Luise Light

BIO - Luise Light, MS, Ed.D.

Luise Light is a writer, editor, author, teacher, radio talk show host, nutritional expert and pioneering researcher and investigator. As the former USDA Director of Dietary Guidance and Nutrition Education Research, she was responsible for the original Food Guide Pyramid. The "Pyramid" emphasized eating more vegetables and fruits, less meat, salt, sugary foods, bad fat, and additive-rich factory foods. USDA censored that research-based version of the food guide and altered it to include more refined grains, meat, commercial snacks and fast foods, only releasing their revamped version 12 years after it was originally scheduled for release.

Hired as an expert to guide development of new nutrition and cancer prevention efforts, she developed the National Cancer Institute's first diet and cancer prevention guidelines, and headed national health promotion efforts with supermarkets which led to the National Nutrition Labeling Program; improved school nutrition programs offered by the American Cancer Society; and new, updated consumer courses offered by the American Red Cross, among others.

Subsequently, Light was health editor of Vegetarian Times Magazine where her groundbreaking series of articles on meat contamination won honors from the James Beard Foundation. Later, as executive editor of New Age Journal, she unmasked health breakthroughs that were suppressed by the FDA and other government agencies. As the Founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Science in Society (ISIS), a nonprofit research and advocacy group based in Washington DC, Light continued to unmask government and industry cover-ups that affected the health and welfare of children and adults.

Light is the author of two books, the first vegetable cookbook published by a US publisher,In Praise of Vegetables, now out of print. Her latest is, "What to Eat," in which she describes some of the shenanigans she experienced in Washington, DC, including the story of how her original version of the Pyramid Food Guide was changed and suppressed. She now hosts a weekly, popular public access radio program, "Food for Thought," broadcast over WOOL FM (100.1 FM) in Southeastern Vermont/New Hampshire, where she also teaches, counsels and writes. You can listen in every Sunday, 2 to 3 PM, over the station's website: www.wool.fm, from any point on the planet.