Nutrition policy expert Marion Nestle says that when she wrote her first book, Food Politics , in 2002, people often asked her what food had to do with politics.

"Nobody asks me that anymore," Nestle says. "When I look at what's happening with food assistance I'm just stunned."

Nestle says the Trump administration's efforts to withhold SNAP benefits from millions of Americans has made clear how fragile our economy is: "We have 42 million people in this country — 16 million of them children — who can't rely on a consistent source of food from day to day and have to depend on a government program that provides them with benefits that really don't cover their food needs, only cover part of their food needs."

Decades of studying the food industry have given Nestle a clear-eyed view

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