Food Politics

Food Politics by Marion Nestle is a very informational book so far. It is a very dry book however. So far it is confirming simple world truths. Money corrupts. The government likes money and capitalism and botches at least half of everything they do. So far it would seem as I read that the USDA is not doing what it was intended to do. In my opinion the United States Department of Agriculture was created to regulate the market and to inform the average American of what is going on with their food. Instead, like many things they have become to political and are secretly in bed with many huge food business. Because the USDA is a government agency they are sustained through elected officials. So, the elected officials cannot rock the boat to much as to anger large corporations that have huge amounts of money behind them. If you upset big business to much when you are in the government those business more often then not help you out the door, or at the very least make you job much more difficult. Nestle gives the reader her book in a nutshell and I will try to do the same in my own words. The food industry creates massive amounts of food. In fact they create to much food, however, there are only so many people to eat it. Wall Street demands they continue to grow fiscally so the industries process food to maximize profit by adding more fluff to raw materials to make the raw materials go further. In turn the food becomes less healthy. Then the food industry markets in the most genius of ways all their food to us. They promote an "Eat more mentality." Then they use all their money to lobby the government and shut them up about the scary truths to the food they sell. Another point that Marion makes that I really like is that the food industry puts all the blame of obesity on the consumer. The industry says that consumers should exercise  self control. I think every one would agree that obesity in part is blamed on self control. However, it were just self control than fixing the problem would be rather easy. But, in reality the food environment makes it very difficult to eat healthy. We have reached an age where you have to of a degree in science to really understand what is in your food. We need a food environment that makes healthy eating through self control easy because there are so many truly healthy alternatives out there.