That's all she wrote! Senior Director of Nutrition Bonnie Liebman steps down after 48 years

After more than 48 years, this will be my last issue of Nutrition Action. It’s been quite a ride.

Even before I ever set foot in the office, I knew that working at the Center for Science in the Public Interest was the career for me. Fresh out of college, I had always been interested in science but I also wanted to work, well, in the public’s interest.

So in 1974, after I read an article about CSPI’s work in The Washington Post, I was hooked. In 1977, armed with a masters in nutrition, I became CSPI’s first staffer with a graduate nutrition degree.

My first major assignment from CSPI’s co-founder, Michael Jacobson, was to draft a petition urging the FDA to require food labels to disclose sodium levels. (Back then, labels only had to disclose nutrient levels if a food was fortified or made a claim like “low sodium.” It wasn’t until 1990 that CSPI’s long battle to secure a law requiring Nutrition Facts on all packaged foods finally paid off.)

Then what?

Just for fun, I offered to write a review of The Jewish Low-Cholesterol Cookbook for Nutrition Action, which was then focused largely on nutrition policy. A few years later, I wrote an article about “nouveau junk food,” which skewered quiche, croissants, and other trendy foods that had an undeserved healthy reputation.

By the 1980s, when Nutrition Action shifted its focus to helping everyday Americans stay healthy, I had found my niche at CSPI.

I could not only write about healthy (or unhealthy) foods. I could also scour scientific journals for the latest studies on diet and health, interview leading researchers, and let hundreds of thousands of readers like you in on what I’d learned. The reading, interviewing, and writing never got old.

Nor did the satisfaction of being part of an organization that was making a difference in people’s lives.

Over the years, I worked on many CSPI petitions (for example, to require labeling of added sugars or ban misleading claims about fruit or whole grains), lawsuits against misleading labels, written responses to countless proposed regulations, letters to the editor, and other advocacy efforts.

Some Nutrition Action articles broke through to broader print, TV, and radio audiences. Take our annual Xtreme Eating Awards, which spotlighted some of the worst dishes at chain restaurants. They not only made headlines; they helped CSPI convince Congress to require chain restaurants to post calories on their menus.

Today, with 70-plus staffers, CSPI is brimming with scientists, lawyers, and policy experts. And that matters more now than ever, with the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, leading research universities, and science itself under assault, and with misinformation coming not just from the food industry or influencers but from the government itself.

Despite the headwinds, CSPI will keep fighting to protect the health and safety of all consumers. And, like you, I’ll be reading about those battles—and the latest on diet and health—in Nutrition Action. (For now, I’m still going to be writing Quick Studies. It’s tough to go cold turkey.)

It’s been a privilege to be part of CSPI and to share what’s fascinated or infuriated me over the years. Thanks for making that possible.