This week, The New Food Economy is presenting our first Meat Month Q&A, a live chat with renowned food scholar and writer Marion Nestle. She’ll be taking reader questions all week via the hashtag #CarnivoresDilemma and answering them on Twitter this Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 1 p.m. EST.

Nestle is the author of six books, including the essential Food Politics (2002)—a book that helped make the economic and political structure of the American food system a mainstream concern. In particular, Nestle’s writing and research has focused on the way industry groups have used their power to influence national nutrition policy. She writes regularly on her blog, FoodPolitics.com, where her writing on the subject of meat can be found here.

Nestle is currently a professor emerita in the department of nutrition and food studies at New York University. She chaired the department from 1988 to 2003. Prior to that, Nestle taught at Brandeis University and UCSF School of Medicine and received her Ph.D. in molecular biology and and M.P.H in public health from the University of California, Berkeley. She’s served as a nutrition policy advisor for the Department of Health and Human Services and was the editor for the 1988 Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health.

Nestle’s forthcoming book, Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat, explores the methods corporations and industry groups use to manipulate scientific research as a marketing tactic—resulting in widely-shared food “studies” that influence the public conception of food and health.

Meat is a fraught and thorny topic, and if anyone can help bring clarity to it, it’s Marion Nestle. So, this week, tweet all your questions about eating, industry influence, and the health and politics of meat at @NewFoodEconomy, and Marion Nestle will answer her favorites. Be sure to use the hashtag #CarnivoresDilemma. See you soon!