Why Nutrition Isn’t That Complicated: A Conversation with Marion Nestle, Part 1
What a Cigarette Conference Revealed About Food—and How Marketing Shapes What We Believe
Marion Nestle hardly needs an introduction, at least not in the circles where people debate things like menu labeling and industry-funded studies. She’s a professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health; an outspoken force in food policy; a prolific newsletter writer, and the author of seventeen books—many of which have shaped how most of us think and teach about food.
I was lucky enough to study in the department she led at NYU, where her work nudged me toward the career I have now. These days, I get to call her a friend and informal mentor. (Her subscribing to Fed remains one of the highest compliments of my career.) We often exchange thoughts about the never-ending game of nutrition whack-a-mole: that strange cultural moment where a fundamentally boring, evidence-based field keeps getting upstaged by people who’ve never cracked open a metabolism textbook.
So when the chance came to sit down with Marion to talk about her new book, What To Eat Now, plus a handful of timely topics, I jumped.
We talked for a little over an hour, and I easily could have kept going. I’m breaking the conversation into two parts, and what you’ll read here has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Here’s Part 1 organized into 6 sections.
Early Days at NYU and the “Home Ec” Era
Lourdes Castro: I met you in the early ‘90s when I came to NYU as an undergraduate to study nutrition.
Marion Nestle: I was appointed chair in the late ‘80’s but back then, the department was the Department of Home Economics and Nutrition.
LC: Wow! You came to New York from the West Coast with a PhD in molecular biology and had been teaching at a medical school.
MN: And then I worked for the government for 2 years before coming to NYU.
LC: Did the fact that the department was the Home Economics department give you pause?
MN: Oh, yes. I called my therapist in California and asked, “Should I take this job?” And my therapist said, it’s a full professor with tenure. It comes with an apartment in New York that you can afford. There’s security. You’ve never had security. You might like it. And if you don’t like the job, you can leave and look for another one. So that was it.
The administration wanted me to bring the department into the 20th, if not the 21st century. They wanted me to transform the department.
LC: And you were up for the challenge?
MN: Yes, and that’s when, at some point, the home economics title was removed. That needed to happen. That went pretty quickly.
From Clinical Nutrition to Food Politics
LC: Congratulations on your latest book!
MN: Thank you.
LC: I did a little research on all of your books. This is your 17th book. Your first book was about clinical nutrition, and then you shifted towards food politics. What caused that shift?
MN: I tell the story in my memoir, Slow Cooked, which came out in 2022. I went to a meeting at the National Cancer Institute in Washington, D.C., on behavioral causes of cancer, and they were looking at cigarette smoking and diet. Most of the talks were by this international group of experts on cigarette smoking. I knew that cigarettes caused cancer. I really did. But I never heard these people speak before, and they gave talks where they showed slide after slide after slide of cigarette marketing all over the world, and cigarette marketing to kids. I was just floored by their presentations, because, as I said, I knew cigarettes caused cancer, but I never paid any attention to the advertising. I had never noticed the advertising. And I walked out of that meeting saying we should be paying attention to Coca-Cola.
That was in the early 1990s, and I started writing articles while I was working on transforming home economics to what is now nutrition and food studies. I was writing articles about food politics. Mainly from the marketing angle. But I was also going to a lot of meetings about childhood obesity, and at those meetings, every single speaker would talk about their despair at how they were going to convince mothers to feed their kids healthier. Nobody was saying, “How are we gonna stop the food industry from marketing junk foods to kids?” Nobody was. Because parents are almost powerless. Nobody considered the food industry to have any influence over what people ate.
LC: And that is where the idea for the book came from?
MN: It took me a long time to figure out that NYU thinks books are terrific. But when I did, I decided I really ought to write a book. I took all the articles I’d been writing over those 15 years and thought, 'Well, I’ll just put them together into a book on food politics.’ That’s where the book starts.
What Should We Eat Now? – Marion’s Big-Picture Advice
LC: Your latest book is the revised edition of What To Eat. Why did you decide to do this revision now?
MN: The pandemic. I was stuck up in Ithaca with nothing to do, and couldn’t go anywhere; I couldn’t go to a library, couldn’t do the kind of research I usually do. I needed a project. I started working on the memoir, but I also proposed a new edition of this book. I figured it would take six months. But it was four years and 700 pages later.
LC: There is so much information! Every time I crack open the book, there’s a different topic that comes up, and I’m like, “Oh, I want to read about this!”
A: It covers a lot of territory. And a lot of territory that wasn’t in the first book.
LC: Speaking of lots of information, I think most people are overwhelmed with food and nutrition advice. How would you advise the average person walking into a grocery store on what they should eat now?
NM: I think diets are really simple. I’m fond of saying that the journalist, Michael Pollan, can say in seven words (Eat food, not too much, mostly plants) what took me 700 pages. But basically, I’m saying the same thing.
First, define food as real food, not heavily processed food. Balance your calories, which nobody wants to talk about. Make sure you have a lot of plants in your diet. And that’s it. It’s not very hard to do. You should also vary the foods you eat a lot. But that’s it.
LC: What about restaurants? What kind of advice do you have for those eating food prepared outside the home?
MN: You have to be particularly careful about the not too much part in restaurants. Because the portion sizes are ridiculous.
LC: Is there any particular cuisine you would recommend?
MN: Diets that vary enormously are healthy. The traditional Japanese diet is mostly carbohydrate, while the traditional Mediterranean diet is much higher in fat. They both work just great. So you need to find your own way in all of this. But I think food is one of life’s greatest pleasures.
Nutrition Myths, TikTok, and Why It’s “Not That Complicated”
LC: Speaking of the different diets, there’s a lot of nutrition misinformation out there, which makes work difficult for dietitians.
MN: Oh, yes. And you’re doing your best.
LC: I’m trying, but I am no match against TikTok trends or influencers or supplement makers. What do you see as the most harmful or misleading messages regarding nutrition?
MN: That it’s complicated, that it’s hard to figure out what to eat, and that you need special products to be healthy. Remember, influencers are selling products. But diets are simple. It helps if you know how to cook. It helps to have enough money to buy really fabulous ingredients. But even if you don’t have enough money to buy fabulous ingredients, you can buy basic ingredients if you know how to cook them and turn them into something really delicious. But we don’t prioritize cooking anymore.
LC: No, we don’t. And I agree with you that nutrition isn’t complicated.
MN: It’s not complicated, and it doesn’t change. That’s the other thing. It doesn’t change.
You’re required to eat 50 or so separate nutrients that we know about. And those nutrients come from thousands and thousands of foods and food products. And so, the people who make or produce any one of those products have a vested interest in getting you to buy them. That’s what it’s about. Many of the influencers are paid. Others are just trying to make themselves famous and generate enough traffic so that people are willing to sponsor them and pay them that way. And if not, they’re trying to sell something. I guess it’s more fun to do TikTok than to work at a hospital.
Calories, “Fear Foods,” and the Protein Craze
LC: I’m gonna shift into some practical advice. How do you approach a healthy eating pattern?
MN: Eat foods, not products.
LC: Are there foods you think people are still unnecessarily afraid of? As an example, whole milk or eggs.
MN: There was a lot of pressure to have people not eat a lot of fat. But I’m a calorie person. I wrote a book about calories. It’s called Why Calories Count, From Science to Politics. It doesn’t advise anybody to count calories, but calories really matter, and nobody wants to talk about them. They want to talk about fat, carbohydrate, and protein. They want to talk about anything other than talking about calories. But the minute you put this stuff in a calorie context, it makes sense. Fat has twice the calories of protein or carbohydrate. So if you want whole milk, you’re gonna get more calories. Do you want those extra calories from whole milk? Or would you rather save those calories for something else? I’d rather save them for something else, but that’s just me. So I buy skim milk when I can. Although it sure is hard to find out here.
LC: Some feel whole milk is less processed than low-fat and skim milk.
MN: All milk is processed. Even whole milk. All milk is made by totally removing the fat and then adding it back.
LC: I didn’t realize that. Why is that done?
MN: Because the nutrient content of milk varies [by cow]. So to keep it from varying, to keep it consistent, this is done.
LC: What are your thoughts on the protein craze?
MN: Oh, protein. Yeah, that’s just silly. The fear of seed oils is also silly. The idea that cane sugar is better than high fructose corn syrup is extremely silly.
LC: Now that you mention high-fructose corn syrup. In the same vein, some say the shift away from artificial flavors or colors is a step in the right direction.
MN: They are mini steps. If you’re not eating food products that have those things in them, that’s probably a good thing. A great thing, really. But by themselves, [removing them] is gonna make a trivial difference. Yes, I think there are kids who react to colored dyes, but they’re a very small number of them.
Nutritionally Overwhelmed, Not Nutritionally Deprived
LC: Healthcare through social media has really complicated things. Nutrition and health influencers come in and give very specific information, which is actionable, but may not be true. What is a responsible healthcare provider to do?
MN: Yes, and I don’t know what to do about it. You can’t turn them off. You just have to live with it and hope that people are not too gullible. I think anybody who says everything one knows about nutrition is wrong is a red flag. Turn that person off. Because nutrition doesn’t change. The same things are required in the diet. The research hasn’t changed much. And most Americans are not nutritionally deprived. They’re nutritionally overwhelmed. If you’re getting enough calories, you’re getting enough protein, and you’re getting enough vitamins and minerals.
Part 2 will dive into how the food industry shapes “choice” from lobbying to all the Cheerios options to the bottled water craze.
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