• CSPI provides practical advice to consumers interested in nutrition, food safety, and health. 
• CSPI leads advocacy initiatives and lends technical assistance and strategic support to advocates seeking a healthier food environment in communities nationwide.

CSPI’s funding comes from the hundreds of thousands of subscribers to its award-winning Nutrition Action Healthletter— which has never accepted advertising— and from foundations and individual donors who support policies that protect the environment and public health. CSPI takes no corporate or government donations.

Please support CSPI’s ambitious agenda for a new era!

Help us: 

• Ensure accurate and honest labeling on food packages
• Decrease the volume of junk food marketing to children
• Reduce the consumption of soda and other sugary drinks
• Reduce sodium in processed and restaurant foods
• Reform the flawed food ingredient approval process
• Improve food safety laws and reduce the incidence of foodborne illness
• Reduce unnecessary use of valuable antibiotics in farm animals
• Eliminate Red 40, Yellow 5, and other dyes which disrupt children’s behavior
• Provide responsible information about the benefits and risks of agricultural biotechnology
• Defend the progress we’ve made by keeping junk food out of schools

As one of the nation’s top consumer advocates, CSPI will continue to fight for government policies and corporate practices that promote healthy diets, prevent deceptive marketing practices, and ensure that science is used to promote the public good. If you’d like to get involved in CSPI’s efforts, please subscribe to our Nutrition Action Healthletter, sign up for free Nutrition Action Healthy Tips, become a member of our Action Network, or donate today.

Vice President for Nutrition Margo Wootan testifies before Congress on the importance of labeling calories at chain pizza restaurants.

Our History

Founded by then-executive director Michael Jacobson, Ph.D., and two other scientists, CSPI carved out a niche as the organized voice of the American public on nutrition, food safety, health and other issues during a boom of consumer and environmental protection awareness in the early 1970s. CSPI has long sought to educate the public, advocate government policies that are consistent with scientific evidence on health, and counter industry’s powerful influence on public opinion and public policies.

Talk show host Oprah Winfrey called Nutrition Action Healthletter "the master-mind critic that sounded the food alarms."

Over the years, CSPI has grown along with its reputation as an influential and independent science-based organization. When he was Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, David Kessler credited CSPI with "one of the greatest public health advances of the century" by promoting the importance of the link between diet and health to the government, industry, and the public. In 2007, the FDA Commissioner awarded CSPI the agency’s highest honor, the Harvey W. Wiley Special Citation.

CSPI led the efforts to win passage of laws that:

• Require Nutrition Facts on packaged foods (and, later, to include trans fat on those labels)
• Define the term "organic" for foods
• Put warning notices on alcoholic beverages

CSPI also:

• Conducted eye-popping studies on the nutritional quality of restaurant meals and movie theater popcorn
• Helped to increase funding for the government's food safety inspections and nutrition and physical activity programs
• Led the lobbying effort to get soda and junk food out of schools nationwide

In recent years, CSPI led the charge to:

• Eliminate partially hydrogenated oil (the artificial kind of trans fat) from the food supply
• Include a line for “added sugars” on Nutrition Facts labels
• Secure a call from the FDA for voluntary sodium reduction targets for packaged and restaurant foods; and most recently
• Put calorie counts on chain restaurant menus and menu boards nationwide