Pollan may be skeptical about whether American eaters can thwart passage of a bill that includes $42 billion in subsidies for the big cash crops -- corn, wheat, rice, soybeans and cotton -- but he firmly believes that "the eaters have spoken [and] a new politics has sprouted up." There's an all-too convenient relationship between the scientists and the marketers, he writes: "The food industry needs theories so it can better redesign specific processed foods; a new theory means a new line of products, allowing the industry to go on tweaking the Western diet instead of making any more radical change to its business model."