The SF Bay Area as a Center for Food Activists

The SF Chronicle has an article on Marion Nestle, an academic who specializes in food policy, nutrition and journalism:

Nestle's first book, "Food Politics" (The University of California Press, 2002, $39.95 hardcover, $19.95 paper), put her on the map by documenting precisely how the food industry influences what we eat and government food policy.

After it came out, she was invited by the World Health Organization to a meeting with food company executives in Geneva.

"They said, 'You don't have to do anything except sit there. Your presence in the room will tell them we mean business,' " she says.

She is visiting UC Berkeley, and Berkeley is hoping that she decides to stay permanently. Nestle is part of the growing number of food activists who have collectively made the SF Bay Area a growing center of food activism:

She's part of a growing East Bay food brain trust, attracted to this area as a center of the small but growing movement toward better, healthier eating.

"The Botany of Desire" author Michael Pollan arrived from the East Coast to teach in Cal's journalism department three years ago. And Renato Sardo, longtime head of the international Slow Food movement, moved from Italy to Oakland last fall.

... The Berkeley position intrigued her because she's teaching in all three fields that are key to turning around what Pollan calls "our national eating disorder" -- public health, public policy and journalism. She and Pollan are co-leading a lecture series with the likes of Alice Waters and Palo Alto food scientist Harold McGee.

Here are the accompanying articles on the head of Slow Food International Renato Sardo, and the investigative journalist Michael Pollan.