Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (California Studies in Food & Culture) [Hardcover]

I'm telling everyone I know to read this book. It helped me see through the collusion of government and industry in relation to what we eat everyday. It also dispelled any illusions I had that consumers have that much of a choice when it comes to the food they eat and buy. It sounds like a dire subject, but it's a very entertaining read, with many useful charts, photographs, and diagrams.

This is a very well researched book on the pervasive influence of Politics and Industry on the priduction, marketing and advice on food. I was particularly interested in the latter, where the US FDA Food Pyramid is a key feature of the book. The industry reactions to even the slightest changes to this meant that it became a politicised, and thereby meaningless guide to the public. But the flaw I refer to is that the author herself based her role in these matters on a false premise - that fat is bad, that saturated fat is bad and that carbs should be a large part of everyone's diet. So the book lost credibility in my eyes. Aside from this, it is very thorough and highly (but appropriately) damning of industry, driven, in essence, by greed.

This book was a difficult read. The information about the history of each change to the food pyramid (something none of us should use as a dietary guide anyway) was particularly boring and tedious to get through. Much of the book was hard going to read and not written in an engaging or interesting way. It is dull, dull, dull. It has none of the intelligent writing style and ease of reading of so many other books I have read on this topic. The content of the book was also very problematic.

Yes, there is some good information in this book about different ways food companies have tried to skew public opinion about what is healthy and what is not. But unfortunately in this book for every myth busted or interesting fact about bias given, the author reinforces one or two or more other at least as harmful myths or pieces of shocking nutritional misinformation.

The assumption that a low-fat, high-carb, low calorie and preferably vegetarian diet is the healthiest for everyone and that research supports this assertion, really permeates every part of this book. It isn't questioned in any way whatsoever. But this assumption is very wrong.

If aiming for a low-fat, high carb and low-calorie diet makes you feel awful, hungry and ill - as it does for many of us - and has impeded your attempts to maintain a healthy weight, this book is probably best avoided or at least read with a huge grain of salt when it comes to the dietary advice given.

This book says junk food is fine so long as your portions are small and not too high calorie, eating saturated fat increases your heart disease risk, eating according to the food pyramid gives you all the nutrients you need (!), a low salt diet is best, the FDA is a science-based agency that should be given more power than they have already(!), to lose weight you just need to eat less and move more - all of which I would strongly disagree with based on information and research in lots of far better researched books.

One example of the authors' shocking ignorance is when she comments that trans fats raise the risk of heart disease as much as and perhaps even more than saturated fat. She actually says that saturated fat may be worse for you than trans fat! This despite the fact that trans fats are an unnatural fat that has a well-documented and quite shocking negative effect on health, and saturated fat is the sort of natural fat that our ancestors ate, and that we evolved to eat and need to eat be be healthy. Anyone that lists trans fats and saturated fats as equally dangerous should set your alarm bells ringing!

The Danish government banned trans fats and rates of heart disease dropped dramatically. Trans fats contribute to allergies, inflammation, heart disease and obesity, and many other health conditions. Trans fats are unnatural fats. When we consume trans fats our bodies are unable to synthesise them properly and so abnormal cells are formed. There is no safe level of trans fats. Even small amounts can have dramatic effects. If trans fat were to be banned in the US, it is estimated that 275 US lives would be saved each day.

Some saturated fats have anti-cancer benefits. Saturated fats have anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties and saturated fats such as coconut oil are an important part of a healthy diet. We need to eat them to be healthy. Saturated fat sounds scary and gluggy and is often described as 'artery clogging' and 'not heart healthy' but the truth is very different. Saturated fat isn't saturated by some sort of horrific 'glop' but by hydrogen! The same element that is in water. Don't believe all the anti-saturated fat and cholesterol hype. Those myths continue purely because of the interference of vested interest groups in science.

For far better information on fats see Know Your Fats by lipid expert Mary Enig PhD, or The Great Cholesterol Con, Ignore the Awkward, and so on.

The section on supplements is unspeakably bad and it is very clear the author has done very little research in this area. There is a small grain of truth in some of the comments. For example, it is undoubtedly true that a lot of claims are made about supplements that are just not true, but it is misleading to not also note that supplements can have enormous benefit if given at the correct doses and that this is backed up by a lot of solid research. The information given here is beyond skewed and extremely selective, not to mention based on flawed studies which do not at all reflect what nutritional experts are actually recommending. It is not at all the reasonable and educated overview of this topic that it claims to be. It is really outrageous that someone can make such claims considering the safety record and effectiveness of basic vitamin and mineral supplements and it really worries me the effect that such ignorant and fanciful claims can have on peoples health and their ability to treat disease.

If I had listened to 'flat Earth' nonsense like this my severe neurological disease would still be worsening, and not slowly improving month by month as it is now; after 10 years or more of slow deterioration.

Dr Abram Hoffer explains that we need about 45 different nutrients in optimal quantities. He also explains that no nutrient works alone, and that an enzyme reaction that needs three different nutrients to take place, requires all three nutrients and so no one nutrient should be considered more important than the other.

Some nutrients can be obtained in reasonable amounts in food, while others will sometimes or always require the use of supplements to ensure optimal levels. It is not true as some claim that the optimum levels of all nutrients can be obtained through diet alone.

Supplements are necessary, for the following reasons:

* The soils used to grow our food are often very depleted.
* The levels and types of toxic pollution and toxic chemicals we are exposed to are vastly higher now than they were in the past (which requires far higher levels of nutrients than were necessary in the past, to deal with them).
* Many nutrients in food are fragile and only remain fully intact when food is picked and then eaten immediately. Storing foods for long times and heavily processing foods can dramatically lower nutrient levels in the food and may destroy some nutrients entirely; for example, oranges have been found to contain between 100 mg of vitamin C and 0 mg of vitamin C, each.
* The high levels of sugar in the diet of many people is also problematic as sugar is an anti-nutrient.

Supplements are necessary and eating well is also important. As Dr Sherry Rogers writes, 'What you eat has more power over disease than any medication your doctor can prescribe. Food is awesomely powerful.'

It is also important to be aware that the more ill you are, and the more stress your body is under the higher your nutritional needs will be. A person can need many times more vitamin C when ill than they need when they are well, and these higher doses just cannot be gotten from food.

More helpful information on intelligent supplementation is included in books such as Detoxify or Die, Orthomolecular Medicine for Everyone: Megavitamin Therapeutics for Families and Physicians, Primal Body, Primal Mind: Beyond the Paleo Diet for Total Health and a Longer Life among others.

Far better books than this one which set out a diet that is all about health and disease prevention and treatment as well as weight management, and are far better researched and well written, and laos include some information about food politics, include: Eat Fat, Lose Fat: The Healthy Alternative to Trans Fats, Primal Body, Primal Mind: Beyond the Paleo Diet for Total Health and a Longer Life, Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food, Perfect Health Diet: Four Steps to Renewed Health, Youthful Vitality, and Long Life, The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram your genes for effortless weight loss, vibrant health, and boundless energy and others. Fast Food Nation is great too.

Many of us have got fat and ill eating exactly the way this book recommends. Low fat and low calorie diets which include some junk foods and lots of highly processed foods just don't work for so many of us. If it works for the author and some others that is great, each to their own, but for many of us this is not helpful advice and is incorrect. We need to eat real foods and focus on food quality - rather than just endlessly calorie counting. That misses the point completely.

Luckily there are lots of really wonderful diet and nutrition books available today as well as lots of other good books which discuss the politics of food and the tactics of junk food manufacturers to influence public opinion and government policy.

Jodi Bassett, The Hummingbirds' Foundation for M.E. (HFME)