Last year, two Kossacks each told me, "My friend Michele wrote a book. You oughta read it!" Around then, CSI Bentonville told me to check out Michele's website, the Center for Informed Food Choices.
A few weeks ago, I attended a sustainable food conference. I woke up late and showed up even later, after finding breakfast and parking, arriving just in time to completely miss the first speaker - Michele Simon (the same Michele as above). When I saw Michele at a booksigning table during lunch, I realized that I must be destined to read her new book Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How To Fight Back. It seemed to follow me around wherever I go, so I caved in and bought a copy, which Michele graciously signed.
Now that I finished it, I've gotta say that I wish every American would read Michele's book. She completely exposes the "Thank You For Smoking"-like tactics Big Food uses to wreck our health (and the health of our childen) for their own profit. You might already know that I've been on this issue for over a year now, and I learned MANY new ways to frame the debate and counter all of the McLies the corporations use.
I think the best description of Appetite for Profit is a cross between Food Politics and Toxic Sludge is Good For You. Not surprisingly, the back of Michele's book features blurbs by Marion Nestle and John Stauber, the authors of Food Politics and Toxic Sludge is Good For You, respectively.
My favorite aspect of Appetite for Profit is the simple ways that Michele states the truth. It almost comes off as funny - except for the fact that it's not. Initially I wanted to write down a number of great quotes, until I realized that you can probably open the book to any random page and you'll find at least one great line no matter what. For example:
About the Center for Consumer Freedom, a front group for huge food corporations, led by Richard Berman They are anti-anyone that tells you to eat healthy, eat less, drink less, go veg, and more...
Indeed, if CCF really represents consumers, then why isn't it a membership organization? Where is the grassroots consumer movement banging on fearless leader Rick Berman's door begging for protection from the food police? Where exactly are the consumers that the Center for Consumer Freedom purports to represent in the name of democracy? . . .
CCF's efforts to portray sound nutrition policy reforms and those advocating for them as "radical" is likewise duplicitous. The truth is that CCF's corporate clinets are the ones responsible for radicalizing the way Americans eat. In the blink of an evolutionary eye, we have gone from eating natural, nutrient-dense foods to factory-produced, highly processed, nutritionally-deficient "products" that bear little resemblance to anything found in nature. Now that's radical.
About soda companies' arguments to put vending machines in schools to give kids a choice...
"I can understand students making healthy choices. But we don't put cigarette vending machines in high schools to allow the students to have a 'choice,' [Michael Butler, legislative advocate for Californai State PTA] said.
About companies resisting regulations on commercials for junk aimed at kids on First Amendment grounds...
It is dificult indeed to imagine that the same free speech guarantees that allowed the New York Times to publish the Pentagon Papers should also be extended to advertisements for Cap'n Crunch and Count Chocula cereals.
About corporations' argument that they aren't to blame because parents' responsibility are to take care of their kids...
But as CSPI's [litigation director Steve] Gardner responded: "Parents are also responsible for making sure their young kids don't get hit by cars. But if someone's recklessly driving around your neighborhood at eighty miles an hour, you're going to want to stop them."
Yes, those really were quotes taken from random pages I opened the book to just now. Don't they hit the nail on the head? Why do we make children fund their own education with their pocket change (and at the expense of their health) through Coke and Pepsi's "pouring rights" contracts? Why are corporations allowed to tell children to be a pain in the ass in the grocery store until their parents buy them a box of junk food with Sponge Bob on the front or a cheap, shitty toy inside? And when will we all realize that our plethora of food "choices" are barely choices at all?
As someone who has tried to live a "normal" life while eating healthy, I know EXACTLY how hard it is! We have tons and tons of choices for junk but often few choices for health food, if any choices to eat healthy exist at all. Michele completely gets it. Schlosser and Pollan each present various facets of our industrialized food system, but Michele just states the truth flat out, over and over.
She really nails it when she expands on a point made by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton in Toxic Sludge is Good For You, that corporations get activists to compromise with them until the corporations get to do whatever they want and the activists functionally get nothing out of the deal OR corporations frame activists as radicals if they refuse to compromise. Then Michele takes it a step further; after bringing up compromise after compromise made with Big Food while the American food system meanwhile gets worse, Michele tells her readers they should NOT compromise.
Why should we agree that soda companies can market and sell to children in high schools if they grant us a "voluntary agreement" (that happens to be non-binding anyway) that they will keep their sodas out of elementary schools in return? Should schools be a location where children are sitting ducks to receive thousands of corporate messages? Should schools be so starved for cash that they must turn to companies that sell unhealthy products to fundraise? If parents wish to allow their children to drink sodas, they can easily pack their children sodas for lunch. Vending machines in schools - all public schools - need to go. Period.
Michele also advocates focusing on the entire food system as the problem, not obesity. She compares current action against obesity to taking on lung cancer (a symptom of the issue) instead of tobacco (the real issue). As long as obesity remains the issue, Big Food can talk up a storm about personal responsibility and the importance of exercise - and in the meantime, American consumers keep feeding the ridiculous weight loss industry without learning how to eat any healthier than before. The issue is the food system, and obesity is one very obvious symptom that something is very, very wrong.
After thoroughly documenting all the numerous methods Big Food's top offenders (Kraft, McDonalds, Coca Cola, PepsiCo, etc) lobby, market, cheat, lie, and steal to keep making money on unhealthy, processed foods with impunity, Michele provides numerous resources for her readers to REALLY make a difference. To me, finishing the book only to find the appendices, all stuffed full of useful and actionable information, was like waking up on Christmas and finding out that Santa came (even though my family is Jewish).
Examples of what you'll find are a glossary decoding corporate speak, guides to the good and bad groups out there, myths vs. reality, advice for taking back our schools, and legal counterarguments to Big Food's talking points. Throughout the book she also provides tips on how to decode corporate press releases when McDonald's comes out with news about how they are "part of the solution," etc.
I realize this probably reads more like a sales pitch than a book review, but I loved every single page of Appetite for Profit and I really hope at least a few Kossacks go look for it at their local libraries. I nearly forgot one other major thrill in Michele's book: She quotes a Kossack, Compass Rose, several times! (Of course, in the book Michele goes by real names, not dKos handles...).
If you want to find out a bit more about Michele and her work, you can check out her website, The Center for Informed Food Choices, and you can sign up for email updates as well. I've added her site to my blogroll, too. I hope that reading Appetite for Profit is only the beginning for me and for other Kossacks who care about the sorry state of America's food system. With Michele's know-how and our enthusiasm, large numbers, connections, and willingness to take action, who knows what we can accomplish!