This will definitely make you think twice about the foods you eat. If nothing else, readers will learn to question the "health" claims of various products, and to learn more about who sponsored the studies backing them up. Thoroughly-researched but still very readable.

Great book that provides an in depth look at how the food industry insidiously worms their way into our lives and health. It's scary and like they need to be stopped. It's shameful that the agencies put in place to protect the public have NO influence and NO concern about our welfare. The corporations run these agencies and are only out for profit, and like we've seen with tobacco industry, could care less about how much harm they are causing. We have to take control of our health and be reading a book like this, people will better understand what they need to do to protect themselves.

A sobering look at the food industry and a call to action to fix it. A great read.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

Very informative and well researched. Marion Nestle has a point of view that needs to be shared and understood.

"Unsavory Truth" covers the growing problem of industry sponsorship in nutrition research. Every food company wants to claim that their product is a "miracle" or "superfood," but as Nestle argues, that is never the case. What goes on behind the scenes is food companies paying researchers -- university or independent -- to examine the claims that their product will provide x benefit. The studies seem trustworthy enough, but if you read between the lines, you see the reciprocity principle, the pointed questions, and the more positive interpretations of the results in each of these reviews.
This book was eye-opening. I feel that I have had a healthy distrust for the claims food companies make in my teenage and adult life thus far, but a lot of topics that Nestle discussed had never occurred to me. I did not realize just how many ways food companies twisted results, or even premises, of studies in order to claim that their products are better than anything else out there.
Though the information provided was thoroughly researched and eye-opening, the style in which this book was written brought down my rating in the end. Firstly and most prominently, I felt that Nestle seemed to write herself in a circle, repeating the same arguments multiple times on different topics (such as symposiums, specific companies, and nutrition journal practices). To me, the book could have been half this length and still have contained the same volume of information, just by cutting out the same points Nestle made again and again.
Additionally, more than once I felt that Nestle was trying to jump into her own narrative and clear her own name, though no one was doubting it in the first place. I noticed she would mention the follies of other researchers in regard to industry support, but would often include a sentence about how she would not make the same mistakes, that she contributed industry-gifted money to her college's nutrition program, etc. It distracted from the story and felt unnecessary and even self-centered. A bit of personal background and practices may have been useful to contribute, but no one is accusing Nestle of anything, yet she seems to perceive it as so.
Overall, I give this book 2.5 stars. I felt that it had strong evidence of food companies meddling in research and consumer opinion, but the writing style was weak and repetitive. In my opinion, what this book really needs is a tough editor to cut out all the "noise" and repetition and let the core of Nestle's argument shine the way she clearly intended it to.

A thoroughly researched account of how the food industry controls the narrative about what we hear about food, nutrition and the effect of various food groups and items on our health. Marion Nestle details the research studies that have been funded by food industry groups (Coca Cola, Nestle, fruit councils, dairy councils, POM, nut councils, Hershey and so on) and how the results invariably can be used for marketing by the funder. As an example, highbush blueberries, pomegrante juice, and pecans being touted as "superfoods". There's no such thing as a superfood. She debunks marketing truisms to show that eggs still do raise cholesterol, too much meat is indeed bad for you, sugar in all of its forms can lead to obesity, and chocolate is not a health food.

The reason I didn't give this book five stars is because she got a bit too heavily into the politics of the food industry instead of concentrating on debunking the various marketing scams. I ended up skimming through the final third of the book.

Thank you, Netgalley, for the e-review copy of this book.

Marion Nestle's Unsavory Truth book is another great book to read about exposing the truth about how our food is made. I love everything Marion Nestle has written or produced and I follow her Food Politics webpage, where I have learned so much about food and the industry. I highly recommend this book.

Recently, Netflix documentaries like "Rotten" and "What the Health" have exposed the shady practices of the food industry. In this new book, "Unsavory Truth", Marion Nestle (I'm assuming no relation with the company) exposes another shady side of the food industry.

The food business is exactly that: a business and companies need to make money and find ways to drum up interest in and necessity of their products. Attaching an endorsement from a nutritional professional or respected institution conducting nutrition and health-based studies adds validity to a product,, can influence consumers, and even legislation. But if you look beneath the surface and see the companies that are sponsoring these studies, it should raise red flags for consumers.

"Unsavory Truth" is looks at these sadly too common marketing practices, using case studies and examples to show how consumers can easily be manipulated by the food industry and not even know it. Just like we need to look into the type of associations politicians accept money from, this book might be able to make people look into the type of people who sponsor food studies and articles that claim that [insert food name] is the next superfood.

Marion Nestle's Unsavory Truth reveals some "scientific" studies paid for by brand name companies are more marketing than fact. She debunks the myth of the Superfood and how we are constantly and continually manipulated by the food industry. An interesting read, though nothing particularly surprising. Well written and readable, we are purchasing a copy for our library. (I'm still believing that chocolate is a health food!)

The aptly named Unsavory Truth is an exhaustive account of the pervasive influence of the food industry, more particularly their monetary largesse, upon nutritional science and research.

The simple truth in a nutshell (pun intended) is that there is no such thing as superfoods, sugar is bad and plants are good. Yet, the food industry spends millions of dollars telling us otherwise.

They have borrowed the same playbook that was first established by the tobacco companies, with strategies of casting doubt on the science and promoting the virtues of self-regulation and personal responsibility.

For me personally, I have no issue with our freedom to choose the crap we put into our bodies, but don't, please don't lie to me and try to fool me into believing it's good for me. Set the truth as free as our own personal choices.

We are faced with the mutually exclusive aims of nutrition education versus the aims of the food industry. One seeks to promote public awareness of healthy food choices,  whilst the other seeks promote food purchases for the most profitable outcome.

Marion Nestle is a wonderful, strong woman fighting the good fight, armed with the truth and not being shy to shine the light on falsehood. However, Unsavory Truth, as illuminating as it is, can be very dry and replete with organisational acronyms that span the alphabet. Yes, the devil is in the detail, but there is such a thing as too much detail.

Unsavory Truth is an unapologetic examination of the food industry, but it is a heavy read for the average reader.

I wanted to like this book. I'm not sure it was meant for the average reader. There was so much information that I couldn't even process. And I thought I was somewhat smart.

Thanks to author, publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free, it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.

If you have followed Marion Nestle’s books as I have, you will note not so much a progression, as a regression. They started with the nutritional value of foods in the body, worked their way back to manufacturing and chemicals, and now with Unsavory Truth, there is almost nothing about food at all — just money. It’s as American as — individual apple pie in a cardboard sleeve.

The issue is the discipline of nutrition. It is decades behind other sciences in recognizing that money corrupts. They’ve only just begun arguing about it, as they are absolutely inundated with cash, gifts and samples to help sell pretend food. Just like doctors with pharmaceuticals. Netsle opens with the real foundation of the issue: the slightest gift influences the recipient. Those pens and umbrellas and freezer bags and coffee mugs, all serve to make the recipient feel indebted. They make them remember the donor’s company when it is time to buy, recommend or prescribe. It works. Beautifully. Or they wouldn’t do it.

The recipients whine and complain they aren’t that gullible or stupid. But they are. Worse, medical practitioners claim they are actually entitled to the gifts because of all the hard work and expense they went thorough to get to where they are. So bring on the junkets, the conferences in resorts around the world and all expenses paid plus honoraria. They earned it all! There’s an entire chapter just on Coca-Cola’s masterful efforts. She also includes a delightful cartoon — a bingo card one of her colleagues created, with a box for every moronic excuse why researchers can and should accept corporate money.

And it has been going on for so long, it is an accepted part of the culture. “The link between drug industry gifts and prescription practices is so firmly established that it is considered beyond debate,” she says. They live a career of conflict of interest. And so does nutrition.

Possibly the most important new bit of information in the book is what Nestle calls nutrifluff. Any study that claims one single food or additive improves health, prevents disease or provides all the nutrition you need — is nutrifluff. Those news releases come out all the time. Reporters take them at face value. But the world, nutrition, and science don’t work that way. Taking one element out of context is a scientific absurdity. Similarly, there is no such thing as a “superfood”. Foods work in combination. They each contribute in their own way. Alone, they can’t do the job. And none is endowed with special powers.

Companies are forever funding studies to prove their product performs exactly that way. Industry and foundations account for 70% of food-related research. NutraSweet funded 74 studies, all of which found it safe. In 94 other studies, 90% (84) questioned its safety. Since studies without corporate backing are becoming an endangered species, all studies should be read with a cynical eye. But they should actually be read, Nestle says, because the truth is often easy to see, and it doesn’t appear in the news release or the news report.

There are exceptions to the corporate study plague. The honey industry paid for a study to show that honey is healthier than high fructose corn syrup. It isn’t. It turns out that honey has about the same levels of fructose, and therefore all the problems of fructose. That the study was published at all is a small miracle.

Some frauds are easy to spot. Fifth Quarter Fresh brand chocolate milk claimed it alleviates symptoms of concussion in high school football players. It had the study to “prove” it. And it got school districts to switch to its products on that basis.

Nutritionists want to know what are the real of effects of various additives. ”We would find out a lot sooner if trade association agendas were not involved,” Nestle says. All the studies to prove chocolate is a beneficial supplement to any diet, diverts scarce research resources from more worthwhile studies, she adds.

At bottom, the industry uses the playbook devised by Big Tobacco. It is, as everyone now knows, a combination of diversion, selective use of data, obfuscation, flooding the market with sponsored “research”, quoting out of context and out and out lies. Later, the industry learned to create “grassroots” groups, fake associations of consumers demanding the freedom to consume at will. Apparently, you can get four or five decades of obscene profits using those tactics, while customers become ill and die by the millions. Whatever works.

What all this leads to is somewhere Nestle won’t go. She recommends consumers call food producers and demand to know where the money goes, and that companies pool donations in blind trusts to be doled out to worthy studies. But she acknowledges this is a longstanding disaster, the result of the takeover of the government by huge corporations. It is capitalism that is the problem. Giving the FDA, the EPA and other agencies the ability to force disclosure, retract false claims, prevent false advertising and fund research without strings would go most of the way to solving Nestle’s issues.

Not happening. The best we can hope for is being informed. Unsavory Truth meets that requirement.

David Wineberg