88 and Rolling
Less than 48 hours after her visit to Stone Barns, Dr. Nestle hopped on a flight to Mexico to deliver speeches to the National Institute of Public Health and a large health advocacy group. Next came a lecture (and two classes) at Pennsylvania State University and a panel in Nashville. Later this spring, Dr. Nestle will give the commencement address at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Almost always, Nestle has numerous online panels, lectures and Q&As on the calendar.
Although healthy habits have undoubtedly played a role in her continued health and verve, she’s unwilling to ascribe too much value to her own choices. At least “some of it,” she said, “is certainly luck.”
Whatever the reason for her vitality, it is hard to ignore. In person, Dr. Nestle is trim and vigorous, her posture straight. She still begins most mornings by writing for two to three hours, as she has for over two decades. When she’s not traveling, she walks a few blocks from her Greenwich Village apartment to her office at New York University; she retired from her position at the university in 2017 but retained the title of professor emerita. There, she reads new research, prepares for lectures and speaks to reporters almost daily.
Dr. Nestle’s appetite is not what it once was — “I used to be able to knock off a pizza. Well, a small pizza,” she told me — but her metabolism seems to be the only part of her that’s slowing down. She has two books coming out this year and is at work on another, a history of food and nutrition policy and an examination of food marketing, told through the lens of breakfast cereal. It is slated for release around the time of her 90th birthday.
When I asked whether she ever considered retiring entirely, the question seemed to take her by surprise. “No, I really don’t,” she said. After 50 years in nutrition, the conversation is changing in ways that surprise her — and occasionally delight her, too.
“When I wrote “Food Politics,” I would often get asked ‘What has food got to do with politics?’” Dr. Nestle said. “I hardly ever get asked that anymore.”
