Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back by Michele SimonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a really long winded book. She probably could have made her case in half the amount of pages since she repeats a lot of information. She does go through many topics including soft drinks and processed food in schools, how food companies can't be trusted to self regulate for the good of society, and the rather weak arguments that personal responsibility and freedom of choice are myths. The book contains a fair amount of "leftist" propaganda. I could tell she wrote this book to persuade people to dislike the food industry or "Big Food". She is not as objective about her information as I expected. She does not go into enough detail about how our elected representatives in government (federal and state) are allowing themselves to become "puppet politicians" for the food industry (she does explain how some seem to be reading off a script the food industry gave them).
The book does highlight various problems with the food system, such as the lack of credible information the public gets from the media (which she does not explain that much; I would have liked to see more information on the media's role in providing health information), researchers being paid by the food industry to produce industry friendly studies (she also doesn't explain how much of this goes on), and the lack of government regulation of truly dangerous food substances because of food industry lobbying. However, she gives no tips on how to change any of this. The book ends with her opinion that we need to change the entire food system and we need to start talking to each other about possible solutions. This is a rather weak (and frustrating) ending as the title is suppose to tell you how to fight back.
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