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Author, journalist and Senior Fellow at Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University
May 27
2012
As America enters its second decade of the obesity epidemic, there's little debate that we need to change the way we eat — and there are two schools of thought dominating our discussion of why we eat the way we do. One holds that our food problems are strictly cultural; Americans, goes the thinking, don't properly value good and healthy food, instead preferring the salty, fatty, processed food we colloquially call "junk." The competing hypothesis is that America's food habits are primarily structural, with limited access to healthy foods driving our food choices.
This Conversation on food is inspired by the Glass House event Dine with Design,
a benefit picnic featuring artisans and chefs from around the country drawing inspiration from the Glass House.
Why do you eat the way you do?
warren gave the final word
I always reject dualistic questions/ answers, prefering at least three options. I don’t accept either alternative. The cultural is a familiar slam at Americans as dumb slobs who don’t know what’s good for them, the same elitist view that sees mass culture as trash, only here it’s American food, not TV. The limited access option has some merit, except that it does not begin to explain the extent of the obesity “epidemic,” since it would suggest that only people who live in “food deserts” get fat, which just isn’t true. For the most part Americans have access to far more food, healthy and not, than they know what to do with.
I personally am intrigued by the evolutionary hypothesis, i.e. that we were designed to gain weight in order to store up fat against frequent famines, only now we don’t have the famines, so we just gain weight, especially now that we’re no longer chasing goats over mountains… But I’m also tempted to add a fourth hypothesis, that there really isn’t an “epidemic” in the first place. All of these possibilities are dealt with quite rigorously by Julie Guthman in “Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism” (California 2011).
As for why I eat the way I do: my food choices are the product of a negotiation among three main determinants: identity (my heritage, roots, cultural tastes), convenience ( can I find, afford, and cook it?), and responsibility (is it safe for me and my family, is it sustainable?).
Monday, May 28 at 5:13pm
I am so impressed by this story about the food that children eat in schools and the attention it has been getting over the last few weeks, here’s GOOD’s coverage: How a 9-Year-Old Girl’s Food Blog Forced Healthier Lunch Options
Thursday, May 31 at 11:35am
I’m traveling in China for work right now, and the food that I eat while away from my home in NYC is always very different from my normal routine. Sometimes when I travel it’s local Chinese cuisine, sometimes elaborate meals with co-workers and factory owners, but more often, and unfortunately, the food that is readily available near factories at lunchtime is American fast food – pizza, KFC, Burger King, etc.– which is definitely not a very healthy option.
Thursday, May 31 at 12:07pm
It seems to me that there are many more than 2 shcools of thought on this one – but to keep it simple; I can say that I eat the way I do for BOTH personal and societal/cultural reasons. I started my career as an organic farmer in Santa Cruz in the 1970′s and learned about growing healthy food and eating what we grew – I lived in the midst of an early cultural force that taught me how to live in harmony with the earth while nurturing my body with the healthiest food imaginable – and that has not changed. Then, when I was 36 yrs old, battling ulcrative colitis, I found myself in the hospital facing major surgery to remove my colon and being served hospital food that I KNEW would not help me heal. I refused to eat it, asked a friend to bring me healthy and organic meals in the hospital, and I got better. But during that time in the hospital, I thought a lot about how fortunate I was – that I knew what food I needed to heal myself AND that I had access to it. I also thought about all those people who do NOT have either the knowledge or access to the healthy food they need to live a healthy life. So now, I try to live my values through my work at Fair Food Network AND through my own personal food choices. It is a BOTH/AND for me. Eating more locally grown, more organic and sustainable, fewer animal products and more plant-based food – AND working to try to ensure that everyone has the same kinds of options that I enjoy. Obesity is a symptom of a broken food system – not a problem that can be solved alone. We need to work to create a food system in which everyone has access to the healthy food they need, at affordable prices, grown in a manner that preserves our natural resources for future generations and keeps farmers on the land. Will this “solve” the obesity epidemic? Not sure – but it will help us travel some significant distance in that direction.
Saturday, June 2 at 7:50am
My personal eating is a complex mix of culture, education, preference, income, geography and body constitution. Whose isn’t? As the United States is an experimental nation and beautifully multicultural one, we are still making up our food traditions.
Unfortunately, our natural food evolution as a people has been largely usurped by extremely aggressive processed food marketing and a national agricultural policy focused on bigger, faster, cheaper — with very little attention to health. We shouldn’t be receiving food advice from snack-food corporations. Our failed willpower enhances their stock price.
I think the solution to our obesity epidemic is to turn off the TV, raise the minimum wage, fix healthcare, support local businesses, grow local culture and celebrate the kitchens and potlucks and home recipes that actually feed Americans. That is our hedge against a homogenized, assembly-line chemical diet which will undoubtedly make us fat. Not to mention bored. Let’s have fun eating again.
Monday, June 4 at 4:44pm
Excellent point, Nina, about the relative youth of the American food tradition–we don’t have much to fall back on, and when convenience food came in in the mid-20th century, people didn’t feel like they were giving up millennia of food culture for some Pringles or a Happy Meal.
I eat the way I do–with a green salad at every meal, of food I cook myself–because I learned it from my parents. I was very lucky. My parents themselves had learned to cook because food was a source of pleasure for them. They passed this on to me, even when we were on food stamps when I was a kid. I hated eating salad all the time, and loved the white bread and Jif at my neighbor’s house, but now I don’t feel a meal is right without something green. And I know (and have tested as an adult!) that no matter how broke you are, you can still eat well, and make yourself happy, so long as you cook things yourself.
Even if the processed-food industry collapsed tomorrow, and all any American had to eat was organic, local, artisanal etc vegetables and meat, a huge portion of the country would founder because people truly don’t know how to cook.
This may sound like I’m in the camp of blaming the culture. But the processed-food industry is nefarious and needs to be contained–and is a far more overbearing and damaging force in America than is ignorance of how to cook some rice and beans.
But in the end, the culture is still key: no matter how much food activists work to make good ingredients available to people who otherwise can’t get or afford them, it won’t make a difference unless people also know how to prepare them.
And this knowledge needs to include really practical stuff: how to plan meals for a whole week, how to budget and shop–one arugula pesto recipe won’t cut it. And this is where pro-real-food people really can come across as preachy and parental.
But I learned from my parents! So there needs to be a “parent” for those who don’t get this at home (by now, the vast majority of Americans, I’d guess). My suggestion: restore home ec classes.
Tuesday, June 5 at 4:06pm
Keywords
Selected list of words appearing in this and other conversations.
warren belasco
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warren gave the Final Word
I always reject dualistic questions/ answers, prefering at least three options. I don’t accept either alternative. The cultural is a familiar slam at Americans as dumb slobs who don’t know what’s good for them, the same elitist view that sees mass culture as trash, only here it’s American food, not TV. The limited access option has some merit, except that it does not begin to explain the extent of the obesity “epidemic,” since it would suggest that only people who live in “food deserts” get fat, which just isn’t true. For the most part Americans have access to far more food, healthy and not, than they know what to do with.
I personally am intrigued by the evolutionary hypothesis, i.e. that we were designed to gain weight in order to store up fat against frequent famines, only now we don’t have the famines, so we just gain weight, especially now that we’re no longer chasing goats over mountains… But I’m also tempted to add a fourth hypothesis, that there really isn’t an “epidemic” in the first place. All of these possibilities are dealt with quite rigorously by Julie Guthman in “Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism” (California 2011).
As for why I eat the way I do: my food choices are the product of a negotiation among three main determinants: identity (my heritage, roots, cultural tastes), convenience ( can I find, afford, and cook it?), and responsibility (is it safe for me and my family, is it sustainable?).
Monday, May 28 at 5:13pm