36:33

Okay, no, that's wonderful. Thank you for your advice on that. You know, and I was looking at diets and different programs for people to use. How do you feel about those? I mean, as long as you stick with them and you're dedicated, they work. I mean, is that?

Dr. Marion Nestle 36:47

Well, you know, I'm of the. The world is divided into lumpers and splitters.

Chef James 36:53

I'm a lumber. Okay.

Dr. Marion Nestle 36:55

I have to admit it, I'm a lumber, and so for me, diets are so simple. I thought the journalist Michael Pollan can do it in seven words. Wow. So food not too much, mostly plants, and the only thing you need to know about the food part is that he means foods that are not ultra processed. Okay.

Dr. Marion Nestle 37:16

So we minimally processed regular foods that haven't been industrially produced and with impossible lists of ingredients. If you're real food and you're having plant foods in your diet and you're not overeating, you're fine. You don't have to worry about anything else.

Chef James 37:37

That's amazing. Okay, what do you think about the blue zones?

Dr. Marion Nestle 37:40

Well, you know I'm in the movie.

Chef James 37:44

So I'm not.

Dr. Marion Nestle 37:45

I'm not exactly a completely objective observer. Okay, you know, I mean it's fun and what. What Dan Buettner found was that people are doing just what you know what eat food not too much, mostly plants and be physically active, and that takes care of it. You have a good social support system. Right, what everybody's been saying for years you want to be healthy and live to a ripe and healthy old age. You have a reasonably healthy diet. You're physically active, you've got things to do and you've got a community. You're all set. Yep.

Dr. Marion Nestle 38:21

You can't do any better than that, but that's all you have to do. Right. And for me, the eat food not too much. Mostly plants leaves you an enormous amount of room for delicious food. Absolutely, you can have really good food and follow us.

Chef James 38:39

Yeah, you can Yep, absolutely.

Dr. Marion Nestle 38:42

And it doesn't mean no junk food, it's just minimal.

Chef James 38:48

Moderation.

Dr. Marion Nestle 38:49

Yeah, perceive with caution. We're Americans, we don't do that.

Chef James 38:53

Exactly, yeah, yeah, looking at you know everything you've done again I just I want to appreciate you and thank you so much for being really such a pivotal and huge piece to sharing our food history. You know, and supporting and doing everything you can, all your many years for change, being that voice you know. Thank you, Dr. Nestle, for your time.

Dr. Marion Nestle 39:18

Well, thank you so much. This has been fun.

Chef James 39:21

Yeah, all right, everyone, that is a wrap. You can check us out if you like that. Subscribe Also the Instagram Chef Massey. Just keep it simple, chefmassey. com, have a good one. Bye for now.