Dr. Marion Nestle

Marion Nestle is a consumer advocate, nutritionist, award-winning author, and academic who specializes in the politics of food and dietary choice. Her research examines scientific, economic, and social influences on food choice and health, with an emphasis on the role of food industry marketing. Her books explore how politics affects food production, dietary intake, food safety, and human and planetary health.

She is the author of the classic Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health which won awards from the Association of American Publishers, the James Beard Foundation, and World Hunger Year. Her second book, Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety, won the Steinhardt School of Education’s Griffiths Research Award.

Dr. Nestle’s book, What to Eat was named as one of Amazon’s top ten books of the year and a “Must Read” by Eating Well magazine; it also won the Better Life Award from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and the James Beard Foundation book award for best food reference. With so many changes in the foodscape over the last twenty years Nestle has written a thoroughly revised version titled What to Eat Now. Her next book, written with Lisa Sutherland, will be Sugar Coated: Unboxing the Hidden Forces Shaping America's Favorite Breakfast Food (University of California Press, September 8, 2026).

Dr. Nestle’s other books include Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine; Feed Your Pet Right, co-authored with Malden Nesheim; Why Calories Count: from Science to Politics, also with Malden Nesheim, which won book of the year from the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP); Eat, Drink, Vote: An Illustrated Guide to Food Politics, which won an IACP book award; Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning), which won an IACP book award along with the James Beard Award for Writing & Literature; Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat which was one of Nature's Best Science Books of the Year; and Let's Ask Marion: What You Need to Know about the Politics of Food, Nutrition, and Health with Kerry Trueman. Dr. Nestle has also written a memoir titled Slow Cooked: An Unexpected Life in Food Politics.

Marion Nestle is the emerita Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health and Professor of Sociology at New York University. She also holds an appointment as visiting professor in the Cornell Division of Nutritional Sciences. Her degrees include a Ph.D. in molecular biology and an M.P.H. in public health nutrition, both from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Nestle has received many awards and honors, among them the Bard College Prison Initiative’s John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service, the National Public Health Hero award from the UC Berkeley School Of Public Health, the James Beard Foundation Leadership Award, the Innovator of the Year Award from the United States Healthful Food Council, she was named Grande Dame by Les Dames d'Escoffier, the International Association of Culinary Professionals Trailblazer Award, the Changemaker Award from the Food Policy Center at Hunter College and Edinburgh Medal. She has been awarded Honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Transylvania University in Kentucky and CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College. Dr. Nestle also appears frequently in documentary films, among them SuperSize Me!, A Place at the Table, Fed Up, El Susto, Code Blue, and All the World is Green.

Dr. Nestle blogs daily (almost) at www.foodpolitics.com. 

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