Marion Nestle, an NYU professor in nutrition and an influential voice in food advocacy, has been working in changing the landscape of the food system for the past thirty years. A pioneer of the Food Studies program at NYU, this interdisciplinary field looks at food through a political lens throughout its course of production, consumption, and waste. For her, there exists so much confusion about what people should eat because of the power dynamics at play with agribusiness aiming to sell as much as possible at the lowest cost. Despite the consumer ‘movement’ influencing what companies put into their foods, top-down change is required to deal with systematic issues such as hunger. It is this sort of regulation that is extremely lacking in the Trump administration’s food policies. Whilst the food movement is fragmented in terms of goals and issues at stake, Nestle is optimistic with the role that young people can play in food advocacy, especially at a local level. Photo Credit: Bill Hayes.
