As much as I have mixed feelings about my undergrad institution, I have to admit that the education and many of the exposures it granted me were pretty phenomenal. As a college student, I was lucky to be offered free tickets to hear both Jane Goodall and Maya Angelou speak, and this evening my alma mater hosted the prestigious and well-loved foodie
Michael Pollan (although my free ticket tonight was provided by my current employment/institution). Pollan always gives us food for thought (pun intended!) and tonight was no exception. Having read several of his works, tonight was a wonderful reminder of the food tenements that I should be keeping.
Here are some of the notes that I took from his presentation/speech this evening (some paraphrasing included):
Last month Oregon had 240,000 people receive food boxes with 22% of those recipients being children. (Actually presented by our representative Earl Blumenauer.)
"You can't have a healthy population without a healthy diet, and you can't have a healthy diet without healthy agriculture."
Pollan had purchased two bags of groceries from our local grocery stores prior to the talk. The groceries included many food items which he terms "edible food-like substances."
--There are 17,000 new products added to the supermarket every year, which one example was a fruit pizza with cheese.
--Most common cereals (such as chocolate cheerios) are 40-44% sugar.
--20% of eating in the US is done in our cars
--Generally low-fat foods actually have more sugar and calories (here he had the example of low-fat Tillamook yogurt having 33g sugar and regular Dannon yogurt having less calories and 25g sugar)
--Putting health claims on soda is an example of "nutritionism" hitting a new low (ginger ale w/ ginseng and green tea extracts)
--$69 billion dollars last year was spent on food packaging (which was more than the amount actually paid to farmers)
He discussed the new concept of nutritionism which includes America's fascination and obsession with nutrients rather than of food itself. Nutrients rule the food market and we frequently see nutrient claims on all sorts of packaging, even in foods where they have no business making the migration (ex bread with calcium, fiber in milk). We don't see food, instead we obsess on nutrients, leading to an unhealthy obsession with "healthy eating." Since we don't receive real guidance and there isn't much regulation on food/nutrition, we instead try to figure it out ourselves. Since nutrients are invisible however (and when we look at an apple we don't see the apple but rather the nutrient components we worry about...), then we feel we need "experts" to explain the hidden reality of all the good vs evil nutrients that exist. We view eating's purpose to be protection of our health...rather than enjoyment, community, culture, etc.
The regulation/guidance has been skewed by industry. In the 70s regulators tried to come out and say "eat less red meat," a very simple to understand statement. However meat industry was upset and was allowed to enter the conversation, skewing the message to state "choose meats with less saturated fats," which is a less easy to understand statement. From that point on, industry was a part of the "nutritional guidance" conversation, and it set the precedent that the government can't tell the public to actually eat less of any FOOD but it can tell it to eat less of any NUTRIENT. It also set the stage for us to get fat on low-fat, ie we ate more because it was low-fat, and it allowed us to feel that when one nutrient is demonized it allows a free pass for another nutrient.
Industry thus loves nutritionism, which is evidenced by the fact that corn and soy can be found in a large percentage of our processed foods. Corn is used in various sweetners, soy is used in fats and fillers. Two-thirds of our calories tend to come from four plants with 30% of our calories estimated to be from corn and/or soy.
The Western diet is based on a radical change in human eating and has lead to the development of our common Western diseases. Approximately 1 trillion dollars of our health care spending is estimated to be going toward prevention and treatment of chronic disease due to our dietary choices. 80% of heart disease, 30% of cancers, and the majority of Type 2 diabetes is estimated to be from dietary choices. Whereas our current low-fat, nutrient-focused diet has lead to enormous negative disease outcomes, the traditional human diets did not. The irony of this fact is that traditional diets are/were incredibly diverse (ex Inuit diets were limited and based on high fats, Mexican diet was based in beans and corn among many other items), but our nutrient-focused culture would view their diets as lacking via balanced nutrition. This demonstrates that there is NOT one way to eat for all even as we try to develop one diet.
Chronic disease is in fact becoming a lifestyle factor for us (ex Diabetes Today magazine in check-out aisle), especially when 1 in 3 kids is likely to be diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in their lifetime. We really have two choices:
1) Surrender to the Western diet and hope for evolution to eventually adapt humans.
2) We can change backward in both eating AND lifestyle toward the choices of our ancestors.
The difficulty is that as Americans we prefer whatever is cheap and easy. Currently we spend less on food today compared to other developed nations and compared to our own history (currently 9.5% of our income).
Really we need to remind ourselves that we CAN "feed ourselves without nutritionism." We had a food "culture" long before we ever had a food "science." Culture is routinely passed down through the generations (ex via grandma and mom) but science in this case undermined mom/culture. We need to relearn. So what do we do?!
---Eat Food. Not too Much. Mostly Plants.
--Make sure you recognize the ingredients in what you're eating. Give it the grandma (or great-great grandma test), would she recognize it?!
--Shop the perimeter in the grocery store.
--Don't eat foods that make health claims or that advertise on TV.
--Eat meals with people. (Healthier families are those that cook and eat together.)
--Remember the meal as a sacred institution.
--Eat til you are 80% full. (Language difference: we ask if we're full, other countries/languages ask if one is satisfied or no longer hungry.)
--Put your money where your mouth is. (By buying local, basic foods we promote agriculture change, funding, and regulation. Diverse diet leads to diversified growing (rather than monocultures), which decreases pesticide, water, and fossil fuel usage. For every calorie based on the industrial food model (monoculture), 10 calories are spent on oil/fossil fuel for energy. Industrial food=fossil fuel. Local food increases the experience of community.)
What's best for our health is also what's best of agriculture.
Definitely some food for thought....if you have never read any of Pollan's works, I encourage you to do so--always insightful.
