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Sangbin Park
Professor Gillespie
Honors 231 A: Animals, Environment, Food & Justice
22 January 2015
Week #3 Reflective Journal: Marion Nestles Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences
Nutrition and Health
A food pyramid diagram is something that I am used to seeing. In high school, I was
required to take a class on health and nutrition. In that class, I learned about basic nutrition
education and how to live a healthier lifestyle through making sound dietary choices. I also
recorded and kept track of everything that I ate for several weeks using the USDAs website,
MyPyramid, as required by the class. The standard of a healthy diet was determined by the
Pyramid. Consuming five categories of food grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, and meat & beans
in the recommended serving sizes was the ultimate goal. As a student, I never questioned the
authority, USDA, which created the Pyramid. USDA was a credible source and my classmates
and I were taught to believe the information that it published was the truth.
Marion Nestles Food Politics was interesting, because it educated me on the history
federal dietary guidelines and how USDAs Pyramid came to be which was completely left out in
my high school class. Nestle takes the audience all the way back to 1890s when dietary
deficiencies were prevalent and eat more was the dominant dietary advice. From there, she
outlines the transition to eat less dietary advice of the present times. One of the big takeaway
points for me was that federal dietary advice was and is never purely about the public health.
Government agencies that issued dietary advices like the USDA and DHHS had inevitably
other constituencies as well as the public, most notably the agricultural and food industries

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(Nestle 32). The food industries influenced federal dietary advices in many ways including the
wording and the service sizes. As a result, federal dietary advices became less clear and direct in
their meanings. Perhaps, they have also lost unwavering trust from the public as well.
Although I would like to argue that the impact of federal dietary advices like the USDAs
Pyramid in my dietary choices are not significant, I do have to agree that they made me more
conscious about my dietary decisions. For example, I started eating more fruits and vegetables as
a result of learning more about nutrition from USDAs dietary advices. I also try to drink more
cups of milk. In the present times, however, USDA is not the only source of dietary information
for many people. Rapid development of communication technologies such as the Internet has
allowed for overflow of information. Anyone can access the Internet and find plenty of helpful
dietary information from many other sources. In 2011, the USDA introduced MyPlate replacing
MyPyramid as the current federal nutrition guide. Evidently, it seems like this federal dietary
advice is receiving the same criticism as its predecessor for its attempt to meet the interests of
both the public health and the food industries. It has the overemphasis on dairy and the lack of
clear messaging on limiting red meat (Out with the Pyramid, In with the Plate). It is still a
mixture of science and food industries interests. In reality, a purely science-based dietary advice
may never be possible. However, I believe that the generable public is better equipped than ever
before with the accessibility to abundant dietary advices through the Internet, magazines, and
journals to just rely on federal dietary advices. Clearly, the USDA is only one of many resources
that the public has to make a sound dietary decision.

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Works Cited
Nestle, Marion. (2007). Undermining Dietary Advice, in Food Politics: How the Food
Industry Influences Nutrition & Health, pp. 29-92. University of California Press.
"Out with the Pyramid, In with the Plate." The Nutrition Source. Harvard School of Public
Health, n.d. Web. 23 Jan. 2015. <http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/platereplaces-pyramid/>.