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March 13, 2007
Just by tuning in to most news broadcasts or picking up virtually any magazine, it is quite obvious the obsession among Americans when it comes to food and weight.News programs ranging from Good Morning America to Anderson Cooper 360 report stories on the latest weight-loss trends and the newest miracle diets. Pieces are written for newspapers and magazines about everything from how to lose weight by drinking wine and eating chocolate and cheese to ways of decorating your home to guarantee better eating habits.
While many are admittedly quite ridiculous, this does not detract from the apparent significance among consumers about the topic.
But one must question, as many of us already do, if Americans are so allegedly obsessed with the food-weight-health relationship, then why are we known as the fattest population in the world?
The Facts Don’t Lie
Approximately 64 percent of American adults and more than 30 percent of American children are overweight – both numbers that have continued to increase over the past 20 years, according to the American Obesity Association.
Though many of us have ignored the obvious physical changes and have been in denial of the sobering statistics, the results should come as no surprise.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average number of calories Americans eat each day has risen from 1,854 to 2,002 during the past 20 years. That increase of 148 calories per day works out to 15 pounds of extra weight each year; hence, a fatter America.
To me though, these are the obvious and overly exploited causes and effects that deserve no more attention than has already been given. I believe the existence of obesity in America today derives from a far more complicated and philosophical supposition that stems from subjects far deeper than just eating.
George McGovern & Nutritionism
I will start by introducing a document called, Dietary Goals for the United States, written in 1976 by a Senate Select Committee on Nutrition, headed by South Dakota Senator, George McGovern.
The committee originally created the documents in response to an alarming increase in such chronic diseases as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, each associated with diet. The documents consisted of a straightforward set of dietary guidelines suggesting that Americans limit their intake of red meat and dairy products.
After just weeks of being published, the committee received threatening criticism from the red-meat and dairy industries, and, with their personal political interests in mind, hastily rewrote their original recommendations.
The committee shifted their recommendations from reducing the consumption of specific foods – that to deter any hindrances in the business of red-meat producers and dairy farmers, to suggesting instead that they reduce their general saturated fat intake.
They have, according to an article written in the New York Times by Michael Pollan called, Unhappy Meals, exonerated the foods themselves, now making the culprit an “obscure, invisible, tasteless – and politically unconnected – substance....”
The revised language used in the document set the way for a very American approach on food now known as Nutritionism.
Not sure what nutritionism is? Well, if you have ever found yourself flipping over the box of cereal or a bottle of juice to examine how many calories, sugar, carbohydrates, etc. it contains, you are a well-trained student of this ideology.
Nutritionism is a reductionist approach to eating and tracking your health by breaking down foods into their nutritional values and using that to better understand the food and to determine its health value to your body.
As a result of this ideology, Americans view food not as something to enjoy for its flavor or aroma, or for the social pleasure it may bring, but instead for how many calories it does not have and how much [place your favorite nutrient here] it does have.
If you are an American, this makes wonderful sense I presume, but let us approach this then a bit further than the surface.
Capitalism
Though a seemingly unrelated term, I, along with many others, believe the psychological and social significance of capitalism in America is what drives the American way of life, even down to our eating habits.
Americans, in addition to being fat, are also known as extremely hard workers. Many people take advantage of the abundance of opportunity for financial advancement, so much so that many times, priorities are shifted and work finds its way at the top of the list, placing such things as family and health last.
Along with a shift in lifestyle, so too comes the mental shift that is many times associated with capitalism and that is, “time is money”. This dichotomy, now conventional wisdom for most Americans, is a very defining factor of how this country operates.
To better understand what I mean, I will break down this ideology into two parts – time and money, and their relativity to the subjects at hand – Americans and food.
Time
Americans, as I previously mentioned, are very busy people and in most cases, whether rich or poor, most of our time is spent working. On average, employed Americans are working anywhere from 40 to 50 hours per week, leaving little time for much else.
No longer are Americans taking the time to sit down and enjoy a home-cooked meal at the dinner table, but they are instead stuffing their faces on the go with items from the office vending machine.
This mentality, once again, as with nutritionism, removes the palate pleasing and socially stimulating enjoyment of eating.
First of all, we are not dining on foods with any real substance. While these pre-packaged and highly processed foods are great at meeting the need for convenience, they lack quality across the board.
These foods are pumped with preservatives, artificial ingredients, and artificial flavorings – need less to say, they are packaged for convenience and made to last forever, but they are, essentially, fake. (A topic I will touch upon in the next segment)
It seems, too, when Americans actually do slow down long enough to have an actual meal, they do not ever really slow down.
By doing this, not only are Americans once again depriving themselves of the pure enjoyment of eating, but so too are they denying their bodies of its ability to perform certain functions involved with eating.
“There is a physiological benefit of eating more slowly…your body senses that food has reached the stomach and shuts off the feeling of hunger before you overeat,” said Giuliano Hazan in his article for the New York Times, You Are How You Eat.
In other words, if we were to take the time to not only think about what we put into our mouths, but also how much of it we eat, we could save ourselves from consuming more food than our body needs, or wants for that matter.
Money
In response to the McGovern driven notion of nutritionism and the American demand for convenience, “the food industry set about re-engineering thousands of popular food products to contain more of the nutrients that science and government had deemed the good ones and less of the bad…giving us low-fat pork, low-fat Snackwell’s and all the low-fat pasta and high-fructose (yet low fat!) corn syrup we could consume,” said Pollan.
Speaking of high-fructose corn syrup, it is important to mention a Mr. Earl Butz, a former Secretary of Agriculture under President Nixon.
During Butz’s tenure, corn crops multiplied, which lead to an increase in production of high-fructose corn syrup, “a liquid sugar produced from corn starch that is six times sweeter than cane sugar”.
Conveniently enough, it also had attributes matching very well the needs of food manufacturers.
High-fructose corn syrup is capable of not only sweetening foods at a very cheap cost, a prominent goal of the Nixon administration, but it also prevented frozen foods from becoming freezer burnt and acted as a preservative prolonging the shelf life of other foods.
“The legacy of Earl Butz was that Coca-Cola and Pepsi switched from a 50/50 mix of corn sugar and cane sugar to 100 per cent high-fructose corn syrup, enabling them to save 20 per cent costs, boost portion sizes and still make profits,” said Greg Critser, author of Fat Land.
At the supermarket, too, calorie-dense convenience foods became even more affordable.
“In short, Butz had delivered everything the modern American consumer had wanted. Cheap, abundant and tasty calories had arrived. It was time to eat,” Critser also said.
Seemingly so, the needs of the people had been met – the ability to get food fast and at very cheap prices. So, once again, the capitalistic practices of this country have placed less emphasis on food and health and more emphasis on time and money.
Needless to say, while Americans were deceivingly packing on the pounds, the manufacturers of processed foods were gleaming.
A Misinformed America
Multi-national food corporations, such as General Mills or KRAFT Foods, were making bank off of misleading the American public to not only believing that their products were healthier than they really were through erroneous health claims – “low-fat…heart healthy…low-calorie,” but that too their quality was high despite the low price.
In my opinion, this has greatly distorted the relationship that Americans have with food. Consumers are forced to decide between the healthy and fresh, but more expensive item or the preservative-pumped, low-fat, high-calorie yet, very cheap item, making it quite difficult, especially for the less affluent, to make healthy purchases.
“People in poor neighborhoods may not have such good access to supermarkets where they can actually choose the fresh produce, said Dr.
Mariana Chilton, a professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, “[processed and packaged] foods are much cheaper and are
easy to access.”
Nutritionism has also played its fair role in the unhealthy and misunderstood relationship between Americans and food.
This ideology, which places more emphasis on the conveniently unseen nutrients and less emphasis on the pleasure of enjoying food as a whole, has created an obsession with health among Americans, but under the wrong premises.
Directing focus on those things, such as nutrients, the average consumer knows little about, has lead Americans to believe that they are unable to develop a relationship with food - ingredients, portions, nourishment, without the help of experts - a role I believe our media has attempted to play very well.
Waiting on the World to Change
The quest to a healthier and fitter America must start with education. Americans – women, men, and especially children, must be informed of the significance of eating sensibly while emphasizing moderation. It is extremely important for people to create a personal relationship with food that inhibits balance and understanding essential to personal health and happiness.
It is also important to rid ourselves of these over-processed, artificial foods by understanding their true effects – to both our bodies and our psychologies.
Once this has been established, overweight or not, we can no longer act as victims, but must instead take action.
It is very important to recognize your ability to fight the system by contacting members of Congress and even marching on Washington – better coined by Dr. Chilton as a “Million Pound March”.
The path to change is getting longer and longer as more Americans are becoming overweight. Let us recognize the threat and change the world – or just America for now.
Nutritionism has also played its fair role in the unhealthy and misunderstood relationship between Americans and food.
This ideology, which places more emphasis on the conveniently unseen nutrients and less emphasis on the pleasure of enjoying food as a whole, has created an obsession with health among Americans, but under the wrong premises.
Directing focus on those things, such as nutrients, the average consumer knows little about, has lead Americans to believe that they are unable to develop a relationship with food - ingredients, portions, nourishment, without the help of experts - a role I believe our media has attempted to play very well.
Waiting on the World to Change
The quest to a healthier and fitter America must start with education. Americans – women, men, and especially children, must be informed of the significance of eating sensibly while emphasizing moderation. It is extremely important for people to create a personal relationship with food that inhibits balance and understanding essential to personal health and happiness.
It is also important to rid ourselves of these over-processed, artificial foods by understanding their true effects – to both our bodies and our psychologies.
Once this has been established, overweight or not, we can no longer act as victims, but must instead take action.
It is very important to recognize your ability to fight the system by contacting members of Congress and even marching on Washington – better coined by Dr. Chilton as a “Million Pound March”.
The path to change is getting longer and longer as more Americans are becoming overweight. Let us recognize the threat and change the world – or just America for now.
