Nutrition, SNAP & Why We Need A Food Revolution

Summary

Fresh Air — Nutrition, SNAP & Why We Need A Food Revolution
Host: Tonya Mosley (NPR)
Guest: Marion Nestle (Food Policy Scholar, Author)
Date: November 11, 2025

---

Episode Overview

In this compelling episode of Fresh Air, journalist Tonya Mosley sits down with renowned nutritionist and food policy scholar Marion Nestle to discuss her new book, What to Eat Now. Their wide-ranging conversation delves deep into the fragility of America’s food system, the politics swirling around nutrition assistance (SNAP), the rise of ultra-processed foods, and the daunting challenge—and necessity—of a food revolution. Together, they dissect how food, politics, marketing, and industry interests shape what ends up on America’s plates.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Fragility of the Food System & SNAP Benefits

[01:51–04:41]

• SNAP Dependency: 42 million Americans (16 million children) depend on SNAP. SNAP benefits do not cover full food needs; the system leaves vulnerable populations exposed.
  • "We have never punished the poor as badly as we're punishing them now." — Marion Nestle [02:09]
• System Under Attack: Food insecurity is tied not to food scarcity, but to poverty and policy. Congress debates SNAP amidst a government shutdown.
• Historical Echoes: Attitudes toward the poor haven’t changed much since the 16th-century English food laws, blaming poverty on the poor themselves.

2. Food and Politics: Changing Perceptions

[03:09–04:41]

• The once-common idea that “food isn’t political” is now outdated.
• Emergence of highly politicized stances around food, with public figures like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. making food issues central in their platforms.

3. The Disappointment of Food Policy Reform

[04:41–09:34]

• Initial hope for meaningful change with RFK Jr. in HHS, and Trump’s surprising commentary on the “food industrial complex."
• The first “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) report set out an ambitious agenda: removing toxins, reforming school food, addressing ultra-processed foods.
• Backtracking: The second MAHA report backpedaled—core issues dropped in favor of voluntary corporate wins (e.g., replacing dyes, switching sweeteners).
  • "Fruit Loops with vegetable dyes are still Fruit Loops." — Marion Nestle [07:31]
  • The focus shifted from regulatory change to superficial adjustments.

4. Industrial Influence & Policy Paralysis

[09:34–11:58]

• Policy retrenchment attributed to intense lobbying by agriculture and food industry interests: threats of job losses, regulatory pushback.
• Private industry and ideology (e.g., skepticism about vaccines, fluoride, seed oils) undermine public health approaches.
  • "We're in an era in which science is just considered just one way of looking at things." — Marion Nestle [11:35]

5. The Business of Supermarkets and Slotting Fees

[11:58–16:08]

• Supermarkets are not agents of nutrition, but of commerce: shelf space is “prime real estate” sold to the highest bidder via slotting fees.
  • "Slotting fees... are payments that food companies make to grocery stores to stock their products where people will see them." — Marion Nestle [12:54]
• Slotting fees keep small producers out, privilege large corporations, and direct customer attention toward highly profitable (often ultra-processed) foods.
• Layouts are designed to maximize exposure to these products and increase impulse purchases.
  • "If you want a bottle of milk, you've got to go to the far corner..." [15:01]

6. Dollar Stores & Food Access Inequality

[16:08–19:20]

• Dollar General’s dramatic rise as a grocery retailer: heavily stocked with ultra-processed foods, only token fresh produce (to meet SNAP requirements).
• Target low-income areas abandoned by major chains; contribute to food deserts and reinforce poor diet cycles.
  • "Large grocery chains don't want to be in those neighborhoods... dollar stores moved in." — Marion Nestle [18:10]
• Industry consolidation: A few chains control a majority of the market, dictating product selection and prices.

7. Ultra-Processed Foods & Nutrition Paradigm Shift

[21:57–26:56]

• Introduction of “ultra-processed foods” as designated by Carlos Monteiro: industrial products laden with additives, engineered to be “irresistible.”
  • "Corn on the cob is unprocessed, canned corn is processed and Doritos are ultra processed." — Marion Nestle [24:01]
• Strong links between ultra-processed food consumption, overeating, and ill health.

8. Environmental Impacts & The “Triple Duty Diet”

[24:29–27:56]

• Ultra-processed foods disproportionately contribute to environmental harm due to their production, packaging, and waste.
• U.S. food system grows vastly more calories than needed—feeding animals and fueling cars, not people.
• "We would be much better off eating diets that had more plants and less animal." — Marion Nestle [25:38]
• The "triple duty diet": A mostly plant-based diet that addresses hunger, obesity, and climate change simultaneously.
  • Michael Pollan’s maxim: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”
• U.S. overproduction and agricultural subsidies drive waste and inefficiency.

9. Export of Processed Foods & Food Colonialism

[29:48–32:22]

• Aggressive multinational marketing: American ultra-processed foods penetrate rural, hungry regions globally; displace traditional diets (e.g. Coca-Cola in Myanmar, U.S. cereals in India).
• Nestle calls this trend “food colonialism.”
  • "These are deliberate attempts to try to replace traditional foods in these countries with American ultra processed products." — Marion Nestle [31:43]

10. Digital Marketing & Children as Targets

[33:25–36:28]

• Marketing sophistication: Digital platforms and influencers target children with tailored advertisements; monitoring and regulation lag far behind.
• "What's going on digitally is so beyond what most people can comprehend... I'm somebody who's been deep faked." — Marion Nestle [35:20]
• Kids can’t reliably distinguish between content and advertising until teenage years.

11. Preserving Joy in Food & Navigating the System

[36:28–37:45]

• Finding pleasure in eating is possible, but doing so “asks a lot of the customer.”
  • "I think you can eat healthfully at any grocery store in America if it's got any kind of variety. You just have to know what to choose." — Marion Nestle [37:33]

12. The Need for a Food Revolution

[37:45–40:15]

• Nestle envisions a sweeping transformation: redirect agriculture toward feeding people, elect public health–focused officials, demand social responsibility from corporations.
  • "Our food system is unfixable without a revolution." — Marion Nestle [37:57]
• Advocacy and collective action are essential; no individual can fix the system alone.
  • "You have to join organizations... Because if you don't do it, who will?" — Marion Nestle [40:06]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On SNAP and Food Politics:

• "We have 42 million people in this country, 16 million of them children, who can't rely on a consistent source of food... It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen. It's unprecedented." — Marion Nestle [02:12]

On Policy Rollbacks:

• "Fruit Loops with vegetable dyes are still Fruit Loops." — Marion Nestle [07:31]
• "If you want to reduce obesity in the United States and help people eat more healthfully, you've got to do things like change the agricultural subsidy structure." — Marion Nestle [08:42]

On the Power of the Food Industry:

• "I can assume [lobbying] is what happened because that's what always happens." — Marion Nestle [10:12]

On the Supermarket Business Model:

• "The purpose of a supermarket is to sell as much food as possible to as many people as possible, as often as possible at as high a price as they can get away with. I can't say that enough." — Marion Nestle [15:04]

On Marketing to Children:

• "We're not watching social influencers... We're not watching any of this stuff aimed at getting kids to want products." — Marion Nestle [34:40]
• "There’s a deep fake ad going around on the Internet... It looks like me and it sounds like me, and I didn't do any of it." — Marion Nestle [35:32]

On Change and Revolution:

• "Our food system is unfixable without a revolution." — Marion Nestle [37:57]
• "If we don't do what we can to advocate for a better food system, we won't get it." — Marion Nestle [39:46]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Fragility of SNAP and Poverty: [01:51–04:41]
• Food Politics and Historical Echoes: [03:09–04:41]
• Hope and Disillusionment in Food Policy Reform: [04:41–07:14]
• Backtracking of MAHA & Corporate "Wins": [07:14–09:34]
• Lobbying and Policy Paralysis: [09:34–11:58]
• Supermarket Economics and Slotting Fees: [11:58–16:08]
• Rise of Dollar Stores and Food Deserts: [16:08–19:20]
• Ultra-Processed Foods Defined: [21:57–24:01]
• Environmental and Systemic Costs: [24:29–27:56]
• Overproduction and Food Waste: [27:56–29:06]
• Export of American Processed Foods: [29:48–32:22]
• Marketing to Children, AI & Deepfakes: [33:25–36:28]
• How to Eat Well & Joy in Food: [36:28–37:45]
• The Case for Revolution & Individual Action: [37:45–40:15]

---

Summary

This episode offers a frank, insightful exploration of the tangled web that is America’s food system. Marion Nestle’s expertise and candor cut through jargon—laying bare how corporate interests, government subsidies, and unchecked marketing shape not just individual choice but the health of the nation and planet. Her call for revolutionary change—starting at the policy and systems level, demanding broader collective advocacy—underscores that meaningful progress can't be left to individuals alone. If you care about what’s on your plate, why it got there, and who it truly serves, this is essential listening.

---

For further learning, Marion Nestle’s new book is What to Eat Now.

Transcript

[Announcer]

This message comes from Capital One. Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com bank for details. Capital One NA Member FDIC this is FRESH AIR.

[Tonya Mosley]

I'm Tonya Moseley. Today my guest is Marion Nestle, the molecular biologist turned nutritionist and food policy scholar whose voice has helped decode for decades why what we eat and why it matters. Her well known book what to Eat became a consumer bible of sorts when it came out in 2006, guiding readers aisle by aisle through the supermarket while exposing how industry, marketing and policy steer our food choices. Two decades later, she's back with what to Eat Now, a revised field guide for the supermarket of 2025, where ultra processed foods, plant based meats, corporate organics and and our ability to have food delivered to our very doorstep have rewritten the rules. Nestle's journey began in the classroom. When she first began teaching a nutrition course in the early 70s, she says it felt like she was falling in love with the subject. She went on to serve as associate dean for human biology at the University of California, San Francisco, and as staff director for nutrition policy at the Department of Health and Human Services Women, where she helped shape dietary guidelines for Americans in the 1990s. Nestle is the author of 15 books, including Safe the Politics of Food Safety and Soda Politics. We recorded this conversation last week as courts in Congress were battling over SNAP benefits for more than 42 million Americans during the government shutdown. And Marianne Nessel, welcome to FRESH air.

[Marion Nestle]

Oh, glad to be here.

[Tonya Mosley]

Well, Marianne, before we dive in, I want to talk to you a little bit about what's happening with SNAP benefits. Food banks are already reporting that they have been inundated with people in need of food. I want to know what you're thinking about in this moment, what this moment reveals, maybe about how fragile our food system here in the US Is right now.

[Marion Nestle]

Well, I think what it reveals is how fragile our economy is. We have 42 million people in this country, 16 million of them children, who can't rely on a consistent source of food from day to day and have to depend on a government program that provides them with benefits that really don't cover their food needs. They only cover part of their food needs. And this amount of money is under attack and is looked at as a cash cow that will, instead of paying for people's meals, will pay for tax cuts for people who have lots and lots of money to begin with it's the weirdest thing I've ever seen. It's unprecedented. We have never punished the poor as badly as we're punishing them now.

[Tonya Mosley]

You know, when you first began your journey in nutrition, I think I heard you say that people actually questioned whether food and politics went together. That, like, food is not political. People were really surprised by that. You went on then to talk about how in America we don't have a problem with a lack of food. It's about poverty, it's about policy. How are you seeing these forces play out right now in the way the government is approaching nutrition assistance?

[Marion Nestle]

Well, when I wrote my book Food Politics in 2002, the first question I got asked was, what does food have to do with politics? Nobody asks me that anymore. Part of that is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. And what he's doing, which is so obviously political around food. And everybody can see what's happening with food assistance. When I look at what's happening at food insistence, I'm just stunned at how similar this is to what happened in the 16th century when the English passed the English food laws. And they were passed with the idea that the poor were poor not because of bad luck being born into the wrong family or circumstances beyond their control, but the idea that the poor were poor by choice and that what they wanted was to live on handouts. And the idea that hundreds of years later, we're still thinking the same way is just shocking to me.

[Tonya Mosley]

RFK Jr. Is at the HHS talking about toxins and ultra processed foods. Many of the issues that you also talk about, too. You guys seem to be aligned on, on many things. Do you see a genuine opening here for food policy reform?

[Marion Nestle]

Well, I was very hopeful when he was appointed because he was talking about, let's get the toxins out of the food supply. Let's make America healthy again, let's make America's kids healthy again. Let's do something about ultra processed foods. Let's do something about mercury and fish and a lot of other issues that I thought, oh, how absolutely terrific that we're going to have somebody who cares about the same kind of issues I do. This is very exciting. And when President Trump introduced his nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. On social media, President Trump talked about the food industrial complex. I nearly fell off my chair. I thought, here's the President sounding just like me. What's going on here? So then we. The first Maher report, the first Make America Healthy Again report, which talked about a lot of these issues and put in an aspirational Agenda. We're going to work on this, this, this, this, this and this. All of that sounded terrific. And then the second report came out and they had backed off on nearly all of the things that I thought were really critically important.

[Tonya Mosley]

You have been skeptical of his anti.

[Marion Nestle]

Vaccine rules from the beginning. I'm a public health person. I see vaccination as one of the. Well, first of all, I'm old enough that I remember what it was like when we didn't have vaccinations. You know, I remember what it was like to be a kid in the era of polio. You couldn't get go swimming in the summer, you couldn't play with your friends in the summer. It was terrifying, absolutely terrifying. You never knew when something absolutely terrible was going to happen and paralyze you for life. I remember what it was like before measles vaccines, when kids were sick, kids died, just like kids are getting sick and dying now. And to go back to that makes no sense to me at all.

[Tonya Mosley]

What were some of the things that were the most important to you that you felt like were dropped in that second run?

[Marion Nestle]

Oh, marketing to children, Reduction of ultra processed foods, cleaning up food in schools, getting the toxins out of the fridge, food supply at the production level and other kinds of things that there were things that had to do not only with Health and Human Services, but also with the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency. But these things didn't happen. What did happen were declared MAHA wins. And the MAHA wins are companies voluntarily agreeing to remove artificial color dyes from their products, which I'm in favor of. I think that's great. But Fruit Loops with vegetable dyes are still Fruit Loops. M and Ms. With vegetable dyes are still M&Ms. It's not going to make a big difference in the food supply on ultra processed foods. They've said they want to define them, but that's all they've said. They're investigating the possibility of looking at marketing to children, but with no sense at all that there are regulatory initiatives that they're considering. And they declared a big win when Coca Cola said it would substitute cane sugar for high fructose corn syrup. Something that I termed nutritionally hilarious because they're basically the same biochemically and they're not going to make any difference at all. If you want to reduce obesity in the United States and help people eat more healthfully, you've got to do things like change the agricultural subsidy structure. You have to stop the ability of food companies to market ultra processed foods, especially to children. You need better school food. You need universal school meals. You need much more money in school meals than presently exists. You have to look for ways to make healthy foods an easier and less expensive choice. And look for every public policy that you can to do those kinds of things. And I don't see that happening.

[Tonya Mosley]

You've worked inside of governmental agencies, so you kind of know a bit about how the machine works. What do you think happened between that first Make America Healthy Again guideline proposal and the second one, why they were so drastically different? Why the priorities changed in such a stark way?

[Marion Nestle]

Well, they found out what lobbying was about. You know, I mean, they were hit with. And there's a fair amount of evidence that they met with agricultural producers, they met with food industry representatives, and the food industry representatives and agricultural producers told them what the effects of these kinds of changes would be on the bottom lines of these industries. I'm sure they talked about job losses. I'm sure they talked about having to move their businesses overseas. I'm sure they had all kinds of lobbying threats like that. I wasn't there. I didn't witness it. But I can assume that that's what happened because that's what always happens.

[Tonya Mosley]

Do you think that when it comes to public health there seems to be, I don't know if you would call it like stratifying or siloing, like there are vaccines, there's food, there's medicine. And why don't you think the government looks at it in a holistic way, as a holistic approach?

[Marion Nestle]

Well, because there's so many. There's so much private industry involved in this and so much ideology. This is a government that has an enormous amount of ideology with some very ideology based views of what public health is about. You know, the idea that natural immunity is better than vaccination immunity, or that that fluoride is poisoning children, or that seed oils are poisoning America, or that high fructose corn syrup is poisoning America. I mean, these are not ideas that are backed by science. But we're in a era in which science is just considered just one way of looking at things. And people have different sets of facts that they believe. And this is part of food politics now in a way that's very troubling.

[Tonya Mosley]

So first off, I want to say your method. You approach this book like an investigative journalist. You visited stores wherever you traveled, you interviewed managers. You make a point to say, though, that supermarkets are a business. They are not in the business of nutrition at all. And I think that when you say it out Loud. It's of course. But I think there may be maybe an implicit thing or a subconscious idea that I'm going to the grocery store and there have been good choices that have been picked out for me for the good of my health and nutrition, and not necessarily because it's about selling things, but there are some things that really set for us what we see when we walk into a grocery store. The things that are at eye level for us. Like slotting fees. You call them suspiciously like bribes.

[Marion Nestle]

Yes.

[Tonya Mosley]

What are slotting fees?

[Marion Nestle]

Sorry about that.

[Tonya Mosley]

Well, what are they and how do they impact what we encounter when we.

[Marion Nestle]

Walk into the store? They're payments that food companies make to grocery stores to stock their products where people will see them. You know, there are rules about sales in supermarkets. The more products you see, the more you're likely to buy. Therefore, the products that are organized so that you cannot miss them are in prime supermarket real estate. And companies pay the supermarkets to place their products at eye level, at the ends of aisles. Those have a special name, end caps. And at the cash register, when you see products at the cash register, they're paying fees to the supermarket by the inch of space. And that's how supermarkets make a lot of their money, is through slotting fees. And of course, what this does is it keeps small producers out because they can't afford to make those kinds of payments because these payments are pretty expensive, very expensive. I mean, we're talking about thousands or in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars. And every single product that is in a supermarket is placed where it is for a reason. There is research. I mean, what I can't believe and just can't get over is the amount of research that goes into it, the amount of consumer research, focus groups, camera research. I mean, every kind of social science research that you can think of is used to plot out are going to walk through the stores where the items are placed, what people are going to see, what they're most likely to buy. And what you want to do, of course, is you want to place the most highly profitable items where they're going to get the most viewers. And it's not. The joke is, of course, if you want a bottle of milk, you've got to go to the far corner, the furthest corner from the entrance. The purpose of that is not only to keep the milk cold because the refriger is along the wall, but also to get you to walk through the store, preferably through as many aisles as.

[Tonya Mosley]

Possible because it's a staple so they know you're going for milk and eggs and meats. So to have to walk through the entire store to get there. Then you go through all of that ultra processed stuff and all of the packaged stuff.

[Marion Nestle]

It's great for your step counts.

[Tonya Mosley]

You mentioned something about camera research. This is so fascinating. When you say camera research you mean the cameras that are in the store, but also the that are in the self checkout.

[Marion Nestle]

Well, and also there are studies that are done where they put cameras where they watch customers and just watch what people do and set up different experiments within the store and check the way people respond to them. The purpose of a supermarket is to sell as much food as possible to as many people as possible, as often as possible at as high a price as they can get away with. I can't say that enough. That's its purpose.

[Tonya Mosley]

You have this handy little list of the top grocers in the US and the list is from 2023, but I think the list still stands even in 2025. And the names won't surprise many. Walmart, Kroger, Costco, Publix. But there's also one on the list that's relatively new and that's Dollar General. How did dollar stores get into the food business?

[Marion Nestle]

Well, they started out by selling a of lot the most popular ultra processed foods. If you want to buy an ultra processed food you go to a dollar store because there it is. They're going to have chips, they're going to have sugar sweetened cereals, they're going to have every junk food you could possibly think of. That's what they make their money off of. They will have a few fruits and vegetables, a few sad bananas, a few sad apples, maybe some pears, may some green vegetables, but not very many. And they'll be in a case off somewhere because they have to offer those because they're taking SNAP benefits. They're required to meet the stocking requirements of the SNAP program which requires them to have a certain number of fruits and vegetables. It's just been raised to seven varieties in order to be allowed to accept electronic benefits transfer the benefits for SNAP recipients. And they're just everywhere. And during the pandemic particularly, they just proliferated like mad and they undercut local stores. They're cheaper, they have poorer quality food, but the prices are lower. Price is an enormous issue.

[Tonya Mosley]

These dollar stores, they're everywhere, but they're also concentrated in very specific places. In poor and urban neighborhoods.

[Marion Nestle]

Well, yes, because large grocery chains don't want to be in those neighborhoods. But you know, if you want a Trader Joe's or a Whole Foods or a Wegmans in your neighborhood, you've got to have hundreds of thousands of people within walking distance or question driving distance who make very, very good incomes. Or the stores aren't going to go there. They're going to close the stores that are not performing well, meaning having lots and lots of people spending lots and lots of money at them. And so as the big grocery stores have closed in inner city neighborhoods, the dollar stores moved in.

[Tonya Mosley]

You know, I grew up with a grocery store chain in the Detroit area called Farmer Jackson. And it was there for many, many decades. And then poof, I think it was the early 2000s. They just disappeared. And it seemed to be that way throughout the country and places in major cities. When did we start to see these family run stores like that close? It was before the pandemic.

[Marion Nestle]

Oh, it was long before the pandemic. I mean, the tendency has been, you know, it's the same thing everywhere in the economy, get bigger, get out, so that the top three chains or three or four grocery chains own more than half the business, 60, 70% of the business. And whenever you have a highly concentrated industry, like the meat industry, for example, where three companies own 85% of the meat, they get to set prices, they get to set the rules of the game. They get to go to Congress and to the president and say, we don't want dietary guidelines to say anything bad about our products and we want the president to keep meatpacking plants open during the pandemic even though it's killing lots of people.

[Tonya Mosley]

Our guest today is Marian Nestle, author of what to Eat now and one of the most influential voices in food politics. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Moseley and this is FRESH AIR.

[Justin Chang]

This message comes from AT&T. America's first network is also its fastest and most reliable based on RootMetrics. United States Root Score Report 1H2025 tested with best commercially available smartphones on three national mobile networks across all available network types. Your experiences may vary. RootMetrics rankings are not an endorsement of AT&T. When you compare, there's no comparison.

[Announcer]

AT and T. This message comes from Carvana. Buy a car 100% [e-mail] with financing to fit your budget. Enjoy seven days to return. If it's not a fit, limitations and exclusions may apply. See return [e-mail] this message comes from Saatva, official mattress and restorative sleep provider for team usa. All athletes have to clear hurdles at some point, one of which is the need to get quality restorative sleep to perform at their peak. That's why Saatva is proud to be providing athletes with mattresses and bedding for the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games. You can enjoy that kind of sleep, too. Visit saatva.com NPR and save $200 on $1,000 or more.

[Tonya Mosley]

Evergreen trees are Pacific Northwest icons in journalism.

[Announcer]

An evergreen story isn't tied to one news cycle. It goes deep and helps you understand the world. The Evergreen is also a podcast from OPB about the Northwest. I'm Jen Chavez. Listen to the Evergreen Podcast from OPB every Monday, part of the NPR Network.

[Tonya Mosley]

This is FRESH air. I'm Tonya Moseley, and we're talking with Marion Nestle, whose new book what to Eat now explores how our food system has changed from the rise of ultra processed foods to the shifting politics of what's on our plates. Okay, Marian, you identify three nutrition concepts that have emerged since your first run of what to eat in 2006. And those three things are the food systems have have changed ultra processed foods and triple duty diets. And I want to slow down and talk about all three, but I want to first have you give us a brief understanding of each. So in 2006, you wrote about processed foods. A few years later, we were introduced to ultra processed foods. Give us some examples of ultra processed foods. Just remind us of what's the difference?

[Marion Nestle]

Oh, well, ultra processed is a specific category of food named by Carl Carlos Montero, who's a public health professor in Brazil, who came up with the concept. And these are industrially produced foods that contain large numbers of color, texture and flavor additives that you don't necessarily have access to in supermarkets or in your home kitchen. And they're now associated. Consumption of a lot of them is now associated in literally hundreds of studies with poor health outcome. Those studies are observational and they cannot prove causation. But we now have very, very well controlled clinical trials, at least three of them so far, that show that people who eat a lot of ultra processed foods take in more calories than they otherwise would if they were eating unprocessed or minimally processed foods. And the easiest example to explain the difference is corn on the cob is unprocessed, canned corn is processed and Doritos are ultra processed.

[Justin Chang]

Mm.

[Marion Nestle]

Mm.

[Tonya Mosley]

Okay. Yeah. They're designed to be irresistible, basically addictive, like you can't stop eating a bag of Doritos.

[Marion Nestle]

You can't eat just one.

[Tonya Mosley]

One of the things that's so fascinating is you write that ultra processed foods are responsible for as much as a third of the environmental damage from food in wealthy countries. First of all, explain that. And why is that?

[Marion Nestle]

Well, that has to do with the cost of product, of the ingredients, plus the packaging, plus the waste, plus everything that goes into taking a food, transforming it industrially into something that doesn't look anything like the food to begin with. And then you've got all that packaging to deal with. I want to talk about the food system a little bit too, because it's so relevant to this. The easiest way to describe the food system is again with corn. Because if you look at the 12 billion bushels of corn that are produced in the United States every year, roughly 45% of them of that corn is used to feed animals. Another 45% is used to make ethanol for automobiles. And don't even get me started on that. I think it's just crazy leaving maybe 10% of the corn that's produced in the United States as food for people in all its form. Not only corn on the cob, but corn ingredients, high fructose corn syrup, all of that falls into that 10% category. We don't have a food system that's aimed at producing food for people. We have a food system that's aimed at producing feed for animals and fuel for automobiles. But the emphasis on animals is not very good for our environment because beef are. The production of beef causes the largest release of greenhouse gases of any other food in the food system by a very large margin. So we would be much better off eating diets that had more plants and less animal. Not no animal necessarily, but certainly a lot less. And that's where the triple duty dietary advice comes in. Because the diet that is best for preventing hunger, preventing obesity and its consequences, and preventing climate change is one in the same diet, which is to eat real food processed as little as possible, with a big emphasis on plants.

[Tonya Mosley]

Right. Triple duty diet. It's a diet that simultaneously addresses hunger, obesity, and climate change.

[Marion Nestle]

And it's the same diet as the one that's best for health. Isn't that nice? I mean, it all works out and easily, easily summarized by Michael Pollan and his famous seven words, Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. I took 700 pages to do the same thing.

[Tonya Mosley]

Well, I mean, okay, that solution seems clear. Eat more plants, eat less beef. But you write that the American food supply provides twice as many calories at the same time as needed, while 40% of food produced is thrown away. And we're talking about this right as we also are understanding that there's global hunger. 800 million people face global hunger. So how do we talk seriously about triple duty diets addressing food insecurity when the fundamental structure of our food system is designed to overproduce and waste food?

[Marion Nestle]

Well, that's why I think food systems thinking is so important. Our food system in the United States produces 4,000 calories a day for every man, woman and little tiny baby in the country. That's roughly twice what the population needs on average. So waste is built into the system? It's built, yeah.

[Tonya Mosley]

Why though?

[Marion Nestle]

Because that's how the subsidies work. The agricultural subsidies encourage food producers to produce as much food as possible because they get paid for the amount of food that they produce. 10% of the waste occurs at the supermarket level. Surprisingly little. Supermarkets have gotten really good at inventory control. They're very, very good at it. And there's very little supermarket waste. You think there's going to be a lot, they're going to be throwing away a lot of produce, but they really don't. And then 20% of it is at home. And that's something we can do something about. But it's only a small part of the problem. It's a much bigger problem. It's a systems problem because it's built into the system.

[Tonya Mosley]

Is there a country or countries that have successfully implemented anything close to this triple duty dietary approach?

[Marion Nestle]

Not that I can think of offhand. You know, the European. There are countries in Europe that can. They're much smaller than us and they are somehow able to manage these kinds of things a lot better than we do. We have a lot to learn from countries in Europe along those lines and a lot to learn from countries in Latin America about how to prevent obesity and its consequences through, through labeling rules and rules about marketing and that sort of thing. But we're Americans. We don't listen to anybody else.

[Tonya Mosley]

There is something that you, you write about when it comes to ultra processed foods that I was really surprised by, that some of those same products are flooding into rural areas where hunger is highest. Here in the United States, but also in parts of Africa and western Asia and the Caribbean. And they're pushed by these aggressive marketing tactics in low prices. Help us understand what's going on here. Are wealthy nations essentially creating these foods, then exporting them to the world's poorest regions?

[Marion Nestle]

Well, of course they are. I mean, you have an American product with American aura of modernity and identity. And these products are not so expensive that nobody can afford them. They're cheap enough so that even poor people can afford them and they're sold in these countries. I mean, when I was writing my book, Soda Politics was right at the time that Coca Cola there were only a couple of countries in the world that still did not have Coca Cola. One of them was Myanmar, formerly Burma. And there was the effort that Coca Cola made to introduce Coca Cola into Myanmar was astounding to me. First of all, they had to teach people how to to like cold drinks because there was no history of drinking cold drinks in that country. And so they would teach people how to drink cold drinks. They had to. I mean, they had to go through educational efforts, putting an enormous amount of money into having the country open up to Coca Cola. And, you know, and I saw this on a trip to India some years ago. There was a box of an American breakfast cereal on a shelf and it was marketed as having the nutrition of two chapatis and being better than Indian breakfast foods. So these are deliberate attempts to try to replace traditional foods in these countries with American ultra processed products. And that's a form of food colonialism. I don't know what you would call it, but it's certainly not good for the health of the people in those countries.

[Tonya Mosley]

Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is Marian Nestle, a longtime food policy scholar and author of what to Eat Now. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH air.

[Announcer]

Share this message comes from NPR sponsor Adobe, introducing the all new Adobe Acrobat studio. Now with AI powered PDF spaces. Need to turn 100 pages of market research into 5 insights with the Click templates for a sales proposal that'll close that deal or an AI specialist to tailor the tone of your market report. You can do all that with the all new Adobe Acrobat Studio. Learn [e-mail] do that with Acrobat.

[Tonya Mosley]

Hey, it's Ray from Car Talk.

[Marion Nestle]

Are you tired of all the depth and thoughtful care that goes into NPR shows? Want some good old fashioned goofing around and stumbling to figure out what's going on? Well, I've been taking occasional car questions again. You can hear them by signing up for NPR along with lots of other bonus questions content.

[Tonya Mosley]

Just go to plus.NPR.org this is FRESH AIR. And today we're talking to Marion Nestle, a molecular biologist turned food policy advocate whose research and writing have shaped how Americans think about nutrition, marketing and the power structures of the food industry. Have you done any research or study on the sophistication of marketing to children? Today I have a 12 year old, so they don't watch TV. They're not in the same ways that I used to be marketed as a young person. It's not the same anymore. But they have their favorite YouTube celebrities or their games, their video games and gamers. And are there any regulations about those spaces? And have you done any research about that type of marketing?

[Marion Nestle]

I haven't personally done the research, but there are research studies coming out one after another after another. A lot of them from the Rudd Center Food Policy that looks at digital marketing to children. And it's horrifying. I mean it's just absolutely gasp inducing because we don't see it as adults. We don't see it. We're not watching social influencers, we're not watching AI algorithms, we're not watching any of this stuff aimed at getting kids to want products and the level of sophistication of them. Marketing is extraordinary because it's algorithm run and they can tell by the kinds of things that kids click on what they're interested in. And they feed them more and more about what they're interested in. And there are now influencers who are paid to market products, but they don't have to declare it. They're supposed to declare it, but they don't always. And there's very little monitoring of it. I mean, I think what's going on digitally is so beyond what most people can comprehend. Certainly it's beyond what I can comprehend. And I'm somebody who's been deep faked where there's a deep fake ad going around on the Internet that I didn't have anything to do with. And it looks like that's you and it looks like me and it sounds like me and I didn't do any of it.

[Tonya Mosley]

What is it? Marketing?

[Marion Nestle]

It's marketing some kind of kind of product or an idea that you should fast and not eat breakfast. I mean, it's really weird and it's impossible to get it taken down and it's all over the Internet and it's not me, but it sure looks like me and sounds like me sort of. And so, you know, you have kids dragged into this and they're not capable until they're 12, 14, 16 years old really of telling the difference between marketing and real content.

[Tonya Mosley]

You know, I know people always ask you what do you eat? But I actually think I want to ask a different question because I know that you've said that you're a total foodie who views food as one of life's greatest pleasures. I mean, and we all.

[Marion Nestle]

We all eat.

[Tonya Mosley]

But how do you maintain that joy while knowing everything that you know?

[Marion Nestle]

I just really love the taste of food. I really love it. I always have, since I was a young child at a summer camp where I got to pick vegetables from a garden and discovered what real vegetables taste like. I've just loved them ever since. And, you know, good food is available everywhere, and I'm lucky enough and privileged enough to be able to afford it. I don't eat that much anymore because I'm ancient and I don't have much metabolism left. So my metabolism is so slowed down. I don't eat much, but I love to eat. But in general, I think you can eat healthfully at any grocery store in America if it's got any kind of variety. You just have to know what to choose and know how to pick. But it asks a lot of the customer.

[Tonya Mosley]

You have said something pretty astounding that's kind of been staying with me. I've heard you say this a couple of times, that our food system is unfixable without a revolution. What would that revolution look like?

[Marion Nestle]

Well, I think it would start with transforming our agricultural production system to one that was focused on food for people instead of animals and automobiles. We would need to change our electoral system so that we could elect officials who were interested in public health rather than corporate health. We would need to fix our economy so that Wall street favors corporations who have social values and public health values as part of their corporate mission. Those are revolutionary concepts at this point because they seem so far from what is attainable. But I think if we don't work on that now, if we don't do what we can to advocate for a better food system, we won't get it. And it's only if we advocate for it that we have a chance of getting it. And you never know. Sometimes you get lucky.

[Tonya Mosley]

I mean, you know, it seems so daunting when you say all of those things, especially at this moment in the political climate that we're in at this time. And I just wonder, what. What do you tell people on an individual level as they think about, well, what are the things that I can do to actually be a part of a bigger revolution to fix our food systems?

[Marion Nestle]

Well, I tell people that they can't do it on their own. That even the act of going into a grocery store and trying to make healthy choices means that you, as an individual are up against an entire food system system that is aimed at getting you to eat the most profitable foods possible, regardless of their effects on health and the environment. So you have to join organizations. You have to join with other people who are interested in the same issues and concerned about the same problems and get together with them to set some goals for what you'd like to do and then work towards those goals. Because if you don't do it, who will?

[Tonya Mosley]

Marian Nestle, it's been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much.

[Marion Nestle]

Thank you.

[Tonya Mosley]

Marianne Nestle is the author of what to Eat Now. Coming up, our film critic Justin Chang reviews the new film Sentimental Value. This is FRESH air.

[Announcer]

There are tens of thousands of veterans behind bars in the US Often without any of the mental health services they may need.

[Marion Nestle]

When you go to prison, you automatically lose your benefits. As a veteran, you become a war to the state.

[Announcer]

How much do we owe these veterans who have fought our wars? Listen now to the Sunday story on the up first podcast from npr. Hi, it's Terry.

[Marion Nestle]

Our co host Tanya Mosley and I will be doing an end of the year FRESH AIR plus bonus episode answering listener questions about the show and about ourselves. You can send the questions now to fresh airpluspr.org with plus spelled out. That's fresh airplus. P. R.org you ever get to the.

[Announcer]

Pharmacy and you're expecting your medication to.

[Tonya Mosley]

Cost 20 bucks, but instead it's 200.

[Film Critic Narrator]

Or a thousand and you're like, wait, really?

[Marion Nestle]

Like, are you sure? Is there some kind of mistake?

[Announcer]

This week on the Life Kit podcast, what to do when youn Prescription Costs Way More Than youn Expected. You can listen in the NPR app.

[Tonya Mosley]

Or wherever you get your podcasts. This is FRESH air. Four years after their Oscar nominated comedy the Worst Person in the World, the Danish born Norwegian director Joachim Trier and actor Renate Reidsve are together on a new drama, Sentimental Value. The movie, which also features Stellan Skarsgrd and Elle Fanning, won the Grand Prix at this year's Cannes Film Festival and will represent Norway in this year's Oscar race for best International Feature. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review.

[Film Critic Narrator]

Few filmmakers are as attuned as Joachim Trier to the inner lives of young people. In superb movies like reprise Oslo, Aug 31 and the worst Person in the World, he has probed the artistic dreams and frustrated desires of characters trust, trying and often failing to figure out who they are. Trier's thoughtfulness is apparent even in his more middling films like the Jesse EISENBERG drama Louder Than Bombs and the supernatural thriller Thelma, both of which were keyed in to the profound ways our families can mess us up. Complicated parent child relationships are also at the heart of Sentimental Value, a new drama that many have hailed as Trier's best movie to date. But I've seen the film twice now, and although it's thoughtfully crafted and well acted, it strikes me as one of Trier's lesser efforts. The kind of lofty, self consciously mature work that often gets more praise than its richer, livelier predecessors. Renate Reinsveh, the radiant star of the Worst Person in the World, here, plays Nora, an accomplished stage actor whose mother has recently died. As she grieves with her younger sister Agnes, wonderfully played by Inga Ipsdotter, Lilias, Nora must deal with the return of their long estranged father, Gustav, played by Stellan Skarsgrd. Gustav, a film director of some note, abandoned the family when the girls were still young. Now, years later, he surprises Nora by presenting her with a new script and asking her to play the lead role. Nora turns him down, and so Gustav casts a Hollywood star, Rachel Kemp, played by Elle Fanning. Gustav's movie is being financed by Netflix, which allows Trier to introduce some delectable film industry satire. Rachel is game and loves Gustav's work, but she's clearly ill at ease with the material, partly because she isn't Norwegian and partly because the character seems based on Gustav's mother, who died tragically when he was just a boy. In this scene, Rachel meets with Nora, hoping to gain more insight into not only the role, but also Gustav's family dynamics.

[Tonya Mosley]

Why didn't you want to do the role?

[Marion Nestle]

I can't work with him. Why? We can't really talk.

[Tonya Mosley]

But he wanted you to do it.

[Announcer]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Tonya Mosley]

I don't know. I just can't. I can't get a handle on her, you know, the more that I study her, the more lost I feel trying to be her. It's like her sadness is. It's such an overwhelming part of her.

[Film Critic Narrator]

In this scene and many others, Trier directs us to pay attention to his actors shifting expressions and silences, all the pointed things they leave unsaid. When Nora has an unexplained attack of stage fright on the opening night of her play, we wonder if it's rooted in a certain ambivalence about acting, a profession that connects her to her father. Whether she likes it or not. Agnes and Gustav get along better, possibly because she starred in one of his films when she was a young girl. A brief bonding experience that her sister never had. Gustav, it seems, is the kind of father who can only parent through a camera lens. It's bittersweet that he treats her Rachel with a paternal warmth that he seldom shows his own daughters. In the uniformly strong cast, I liked Fanning the best. Her character has a bracing and very American directness that cuts through all the wry Nordic reserve. Trier clearly respects the audience's intelligence, which earns our respect in return. But for every sensitive, perceptive moment in Sentimental Value, there's another that feels coy, even complacent. Trier and his regular co writer Eskild Vogt seem strangely incurious about their characters art. I wanted to see more of Nora's acting and to hear more of Gustav's script in lieu of this. The movie floats a lot of whispery notions about how art and life converge, even when artists turn out to be lousy parents. It's a suggests art itself can be a vessel for reconciliation and healing. This idea is not exactly the stuff of revelation, and the movie basically rubber stamps it without developing or dramatizing it anew. A big part of the story involves the beloved family house where Nora and Agnes grew up and which Gustav wants to use as the shooting location for his new film. We're meant to see that our homes become repositories of memory, filled with the ghosts of generations past. But there's something a little precious about these themes, just as there's something pat and predictable about the way the drama resolves in building toward a redemptive ending. Sentimental Value lets everyone off the hook too easily, especially Gustav. You can't blame Scarlet, who plays the role with his typically irresistible, irascible charm. But it's hard not to feel that Trier, in indulging this character, is favoring the priorities of art over the tougher questions of life.

[Tonya Mosley]

Justin Chang is a film critic for the New Yorker. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, a profile of Laura Loomer, the MAGA conspiracy theorist who describes herself as President Trump's chief loyalty enforcer. The New Yorker's Antonia Hitchens discusses how Loomer forged a close alliance with Trump, got a Pentagon press pass and Loomered high ranking government officials. I hope you can join us to keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews. Follow us on Instagram at NPRFreshAir. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Meyers. Annmarie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Sivines. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson. Roberta Shorrock directs the show with Terry Gross. I'm Tonya Mosley. On NPR's Wildcard podcast, Padma Lakshmi says.

[Marion Nestle]

She feels better at 55 than 25.

[Announcer]

I wouldn't go back to my 20s for all the money in the world.

[Marion Nestle]

I really wouldn't.

[Announcer]

I was so hard on myself about.

[Marion Nestle]

Every little thing or every, you know, imperfection infection.

[Tonya Mosley]

Watch or listen to that wild card conversation on the NPR app or on YouTube @NPR wildcard.

[Justin Chang]

This message is sponsored by DSW, the birthplace of the humble brag, full of all kinds of shoes that get you at prices that get your budget. And when there are never ending options for every style, mood, occasion and budget, there is unlimited freedom to play. And that's something to brag about. So go ahead, stock up on fresh sneakers from your favorite brands or try those boots you always secretly knew you could pull off. Find the shoes that get you at prices that get your budget. Dsw. Let them surprise you.