Although encouraging people to eat more nutritiously can promote better health, most efforts by companies, health professionals, and even parents are disappointingly ineffective. Consumer confusion has lead to floundering sales for soy foods; embarrassing results for expensive Five-a-Day for Better Health programs; and uneaten mountains of vegetables at homes and in school cafeterias. Brian Wansink's Marketing Nutrition focuses on why people eat the foods they do, and what can be done to improve their nutrition.

Wansink argues that the true challenge in marketing nutrition lies in leveraging new tools of consumer psychology (which he specifically demonstrates) and by applying lessons from other products' failures and successes. The same tools and insights that have helped make less nutritious products popular also offer the best opportunity to reintroduce a nutritious lifestyle. The key problem with marketing nutrition remains, after all, marketing.