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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley.

Today, my guest is Marian Nessel, the molecular biologist turned nutritionist and food policy scholar,

whose voices helped decode for decades what we eat and why it matters. Her well-known book,

What to Eat, became a consumer Bible of sorts when it came out in 2006, guiding readers aisle by

aisle through the supermarket while exposing

how industry marketing and policy steer our food choices. Two decades later, she's back with

What to Eat Now, a revised field guide for the supermarket of 2025, where ultra-processed foods,

plant-based meats, corporate organics, and our ability to have food delivered to our very doorstep have rewritten the rules.

Nessle's journey began in the classroom. When she first began teaching a nutrition course in the early 70s, she says it felt like she was falling in love with the subject. She went on to serve

as Associate Dean for Human Biology at the University of California, San Francisco, and as

staff director for nutrition policy at the Department of Health and Human Services, where she helped

shape dietary guidelines for Americans in the 1990s.

Nessel is the author of 15 books, including Safe Food, the Politics of Food Safety and Soda Politics.

We recorded this conversation last week as courts and Congress were battling over SNAP benefits

for more than 42 million Americans during the government

shutdown. And Marian Nessel, welcome to fresh air. Oh, glad to be here. Well, Marian,

before we dive in, I want to talk to you a little bit about what's happening with SNAP benefits. Food

banks are already reporting that they have been inundated with people in need of food.

I want to know what you're thinking about in this moment, what this moment reveals maybe about how

...