In imaginative, lively prose, Mayukh Sen—a queer, brown child of immigrants—reconstructs the lives of these women in vivid and empathetic detail, daring to ask why some were famous in their own time, but not in ours, and why others shine brightly even today. Weaving together histories of food, immigration, and gender, Taste Makers will challenge the way readers look at what’s on their plate—and the women whose labor, overlooked for so long, makes those meals possible.

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I was pleased to get to weigh in on Burger King’s announcement—via a (literally) moldy ad—to go preservative-free. As I said in this ABC News segment, the fast food chain’s decision was just one more signal that companies are responding to the tectonic shift in the marketplace, as eaters across all demographics are seeking out foods without preservatives and other additives, food grown without pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, and meat raised with routine antibiotics. I did note that we would all do good to remember that, preservatives or not, fast food is still not healthy food. I also stressed that the biggest health and environmental impact of Burger King’s supply chain isn’t its preservatives, it’s the beef. Last year, the company bowed to public pressure and agreed to root out deforestation in its supply chain, but gave itself a 2030 deadline for doing so. That’s not nearly soon enough—and we should keep the pressure on to make the company do more, sooner.

The post Weighing in on the New Preservative-Free Whopper appeared first on Real Food Media.

In Food Fight! author Paloma Martinez-Cruz takes us on a Chicanx gastronomic journey that is powerful and humorous. Martinez-Cruz tackles head on the real-world politics of food production from the exploitation of farmworkers to the appropriation of Latinx bodies and culture, and takes us right into transformative eateries that offer a homegrown, mestiza consciousness.

The hard-hitting essays in Food Fight! bring a mestiza critique to today’s pressing discussions of labeling, identity, and imaging in marketing and dining. Not just about food, restaurants, and coffee, this volume employs a decolonial approach and engaging voice to interrogate ways that mestizo, Indigenous, and Latinx peoples are objectified in mainstream ideology and imaginary.

The post Food Fight! Millennial Mestizaje Meets the Culinary Marketplace appeared first on Real Food Media.

This is a special episode of Real Food Reads, featuring new co-host Tiffani Patton and recorded in front of an audience. Read about the event here. 

The post Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat appeared first on Real Food Media.

Anna Lappé is a national bestselling author and a founding principal of the Small Planet Institute and Small Planet Fund. Anna’s most recent book is Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It, named by Booklist and Kirkus as one of the best environmental book’s of the year. She is the co-author of Hope’s Edge, which chronicles social movements fighting hunger around the world, and Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen, with seasonal menus by chef Bryant Terry. A popular educator about sustainable food and farming, Anna has participated in hundreds of events, from hosting community dinners to delivering university keynotes to emceeing a food-focused fundraiser at Sotheby’s. She is currently the director of the Real Food Media Project, a new series of myth-busting videos about the real story of our food. 

The post TEDxManhattan: Marketing food to children | Anna Lappé appeared first on Real Food Media.

Scary? No doubt about it. But together, we can work to curb this predatory marketing and stand up for real food.

We believe that marketing targeting to children and teenagers is a public health crisis. Watch our movies and dig into our Food MythBusters resources and citations in our script to understand why.

• Script and citations: English | Español
• Screening Guide and companion materials

The post Food MythBusters: The Myth of Choice | How Junk Food Marketers Target Our Kids appeared first on Real Food Media.

Our Spinning Food series, developed in partnership with Friends of the Earth and US Right to Know Network, investigates how Big Food and agrochemical corporations are deliberately misleading the public—and the media—about industrial agriculture and organic and sustainable food production.

Taking lessons from tobacco industry spin, the food and agrochemical industries are spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year on stealth public relations tactics, from engaging “third party allies” to mimic grassroots support to deploying “front groups” that are funded by the same corporations whose interests are at stake. These tactics are being used to push coordinated messages attacking organic food production, defending pesticides, and promoting GMOs—messages that are making their way into the pages of our largest media outlets.

Our 2013 report, Spinning Food: How Food Industry Front groups and Covert Communications are Shaping the Story of Food, detailed how these companies are trying to preserve their market share and advance policy agendas by deploying these tactics and more, including producing advertising disguised as editorial content, attacking scientists and investigators, and using other covert media tactics to influence public opinion and sway policymakers without most people realizing the story is being shaped behind the scenes to promote corporate interests. The report sheds light on how the industrial food and agriculture sector is trying to defuse concerns about the real risks of chemical-intensive industrial agriculture and undermine public confidence in the benefits of organic food and diversified, ecological production systems.

Merchants of Poison: How Monsanto Sold the World on a Toxic Pesticide, released in 2022, tells the tale of pesticide industry disinformation, including science denial techniques, attacks on scientists, astroturf strategies, online domination of industry messaging, and other spin tactics. This a multi-year research project is a case study of Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) and its decades-long product-defense campaign of its best-selling weedkiller, Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides. The report exposes how the pesticide industry—just like Big Tobacco and Big Oil—uses obfuscating PR tactics to protect its products despite their planetary and public health harm.

We hope our Spinning Food work helps reporters, policymakers, opinion leaders, and the public bring increased scrutiny to the food industry’s messages and messengers. By revealing key groups and tactics used by industry, we also hope that this work helps generate more balanced and accurate reporting on our food system.

Download Spinning Food: How Food Industry Front groups and Covert Communications are Shaping the Story of Food

Download Merchants of Poison: How Monsanto Sold the World on a Toxic Pesticide

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At Real Food Media, we work to debunk some of the key food myths pushed by food and agribusiness corporations, which face an existential threat from the growing interest in, and demand for, greater sustainability and fairness in food.

We produced short films to take on two of these myths. We encourage you to watch them, share them, and dig deeper. The transcript and citations for each video are included, along with a companion reading guide to learn more about the issues. Since we first launched these videos, they have been seen by more than 1 million people online and have been used in classrooms, workshops, conferences, and more.

Myth: We need industrial agriculture to feed the world.

In this video we take on the persistent myth that we can’t feed the world without toxic chemicals or genetically engineered seeds. And, we showcase the power of sustainable agriculture to address the root causes of hunger in a world of plenty.

 Downloads:

• Script and citations: English | Español
• Screening Guide and companion reading materials

Myth: We want the junk food and packaged products filling our shelves.

In this video we expose the billions at work to influence what we desire, what we buy, and the particularly pernicious marketing of soda and junk food to children and teens.

 Downloads:

• Script and citations: English | Español

The post Food Mythbusters appeared first on Real Food Media.

An audacious idea was hatched: A global boycott of the biggest pusher of infant formula, the Big Food giant Nestlé. The resulting campaign included the founding of INFACT (now known as Corporate Accountability International and home to Real Food Media) and, while the campaign didn’t end Nestlé’s marketing of infant formula, it dramatically restricted how, what, and where the company could market.

This multi-decade campaign of courageous leaders around the world working to promote health in the face of multinational food industry marketing was front-of-mind reading The New York Times deeply reported piece about Nestlé in Brazil. In the piece, you learn about how the global giant is still impacting the health and well being of people around the world, not only through its ongoing marketing of infant formula, but also KitKats, pudding, sugar-sweetened yoghurt. The Times pieces is powerful evidence that preventable diet-related illnesses are on the rise and the processed foods industry, including giants like Nestlé, are driving this public health scourge.

We at Real Food Media believe as a global community, we must stand up to Big Food and its attempts to influence our elected officials and demand real regulation and new policies for public health. The good news is we know there are policies that work—the ones we seek to amplify, through our videos, collaborations and media engagement—like restricting marketing to children (particularly in schools and hospitals), promoting healthy food procurement through initiatives like the Good Food Purchasing Program, and passing taxes like the sugary beverage taxes. (Ideas I shared in a Letter to the Editor, published here).

If you haven’t yet, we encourage you to read The New York Times piece and turn the heartbreak you may feel when you finish into positive action—what we try to do every day.

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