Diet Industry Malarkey
Despite strong evidence that the dietary fetishes of the 90s are unqualified hogwash, capped by the revelation that 'low-fat' diets may produce more health problems than they solve, the diet industry -- the agglomeration of medical researchers, food industry insiders, and media interests who shape America's opinions on eating -- resolutely refuses to modify its approach. All signs point, instead, to a consolidation of national opinion around yet another selective anorexia, most likely along the lines of the so-called 'Atkins diet', a low- to no-carbohydrate diet that encourages participants to indulge maximally in meat and fat.
The national diet does deserve attention, but of a more humble sort. Rather than a new authoritarian vilification of the "bad habits" of Americans, it is high time to study the real ways of eating in America. A few basic points present themselves as worthy of mention.
To start with, there is the continuing problem of starvation in America. By the USDA's conservative statistics, 10% of Americans suffer hunger as a regular part of their lives, and 3% of Americans are somewhere in the process of starving to death. Even as the government continues to massively subsidize agriculture, provisions to ensure even a basic level of nutrition to Americans fall deeper into neglect.
Beyond these 30+ million who have virtually no food choice or control over their diets, there is the burgeoning problem of malnutrition. There is a paucity of reliable information on the problem, but some research suggests that as many as 60% of children suffer from some form of malnutrition (including in fat, which, despite indications to the contrary, is a vital nutritional component). Even many of the so-called 'obese' simultaneously suffer from malnutrition. Given the nutrient-poor calories in affordable food, there is the very real possibility that Americans may in fact be optimizing their diets given the available choices.
Further, there is little accounting for the so-called "voluntary starvation" of anorexia. Statistics on the ravages of anorexia are nowhere to be found in the furor over "fat Americans". Even as the image-makers of Hollywood and New York continue to push the 'ideal' weight lower and lower, the diet industry continues to provide fodder for the punitive regimes of Corporate America. In the mid 90s, the standards for "overweight" and "obese" were modified significantly downward, a little-noted fact which throws into question the statistics purporting to show a dramatic rise in the number of overweight Americans over the same period.
More importantly, the entire orientation of the diet industry is fundamentally anti-eating. "Eating healthy" is presented as a matter of avoidance, rather than one of provision, and a subject of blame, rather than one of possibility.
The diet industry's propaganda displaces the necessary and social aspects of eating in favor of its contingent and isolated aspects. It promotes research that is completely ignorant of the real-time actuality of eating and digestion. There is no discussion of the importance of taste and flavor, even though the most cursory examination of the digestive process makes it obvious that the absorption of nutrients is critically linked to savory pleasure. Likewise, there is no regard given to the time necessary to the conditions necessary to properly digest a meal, though even the slightest experience with eating is enough to know that the shortened meal-times and increased stress of working Americans has had a deleterious effects on diet.
At the same time, the diet industry studiously ignores the conditions of food production and distribution. The last decade has been one of decisive change in the production of American food. As the number of hours devoted to home-making has continued to decline, so has the number of meals prepared domestically. We have passed the tipping-point: the majority of food is now prepared outside the home. Food in America is, de facto, socialized. This socialization has been accomplished according to a corporate agenda, but it also gives us much to be hopeful for. Rapidly disappearing are the drudgery, isolation, and inefficiency of home cooking-it is stupid to romanticize them and a disaster to attempt to recreate them. All of the joy, communal pleasure, and good eating of home cooking can be embraced and recreated on a larger stage. The possibilities are open for a truly social articulation of what it means to eat and to be alive in this most basic way. All the lies of the diet industry have been exposed. Let's take this as an opening for truth.
Signed,
The Red Chef |
