"Shedding light on the power of the food and drinks industry, which in theory should be waning but in practice is stronger than ever, this highly readable book takes the classic case of American politics and the corporate sector's power therein and extends it to new contexts in ways that can inform scholarship and indeed activism about the form of corporate power in play. This is a big step forward for food studies."—Alistair Fraser, Maynooth University, author of Global Foodscapes: Oppression and Resistance in the Life of Food

"A masterful analysis of the political and corporate influences that put unhealthy food in the hands of vulnerable populations. Eduardo Gmez has provided a blueprint for shaping a world where industrial interests do not trump the health of populations."—Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH, Boston University; coeditor of Teaching Public Health

"Eduardo Gmez masterfully integrates political science and public health literatures to shed light on one of the world's most pressing challenges—reconciling economic development with public health, especially among vulnerable populations. Junk Food Politics highlights how political will and a principled commitment to population health might ultimately be the only way to undo this Gordian knot."—Joseph Wong, Roz and Halbert Professor of Innovation, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto

"Across a number of emerging economies, multinational corporations have followed a common playbook, working with governments in the apparent pursuit of policies to reduce noncommunicable diseases such as obesity. When those policies have been adopted, however, the regulatory system has not enforced them, and many countries have failed to pass such policies into law at all. With impressive empirical scope, Gmez shows that making policy together with the junk food conglomerates has not proved nutritious for the body politic."—Pepper D. Culpepper, Oxford University, author of Quiet Politics and Business Power: Corporate Control in Europe and Japan

"Gmez makes a timely and persuasive case that companies selling sugary beverages and ultra-processed foods in six large emerging markets have used lobbying, largesse, institutional infiltration, and government partnerships to lock in marketing, sales, and labeling practices that have contributed to the rapid rise of obesity and type 2 diabetes."—James W. McGuire, Wesleyan University

"In this wide-ranging, theoretically rich study of food politics in developing countries, Eduardo Gmez reveals an entire political economy previously hidden from view. The same arrangements that allow politicians to fund anti-poverty programs also durably trap children in cycles of poor nutrition and higher obesity and shield much of their politics from public view. Junk Food Politics is a triumph of comparative policy analysis."—Daniel Carpenter, Harvard University

"This groundbreaking work exposes the strategies by which sugary drink and fast food companies boost profits and sidestep accountability, leaving individuals and health systems to suffer the consequences...[Junk Food Politics] illuminates how this corrupt system of control operates, with corporations pushing unhealthy foods at low prices to [maximize] their profits, while states work with them and become complicit in exacerbating the costs to people and health systems. Gomez offers a groundbreaking perspective on commercial determinants of health, which is desperately needed to capture the complexities and tensions inherent in junk food policy."—LSE Review of Books