Breaking News: Food Dye Ban: Support But More Needed, Says Dr. Marion Nestle

Mark Masselli (00:04)
Our guest is considered one of the most influential framers of modern food movement. She's Marion Nestle and
now finds many of her ideas in favor in Washington and state capitals.

Marion Nestle, PhD (00:16)
I'm all for getting bad chemicals out of the food supply or questionable chemicals out of the food supply, like
the color additives that are put into candy and cereals. B ut I don't think that goes nearly far enough.

Margaret Flinter (00:34)
Dr. Marion Nestle holds a PhD in molecular biology, and as a nutritionist, she has advocated for tighter
regulation of food additives and for lessening the food industry's influence in health policy.

Marion (00:45)
I'd like to see marketing restrictions on, what we're now calling ultra processed foods that requires some kind of
federal intervention. If we want companies to stop marketing junk foods to kids, we've gotta have regulations
about that.

Margaret (01:03)
This is Conversations on Healthcare.

Mark (01:16)
Dr. Nestle , wel come to Conversations on Healthcare.

Marion (01:19)
I'm glad to be here.

Mark (01: 21)
You're highly respected as a nutritionist, public health advocate, and author. Y ou've called for a complete
change in our food system. So let's start by asking you for your take on H HS secretary Robert F. Kennedy, his
Make America Healthy Again, efforts and his positions on what we eat.

Marion (01:42)
Well. He says he wants to make America healthy again, and oh, I'm totally for that. A nd he says he wants to,
he's parti cularly concerned about obesity and chronic disease. H e wants to get ultra processed foods out of
schools, but mostly what he seems to be focused on is chemicals in the food supply. Now, I'm all forgetting, bad
chemicals out of the food supply or question able chemicals out of the food supply, like the color additives that
are put into candy and cereals. B ut I don't think that goes nearly far enough if he's going to be serious about
making America healthy again, from a food standpoint, he's going to have t o do something about changing the
food system to one that focuses on public health rather than corporate health. And he's going to have to do
something about the food industries, inappropriate marketing, especially to children.

Margaret (02:47)
Well, when we, look at the argument that the president, and the secretary have made that the United States
spends so much money, on health, and yet we have some of the worst outcomes, in the entire world in terms of
health, what do you think about the solutions? Y o u, you said they've, started, mostly perhaps looking at,
additives and chemicals, but if you, if you had the magic lever yourself, where would you start? Where would
you, what levers would you press, at HHS or elsewhere in federal government to begin to ch ange the focus in a
way that might actually make a difference for health in this country?

Marion (03:27)
Well, there are two big issues in nutrition. One is under nutrition or food insecurity, people not having enough
money to buy the foods and picking foods that are cheapest because that's all they can afford. So I would start
with universal basic income. Wh y not think big, universal, universal basic incomes so that people could afford
to buy food and buy what they need and buy healthier foods and wouldn't be stuck with buying the cheapest
foods of the highest calories. So that's one. The second would be, bec ause the big other public health problem is
obesity and its consequences. 75% of American adults are overweight or obese, and 30 to 40% of American
children are overweight or obese. And that needs to be prevented for that. We need an agricultural system th at's
focused on public health, and that instead of growing food to be used as feed for animals, or even worse fuel for
automobiles, we have an agricultural system that's producing food for people, that would increase the supply of

healthier foods, food, fr uits, vegetables, grains, beans. It would decrease their cost and make those foods more
available to the people who need them. Right now, only rich people can afford to eat helpfully, and there's
something wrong with that picture. That's for starters.

Mar k (05:04)
You know, Margaret, we read the New York Times, profile, on you. C ongratulations. It said you met your
moment, your 2002 book. Food Politics is seen as influential because it blamed America's obesity epidemic on
the food industry. Can you tell o ur listeners more about why you say it is it's to blame?

Marion (05:25)
I would put that in a slightly different way. I f, if you go online and ask, what influences people's food choices,
you'll get, answers that include what their families eat, what they like, what's available in grocery stores, what's,
you know, what their particular cultural and religious preferences are. Nobody ever talks about food industry
marketing. And what I did in my book, food Politics in 2002 was what I thought was being very d escriptive. I
was describing a food marketing environment in which the food industry, which is not a social service agency
and not a public health agency, but which is a business for business reasons, was selling the most highly
profitable foods in the mos t places, in the most, in, in to the most people, in the largest possible portions. If we
wanna change that system, we need to do something about calories. If we're going to do something about
obesity, obesity is about calories in being higher than the cal ories that are expended. If we're going to do
something about that, we have to create a food environment that encourages people to eat reasonable amounts of
food. There's enormous ev amounts of evidence that between 1980 and 2000, the number of calories in the food
supply increased, by seven or 800, and people's consumption of those calories increased by 300 or 400 or 500 a
day, more than enough to account for rising levels of obesity. So how do we get people to eat fewer calories?
That's a tough one. O ne thing you do is you start with an educational campaign. You, encourage or require food
producers to produce foods in smaller amounts. I mean, if I had one explanation for the obesity epidemic, it
would be that, portion sizes got larger, and if I had one th ing to teach the American public about portion size, it's
that larger portions have more calories. I wish it were intuitively obvious. So in a sense, I blame the food
industry for, trying to sell more food, but they're just doing what their stockholders re quire. For example, I've
heard food industry executives say, we wish we could stop marketing junk food to children, but our stockholders
won't let us. And that's the problem. So if I had a magic wand to wand to wave, I would change our food
investment syst em for, from one that prioritizes profits above all other considerations to one in which social
values are highly valued as well. A nd there are B corporations that say they do that, but even they have to make
an enormous amount of profit. It's very diffic ult for them to do that. And no large food corporations have
become B corporations except for Danone, which doesn't behave very well.

Margaret (08:48)
Well, Marion , in the, the long arc of your career, and congratulations, for, powering Right on. We're, w e're
holding you up as a model of what we all wanna be doing when we're, at that, at that point .

Marion (09:00)
When we're a hundred years old, right?

Margaret (09:02)
Yeah. There you go. There you go. Good thing t o aspire to, you've seen certainly a tre mendous change in the
social fabric and the social network, and a couple of major ones influence food, nutrition, calories and have an
educational component. A nd many of these have been around starting the early days of our engagement in
community health. Certainly the WIC program, certainly food stamps, certainly school lunches being widely,
available and, you know, to some degree a natural foods movement. Have any of those, do you think been
successful in getting at this fundamental issue, which does see m so simplistic about calories in and calories out,
but wanting it to be healthy calories in, and good consumption of energy through exercise and so forth. What,
what have you seen that gives you hope for, a change given it's not likely to come from things that lower stock
prices around processed food. It's really gotta be a proactive one within the society.

Marion (10:03)
Well, I visited a lot of schools where the staff in the school believes that feeding children healthfully is the most
important thing i n the world that you can do. And in those schools, the food is edible and the kids are eating it.
C ertainly the regulations around school meals have greatly improved the nutritional quality. The big problem
with school meals is the schools don't get nearl y enough money to buy the foods that they, that many of the
schools would like to be able to cook for the kids. A nd more money would help enormously. The, Obama
administration was able to change the regulations and the research shows that for many childre n in America, the

foods they eat in school are the healthiest they eat. W hich is, you know, I, and some schools do this really well.
Some schools don't do this really well. A lot of it depends on who's in the school. What I've learned is that
school food is person dependent, and it's not regulation dependent, it's person dependent. So that would be one
thing. C ertainly the food and assistance programs could be improved, that there's no question about, but the
current administration wants to cut them. I do n't think that cutting is going to help. It's not gonna make that
situation better. I'd like to see marketing restrictions on, what we're now calling Ultrapro Foods that requires
some kind of federal intervention. If we want companies to stop marketing jun k food to kids, we've gotta have
regulations about that. And those regulations would have to apply to social media as well, because there's all this
evidence coming out that kids who use social media are exposed to dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of
com mercials for, or advertisements for unhealthy foods during the day. I mean, there are lots in d of different
ways in which we could intervene. The question is whether this administration is planning to do that or not.
A nd it's very difficult to tell becau se all that, Robert F. Kennedy Jr has announced is he has said he really wants
the color additives out of the food supply. Great. I'm for that. Yep. He wants the, generally recognized as safe
loophole closed, so that food companies are no longer responsibl e, for deciding whether the additives that are
using, that they're using are, safe and effective. He wants some regulation of that. I'm in favor of both of those
things.

Mark (12:57)
Let's take a look at both the regulations, this administration and thing s that you'd want, and see if it aligns with
what at least one of the items that Secretary Kennedy, wants to ban, which is SNAP recipients from spending
their support money on soft drinks and, and junk food. B ut the American Beverage Association says, so does
soda is not what's driving obesity. So do calories, beverage calories overall have been coming down while BC
rates have been, rising? What, what's your response to that?

Marion (13:31)
Well, they're not looking at who's consuming the sodas. T hey're very highly correlated. You know, when the
food stamp program started in 1964, originally it was supposed to have sodas as sugar street and beverages as
part as the category of foods that they could not use their food stamp benefits on. But there was an en ormous
amount of lobbying, not only from the, beverage association, but also from retailers who make a lot of money
off of SNAP recipients to keep the sodas in there. I've been in favor of pilot projects to try to see what would
happen if sodas were put i nto that category where you couldn't, where people couldn't use their electronic
benefits on those sodas, but they could spend their own money on sodas if they wanted to. I've been in favor of
pilot projects. Let's see what happens. Let's see how people fe el about them. B ecause the arguments against
doing that are poor people don't have very many choices, and this gives them choice. A nd it seems to me that's
a reasonable argument, except that when I wrote my books, soda politics, I got letters from Snap r ecipients
saying that they would welcome restrictions on sodas because it would keep them from buying so many. Mm -
hmm. And sodas are an easy target because they're sugars in water and nothing else. They have no nutritional
value. And there is an enormous a mount of evidence that correlates drinking of large amounts of sugar
sweetened beverages with obesity in the chronic diseases for which obesity is a risk factor. Nobody's worried
about a little eight ounce can of soda. No nutritionist would be concerned. I t's the two liter bottles, you know, it's
the quartz, it's the liter that everybody is worried about, because that's an enormous amount of sugar being
dumped into metabolism. And metabolism can't handle it.

Margaret (15:46)
Well, it's easy, to imagine, Marion that the lobbyists descend, as they do around any issue. It's their right when,
policies are being proposed. It's another, when policy is manipulated by the scientific establishment or by so -
called science anyway, influencing these policy decisions. And you've written some wonderful, summaries of
instances where, organizations funded science that lands as policy directors. Maybe share one of those, with our
audience, just to pull that thread. It's, it's not just lobbyists, it's, it's using data

Mari on (16:24)
Well, I should say I wrote a book about that, it's called Unsavory Truth, how the Food Industry Skews the
Science of What We Eat. T here's a, a tremendous amount of research that demonstrates that industry funding of
science influences the outco me of that, of the, of, of that research. And, when I was working on my book Soda
Politics, I was particularly interested in soda industry funding. B ut while I was working on that, I was also
collecting examples of industry funding funded research. And I think I collected 168, examples of industry
funded research over a year and 158 of those, I'm not sure of the exact numbers anymore, but I think 158 of
them or something like that, had results that favored the sponsors outcome. F ood companies are not gonn a
sponsor research unless it has a very high likelihood of giving them the kind of answers that the industry is
looking for. And the food industry is looking for evidence that specific foods make people healthier, make them

make kids smarter, and that they certainly don't cause any harm. And by this time, there's hardly a food or food
product that I can think of that doesn't have a trade association behind it that's funding research. A nd that
research, what the evidence shows is that the place where the in fluence most shows up is in the way the research
question is framed or in the way the results are interpreted. And I get letters from food trade associations all the
time saying, we're looking for studies for proposals, for studies that will demonstrate th e benefits of our product
for heart disease, for cancer prevention, for cognition in children, for, you know, anything that you can think of.
They're not going to fund studies that don't have a good chance of showing that. S o I am, I think that, industry
funded research should be published in its own journal .

Mark (18:41)
Is the food industry monolithic? And I'm trying to, connect the dots between what I've heard is true in Europe in
terms of less, chemicals in the food, or, is is there a best practice ha ppening somewhere in the globe around how
they're regulating, what the food industry can do? And maybe you could, shine a light on that for us.

Marion (19:05)
Well, certainly in Europe, they have, forbidden. Well, they haven't actually forbidden. What the y do is they
require the color additives that we use in the United States, the, petroleum - based dyes, they require those to have
warning labels. And that was all it took to get the food companies using those dyes to stop using it. Hmm. So
that's one thing. Latin America, particularly starting in Chile and now Brazil, Peru, Mexico, many other
countries in Latin America have warning labels on ultra processed food pro products or pro or food products
that are high in sugar, salt, fat or calories, saturated fat calories, sometimes artificial sweeteners and caffeine.
And you go into a supermarket in Mexico, it's an astounding experience because these big black warning labels
are over half the products in the store. And the advantage of the warning labels is that even people who can't
read don't know what they, they, they, even if they can't read, they know what the warning labels are. And even
little kids know what those warning labels are, and they can say to their parents, no, let's not buy that. We're not
allow ed to take that to school because some of the countries have rules that you, that those products cannot be
used in schools. So they're way ahead of us in, in that way. I don't see that happening in the United States, at
least not for the next several years . B ut it's something to think about.

Margaret (20:45)
Well, there has been some Progress, I think, in some of the states, I think, California, right First state to ban four
different kinds of food additives, West Virginia, first state to ban artificial d yes. That was, interesting. A nd we
haven't seen anybody do anything around the supersizing. A nd it seems like that one is fraught with the issues,
though.

Marion (21:08)
Well, t hat's calories . S ee , t hat's where the, t hat's where the calories come in. An d once you start doing that, then
you're hitting the food industry where it hurts the color additives. They're already got rid of the color additives in
Europe and Australia and New Zealand and places like that. They can get rid of the color additives. And RFK
Junior has made it very clear that he expects them to, and he expects them to get rid of the color additives right
away. I think they will.

Margaret (21:37)
Mm - hmm. Mm - hmm. But the super sizing is where the calories, that, that's where the rubber mee ts the road for
profits.

Marion (21:44)
That's where you're hitting the food industry, where it's going to hurt a lot. Because remember, the purpose of a,
of a business is to make more money, not less. It's to sell more food, not less anything that's like ly to reduce,
food company sales or profits is something that they feel obliged. They have a fiduciary responsibility to oppose
under the current system. And food companies are under tremendous pressure these days from concerns about
ultra processed foods. What's happening with people who are taking GLP one drugs for obesity who turn out not
to wanna be eating junk food. Junk foods are the most profitable foods in the supermarket.

Mark (22:34)
Let me just pull, pick up on the, on the food industry and its desire to maximize its profit and think, I'm looking
over your right shoulder. Is it possible I'm seeing a cereal box? A nd maybe tell, tell us a little more about your
thoughts about the marketing strategy, because to make more profits, you really need to have a, a very engaged
in robust marketing campaign. So why, why do you collect cereal boxes?

Marion (23:00)
Well, 'cause my next book is about cereal marketing, and I'm working on it, and I'll just grab this. I bought this
one from Kellogg. This is not a real cereal box. It's a joke. It's not real Yes. But I thought I had to have it

Margaret (23:20)
That is w onderful.

Marion (23:22)
Quite love it. T he, you know, serial companies change the box design several times a year. The big companies
do. And so they are able to respond to the latest trends in or fads in food. And you can respond very, very
quickly. And I've been collecting cereal boxes for about 20 years now and have quite a collection. It turns out
the NYU library has quite a collection and, we' re doing a very tight, I have a co - author and she and I are doing a
very tight deconstruction of cereal boxes, and it's really about how they market. Every single element of that
book of that box is designed for marketing or it's something that has to be t here.

Margaret (24:09)
Mm - hmm. So interesting. You know, we've talked a lot about the food, and eating, but we haven't said anything
about the cooking end of it or the growing end of it, and would really welcome, your thoughts on a community
level, becaus e all problems do not get solved in Washington. T houghts on the community gardening movement.
Food is medicine. I dare I say it would date me so much, but home ec, you know, teaching somebody how to
actually cook as part of your school, curricul which I think has evolved into a different name and more available
to, all people, not just, girls. But what are your thoughts about some of these other pathways in that kind of
subvert the supermarket aisle?

Marion (24:52)
Well, I'm very interested in, in nutrit ion for kids and, 'cause that's really what I worry about. And I've been to
loads of schools that have school gardens, and let me tell you, they're transformative. Mm - hmm. It's absolutely
astounding to watch teenage boys in Harlem where I went to one, go o ut and pick lettuce and vegetables and put
together a salad and make the dressing and serve it and eat it and ask for more because it's so delicious to them.
It's totally transformative in kids' relationships to food. M any kids are completely unfamiliar w ith fruits and
vegetables. They haven't seen them grown, they've never been on a farm. And there's something about growing
your own food that's absolutely thrilling. It's so much fun. And the schools that are doing that are performing an
enormous public se rvice. When Alice Waters first started talking about school gardens, everybody thought she
was crazy, right? But now, there are thousands of schools, literally, that have these things, and they're
astonishing to watch. And schools in which there are, there 's an opportunity to teach about food where the food
is being cooked from scratch are very, very different experiences than in schools that are using packaged foods
because they don't have kitchens or because they just absolutely do not have enough money t o buy what they
need. So I think school food is hugely important. I'm greatly in favor of everybody learning how to grow foods
and everybody learning how to cook. Cooking is really fun. You get to eat it afterwards. I t's really fun.

Mark (26:40)
Well, you know, you also authored the book Why Calories Count, and you, you're skeptical of our ability to
count calories We eat. Maybe talk a little bit about, that struggle that people have, versus just understanding
what a good meal is and eating the right porti ons and not worrying about counting calories, because it seems to
be a very, problematic focus.

Marion (27:05)
Oh, it's impossible. Y ou can't tell by looking at a food how many calories it has. And the only way that you can
tell if you're eating the righ t amount is by weighing yourself regularly on a scale. If your weight is going up,
you're eating too much, period. End of story. Or you're not burning enough, right? I mean, it's, Oh, you're eating.
It's very, very, very, very, very few people can do enoug h. Only elite athletes or people who are exercising for
many, many, many hours a day, will be burning off enough calories to make a difference. Because I, I mean, the
rule of thumb I use is it takes about a hundred calories to walk or run off a mile. So if you have a two or 300
calories soft drink, you've gotta walk or run three miles to work it off. A lot of people don't do that or can't do
that. So it really has to do with the food quantity. For most people, the amount they're eating is more important.
An d you know, I remember when I was young and when my kids were young, we didn't eat between meals.
Here's a rule. The more times a day you eat, the more calories you take in. The larger the portions, the more
calories you take in. W e weren't allowed to eat between meals. A nd if we got hungry, we got hungry, you can
wait for an hour. M any, the, the social norms have changed. So the idea that somebody will go for more than
two hours without eating is, seems kind of ridiculous to people right now, but it did n't used to be that way. And

kids were thinner. You look at school pictures from 30 or 40 years ago. Y ou look at school pictures now, there's
a really, really big difference. So people are eating too much. And how do you get people to eat less really hard ?
That's why these GLP one drugs are so affected. They're getting people to eat less. S o you have to change the
food environment to a food environment that promotes eating more healthfully. People rarely pig out on salads.
S o one idea would be don't eat ultra processed foods or eat ultra processed foods in very, very small amounts,
and, you know, use them as occasional treats. That shouldn't be what everybody's eating all the time. A nd
portion sizes have expanded enormously. Bagels and muffins used to be what are now called mini bagels and
mini muffins and pizzas have doubled or tripled in size.

Margaret (29:51)
Dr. Marion Nestle , we want to thank you so much for joining us today. We've looked forward to this interview.
We thank you for your research, you r education, your advocacy and all that you've, contributed to this country.
A nd just a reminder, to our audience, we want you to be sure to subscribe to our videos on YouTube, find us on
Facebook and x. A nd please share your thoughts and commentary abou t this program, as well as our other
programs. Take care and be well.

(30:21)
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