Marion Nestle, SLOW COOKED: An Unexpected Life in Food Politics
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[0:58]Marion Nestle is the author of slow cooked and unexpected life in food politics
[1:03]Marion is the palette Goddard professor emerita of nutrition food studies in public health at New York University
[1:09]She is the author of 15 books mostly about food politics and a frequent speaker and commentator on food system issues
[1:15]From agriculture to health and please excuse me in this podcast because I had a bad cold and was stiffling nonstop
[1:22]Welcome Dr. Nestle. I'm sorry. I could not bring myself to call you Marion because I
[1:26]Just so introspect in anyway. Thank you for coming on mom. So no time to read books to discuss slow cooked and unexpected life in food politics
[1:36]I'm really glad to be here and it's really okay. You call me Marion. Okay. Okay
[1:41]Thank you so much for sharing your whole life story and everything from the personal to the sort of political
[1:48]It's all in here and it was so fascinating to read
[1:52]I've been following you for a long time. I worked with the eating and weight disorders center at Yale University with Dr. Kelly Brown
[1:58]Now when I was an undergrad and worked at weight watchers for a time and got an integrative
[2:03]It's too for integrated nutrition degree. Anyway, I've had this long fascination with food and all that so I've just been following you forever
[2:10]So this is a real honor for me
[2:12]Glad to be here. Awesome in the back of your book. You conclude by
[2:18]mentioning several things you don't like when interviewers ask you
[2:21]The questions you don't like ask them like oh my gosh, I have to make sure I don't ask anything
[2:25]She doesn't like people to ask
[2:27]So I will politely ask if you could describe sort of the reasons for writing this book and maybe we can go from there
[2:35]And just take it where where you want to take it
[2:37]That's it. That's a softball question. Yeah, softball question
[2:41]And the easy answer is the pandemic when the pandemic hit
[2:45]I moved out of Manhattan and moved upstate to be with my partner who lives in Ithaca, New York
[2:51]And it's very quiet
[2:54]And I couldn't get into a library
[2:57]My office was closed the libraries were closed them and my U Libraries closed them Cornell library was closed
[3:03]I couldn't do the kind of research that I usually do when I'm writing books and I thought okay
[3:10]What do I do what am I going to do here?
[3:13]Here and then I thought maybe this is a fabulous opportunity
[3:19]To rely on memory and try to answer the questions that I get asked all the time
[3:27]How did you get interested in food? How did you get interested in nutrition?
[3:31]What made you do it? You know, did you always know that you wanted to do it?
[3:36]How do you feel about taking on the food industry?
[3:39]How do you feel about the way the food industry reacts to what should I do?
[3:45]I want to do what you do. How do I do it? Those kinds of questions which I've I've always found
[3:52]I've always kind of tossed them off
[3:54]And just given very casual answers to them and I thought well, maybe this is really a time to
[4:01]Think about them since I get asked them so often by students and colleagues and reporters
[4:07]Maybe it's this is a good time to really sit down and try to reflect on
[4:13]how what I did happened and what it means and what I think about it now and that's what I did
[4:20]Was a really interesting project
[4:23]I wasn't I didn't have access to research materials or even any of my own papers and I described this as my first work of fiction
[4:35]You know, I relied on memory
[4:37]Memoirs are about memory others a real difference between memoir and biography
[4:42]Biography is factual memoirs. How you remember it and this is how I remember this
[4:49]Wow, well you start by taking us through how you grew up and then into your marriage and your
[4:54]Furt your marriage is and you know, I was I'm also I'm divorced remarried. I'm on I mean
[4:59]I'm hoping this is my last husband. So but we'll see you never know. No, I'm kidding Kyle if you're listening
[5:04]But one of the things I was really struck by was you're trying to I mean, I hate the word balance
[5:09]but how you were trying to
[5:11]Balance your drive and intellect and wanting to contribute and scientific interest and all of that with having small children and
[5:19]All of the constraints like you you have a scene in the book where you pop into
[5:24]The lab on a Saturday morning and you find out that it was packed with people and that like it was always packed with people on
[5:29]Saturdays and you physically like could not do that with the kids and and your husband working and whatever
[5:34]So to help me just about that time when you reflect back on
[5:38]The craziness of that moment and how you still manage to like find your way through and and all of that well
[5:44]I know I was a woman of the I grew up in the 1950s and
[5:48]The social environment for women which is never easy and still is not easy was very different there
[5:56]Women were expected to get married and have children
[5:58]Preferably as early as possible
[6:01]And I had my children at 25 that was considered old at the time and you know, I had interests and
[6:08]Whatever, but there was no opportunity to do anything with them and I kind of stumbled my way through graduate school and
[6:17]The incident that you're describing was on my first teaching job at Brandeis University and I call it the swimming pool
[6:24]Yes, cause in one day
[6:27]It ended any thought that I had of having a scientific career ended on that day and the incident was as you describe
[6:36]My kids had swimming lessons on Saturday morning. I usually sat there with them while they were at their swimming lesson
[6:44]But for some reason or other there was a double lesson that day and I thought oh they're gonna be in the pool for two hours great
[6:51]I'll go to my lab. I'll see if I can get some work done. There won't be anybody else there to bother me
[6:58]I could just go in and do what I need to do and I walked into the lab and
[7:03]Everybody was there and I mean everybody
[7:06]The lab technicians and the wife of the
[7:10]Lab director and all of the other graduate students and all of the other postdoctoral fellows
[7:16]everybody was in that lab
[7:19]Except me and
[7:21]I didn't even know that people were there on Saturday morning and I thought no wonder
[7:27]People are treating me as if I'm not getting away any work done. No wonder I'm not getting any work done
[7:33]You know, it was like you know, it was just this
[7:35]Revalatory thing and I you know, I was there for an hour and nobody said anything
[7:42]You know anything about it in particular
[7:44]But I walked out of there and thought this is the end of my scientific career. I can't do it
[7:49]I just can't do it. I had nobody to take care of my kids on Saturdays
[7:54]My husband had his own career and his career was much more important than mine
[7:59]We both agreed on that
[8:02]You know, he was an assistant professor at Harvard in a at the medical school
[8:07]Obviously that was more important than being
[8:10]female postdoc
[8:12]At a lab at Brandeis and I started looking for teaching jobs. There were women. I learned later
[8:20]Who were able to balance lab careers and children. I wasn't one of them. I couldn't do it
[8:27]You know, I've met some of them later and they were wealthier than I was
[8:32]They came from academic families
[8:35]They knew how to get the kind of resources that they needed maybe they had more
[8:40]helpful husbands. I mean that I can't say
[8:44]But I was not one of them. I couldn't do it and you know, I had grit my teeth and took a teaching job
[8:51]I feel like some people in that moment would be
[8:54]Discouraged and then give up right and say okay
[8:57]Well, if I can't do it at all
[9:00]But you didn't give up
[9:01]You just pivoted into like a different direction sort of like a pinball kind of you just kept going and found your way
[9:07]To the end of it anyway. I had to do what they were my children in a second marriage
[9:11]So I felt responsible for them and they were my absolute first priority
[9:17]You know, I was responsible for them and then the question was how was I going to take care of them in this situation
[9:24]And make sure that they were okay and I didn't feel particularly sacrificial about it. It was
[9:31]Okay, this is the reality. I've got to face the reality. What do I do and that was
[9:36]What I did and I got a teaching job at Brandeis and that of course turned out to be life-changing is well
[9:44]As I was handed a nutrition course to teach as part of that and that of course was
[9:50]You know that opened up the whole
[9:53]career that I eventually had by you know by
[9:59]somehow
[10:00]stumbling into this course and starting to teach it and never looking back was like falling in love.
[10:06]This was the field for me. It just worked out perfectly and I didn't stay at Brandeis much longer
[10:12]after that because my husband got a job in San Francisco and we moved but I got a job in San
[10:17]Francisco teaching nutrition to medical students and then everything went on from there. It just
[10:23]took a long time. The title of the book is slow cooked. You know, an unexpected life in
[10:30]food politics and the slow cook part was that it took me several hours to figure out you know what
[10:37]I could do and how I could do it and of course none of that happened until after my kids were grown.
[10:43]It's hard to do anything. It's hard to get anything done. We've got a lot of sympathy for that.
[10:49]Still, you realize I identified your interest in this and then despite even more hurdles that
[10:57]kept coming in your way, you referenced your move to San Francisco. That was a whole other set of
[11:02]obstacles and you know I actually found all the politics at the different medical schools and
[11:07]PhD programs like I am not from that world at all and so I found that absolutely fascinating
[11:13]kind of horrifying but also fascinating. Yeah. And the things that went on said like deemed
[11:20]ships and everything that you had to learn on the go how to navigate all of that in addition to
[11:24]sort of everything else while still pursuing your love of the food stuff in general.
[11:31]You know people who come from academic families know how academics were and they don't have to
[11:36]have it laid out for them but I really didn't and I didn't know how to read the tea leaves. I just
[11:41]wasn't good enough at it. So when I took the job at the University of California at San Francisco
[11:48]as my husband's trailing spouse, I didn't realize what a handicap that would be. I didn't
[11:55]understand that and nobody explained it to well actually one person tried to explain it to me
[12:01]but I didn't know how to hear that. The dean of one of the other schools at UCSF said you know
[12:07]you're in big trouble. You came here as your husband's wife you don't have an independent identity
[12:12]here and I remember thinking at the time I don't know what he's talking about I'm going to do
[12:18]what I'm going to do and you know and I'm going to do it as well as I possibly can and earn respect
[12:24]that way and it never occurred to me that that was impossible under the circumstances you know that
[12:30]I could do it didn't matter what I did it didn't matter how well I did it. I would always be my
[12:37]husband's trailing spouse and would never get over that and as soon as the marriage broke up
[12:44]which happened at the same time as a new dean came in I had a job with a very fancy title I was
[12:50]associate dean in the School of Medicine but without any real portfolio I mean that was another
[12:57]enormously complicated thing that I didn't understand very well and as soon as all that fell apart
[13:04]instantly it was you know it was another overnight thing. The dean said he was he was going to leave
[13:10]and take a higher up job and he was not going to take me with him and everything fell apart instantly
[13:17]and so that was when I had to really sit down going to therapy. I tried to figure out how I had
[13:26]gotten myself in this position where I was in my I was about to be 50 years old and I didn't
[13:33]have a job and I didn't have a marriage and I didn't have a future what was I going to do
[13:37]and that was when for the first time I got really solid blunt and very good advice
[13:46]and that was you know my first experience with mentoring I was 50 years old and was told
[13:53]you got a resign and here's how you do it. You know I which opened up everything I went to
[13:59]public health school and the basis of that I got a job in Washington on the basis of that I
[14:04]got the job at NYU which changed everything. So for all the people out there who are 50 thinking
[14:11]that their life is set that you are a living really example that is completely not the case.
[14:17]Just starting it was just beginning you know I mean I was lucky enough to go to NYU with tenure
[14:24]as a tenured full professor I mean that was an extraordinary gift and that opened up everything
[14:30]so you know I had a big job but I was able to do that job by then. So how do you feel big and
[14:37]expert on something? Well it turns out I really have but one of the great things about being old
[14:48]you've done a lot. So a lot has happened and I really do know a lot about food nutrition by now
[14:54]I've been teaching it for 50 years. I should know a lot about it. I've written a lot of books and
[15:01]they cover a big territory so in the area that my books cover you know I feel pretty confident
[15:07]about what I know. And yet things keep changing I feel like more and more I mean obviously in all
[15:14]areas but I just feel like every day there's new news about nutrition and what we should know
[15:19]and what we should know and this is good for you and this is not good and blah blah blah.
[15:23]You have to keep up with all that and really plow through the myths from what is actually science.
[15:28]Well one of the things that I've done is I write a daily blog and I've been doing it for almost 15
[15:35]years and that forces me to keep up and it's not so much work because I post five times a week
[15:43]and Monday through Friday and you know some of the things are frivolous and some of them are
[15:48]fun and some of them require a bit of work but it forces me to keep up with what's happening
[15:54]in a very contemporary way. So if there's a big fuss about something going on I'll weigh in on it.
[16:01]You know I think for next week I'm planning to do one on the full page ad that impossible foods
[16:08]in the New York Times which has been an enormous fuss about because the ad is extremely dismissive
[16:16]of a very fine science writer who had written a big article about the process nature of these
[16:24]artificial meats and the artificial meat companies didn't like her article very much. There were
[16:31]things about her article that I didn't like but maybe I don't like everything but it was I
[16:37]think a very thoughtful and very well researched article and so that's the big fuss now so I'm
[16:44]going to weigh in on that and you know I've got a couple of other things that I'm going to weigh in
[16:48]on as as they come out and there's never a lack of things to write about. Yes I mean it's the one
[16:57]thing well not the only but one thing we all have to do every single day right make these decisions
[17:03]and eat and yeah it's actually quite smart you'll never be out of a job. As one reporter once
[17:11]explained to me if you write about food and nutrition you have a full-time career and total jobs
[17:19]you're ready. It's not going to go away. So how do you make your own decisions like what did you
[17:27]have what did you have for lunch today? Well I haven't had lunch yet because this is a very heavy
[17:32]zoom day okay but yesterday in my office there were small packs of lunches that were given out and
[17:41]I didn't eat mine so I brought her home I'm going to have that today and it looks like it's tomatoes
[17:47]and quinoa and avocado and I think maybe there's an egg in there somewhere I'm not sure.
[17:53]I eat according to my own principles. I would never advise anybody to follow a diet that I don't
[18:02]follow but my principles are so easy to follow that Michael Polling can do them in seven words
[18:09]eat food not too much mostly plants. That's how I believe plenty of room for deliciousness
[18:15]plenty of room for junk food plenty of room for eating what I like. I just try not to eat too much
[18:22]of it. Interesting and obviously no processed foods. Oh no not no processed foods. Just not very
[18:28]many. Okay it's not processed but ultra processed. I'll just add in the order of processed foods
[18:35]that are really that make you eat too much. So I try to keep those to a minimum. If I have trouble
[18:41]with them I keep them out of the house. I'm somebody who can't keep barbecue potato chips around.
[18:47]So I either buy barbecue potato chips in very small packages or I don't buy them.
[18:55]I try not to keep this stuff in the house but then I'm like well baby sometimes you just want to
[19:00]have them. Sometimes I put stuff in the freezer and I'm like oh okay well this will require me to
[19:05]have to just cross for a while and wait that doesn't work either. You have to figure out how
[19:13]not to have so many ultra processed foods around that you can't stop eating them because there's
[19:19]so much evidence now that they encourage people to eat too much. Yes without realizing it.
[19:24]So you sit there with the bag of Oreos or a bag of chips or at least I do and you know you're
[19:30]it'll take up any room. They go down easy. It's just really easy to overeat. So those are the things
[19:36]that it's really important to watch out for sugar sweetened beverages. Go right into that
[19:41]category that includes juices as well as soft drinks but particularly soft drinks because those
[19:47]are formulated and ultra processed foods in general are formulated to be irresistible. You can't eat
[19:55]just one and so you know that's what you want to be careful about. You don't eat.
[20:00]your veggies don't eat too much, you're doing fine.
[20:04]And on the book writing process,
[20:07]something you enjoyed doing would never do again,
[20:09]loved it, wanted to do it again.
[20:10]Where do you fall on the spectrum?
[20:12]Well, the memoir is my 15 book.
[20:15]If I didn't like doing it.
[20:17]Well, no, I mean like writing about yourselves.
[20:20]Oh, writing about myself.
[20:21]That was difficult because I mostly write nonfiction
[20:26]and I write about politics.
[20:28]And so to write about my personal connection
[20:31]to those things, took some cognitive restructuring.
[20:35]It wasn't easy.
[20:36]But what I tried to do was to be a straight forward
[20:40]and as honest and as candid as I could be,
[20:44]within some restrictions.
[20:46]I have a living ex-husband with whom I'm on very, very good
[20:51]terms and I want to keep it that way.
[20:53]I have two living children with whom I'm on very good
[20:57]terms and want to keep it that way.
[20:59]So I didn't want to air a lot of inappropriate dirty
[21:03]laundry about personal relationships.
[21:06]And in fact, I wasn't allowed to.
[21:08]One of the rules about memoir writing,
[21:10]and as I said, memoirs are very different from biography.
[21:13]One of the rules about memoir writing
[21:15]is you're not supposed to use them for revenge.
[21:18]Let's people break those rules.
[21:22]But my editors would not let me break those rules.
[21:27]And in the one or two instances where I just couldn't resist
[21:32]revenge, nope, nope.
[21:38]The other lesson is to have very wise editors.
[21:41]No, I do my best.
[21:44]They're really, really helpful.
[21:46]So the book is a much stronger book
[21:49]because it's not indulging in those kinds of things, I think.
[21:54]And certainly the reaction to the book
[21:56]has been remarkably favorable.
[21:59]People are just enormously grateful for hearing the story
[22:03]because they're stuck in their own lives
[22:05]in positions where they just don't,
[22:07]where they're really worried about the future.
[22:09]And they tell me that having read my story,
[22:13]they feel more confident about going forward.
[22:16]That's wonderful.
[22:19]I didn't expect that.
[22:20]That is very amazing.
[22:22]I didn't know what would have that kind of effect.
[22:25]And that's been very, very gratifying.
[22:28]I can see why.
[22:29]Well, thank you so much.
[22:31]Thanks for chatting about your book.
[22:33]I'm so glad I got a chance to read through it,
[22:36]to learn more about you.
[22:37]And yeah, I do find it really inspiring.
[22:40]I really do.
[22:41]So thank you.
[22:42]Well, thanks for talking to me about it.
[22:45]All right, pleasure.
[22:46]I'll go enjoy your lunch.
[22:48]OK, bye-bye.
[22:50]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms.
[22:52]Don't have time to read books.
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