From Personal to Social Responsibility on Food with Marion Nestle

If Dr. Marion Nestle (pronounced aptly like the verb meaning "to nurture" as opposed to the name of the food company) could teach the American public one thing, it might be that larger portions equal more calories. Alas, that is not as easy as it sounds.

Being healthy, Dr. Nestle, the author of Food Politics (which Kristin reviewed earlier) and What to Eat who spoke on campus yesterday for the Ellen Catherine Gstalder Memorial Lecture, explains, isn't difficult to do. In reality, it's quite straightforward: Eat less, move more, eat more fruits and vegetables, don't eat junk food, and enjoy your food. However, with the barrage of corporate messaging we see today about the health miracles performed by everything from your peanut butter hyped up on omega 3s to your Immunity Rice Krispies, a trip around the supermarket can become a mix of cognitive dissonance and visual overload.

How, though, did we get to be where we are today?
Dr. Nestle spent most of her early career focusing specifically on nutrition; however, she has with time realized that we need a more systematic or holistic approach to understanding our food, one uniting agriculture, food, nutrition, and public health (obesity, hunger, food safety).

She traces back the issue of obesity to the early 1980s, noting four major changes that have influenced the American diet. First is agricultural policy. In the 1970s, farm policy shifted; rather than paying farmers not to grow, the government began paying them to grow as much as possible. Something had to be done with all of that excess food, right?

Second was the wave of deregulation that came with the Reagan administration. With this wave came an increased marketing to children from corporations. This sector grew from $4.2 billion in 1980 to $40 billion in 2010. Granted, not all of this is food-based, but just turn on Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel and count how many sugary snacks or breakfast cereals you see in the commercials. It's not hard to see.

The third factor cited is an increase in women working outside the home. Dr. Nestle, however, notes that this gets overemphasized too much because the trend had already been started in the 1960s, decades before the obesity epidemic hit.

Last but not least was the shareholder value movement. In 1981 Jack Welch of GE changed the dynamic of Wall Street, pushing for immediate return rather than consistent return over time. Food companies, then, had to sell a lot more in order to grow.

Over that same span of time, the price of fruits and vegetables has seen a steady increase (relative to inflation), and the prices of beer, butter, and soda have all fallen drastically. Not the formula for a healthy public, is it?

The information we are being fed along with the food has changed, too. Health claims on food were not possible before 1990, when the Nutrition Labeling Act was passed. Food companies, consequently, could say whatever they wanted to on their products regardless of the existence or nonexistence of scientific evidence to back up their claims. This has been upheld by courts out of a gross corruption of the First Amendment. Dr. Nestle aptly noted that when she was in school, she learned that the founding fathers included this in the Bill of Rights to protect the freedom of religious and political speech, not the freedom of corporations to lie to us about their products.

There is, however, some hope in the future. Dr. Nestle was very optimistic about Michelle Obama's commitment to this issue with her Let's Move campaign. Moreover, the health care legislation included an amendment mandating that all chain restaurants release nutritional information on their menus.

What does she recommend that we do, both as consumers and as citizens?

As a consumer (i.e. personal responsibility), you can buy food, not "products," you can make your own food or even grow your own food, and you can teach your children about where food comes from.

One of the best pieces of advice I can personally give about making sure that what you are eating is actually "food" is to look at the ingredient list. If you were given all of those items separately, could you put it back together? Could you take those monoglycerides, diglycerides, triglycerides, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, natural and artificial flavors, xanthum gum, dyes for every color of the rainbow, and make food out of it? Probably not. Stick to what you know and can pronounce.

Also, your food should be rich in color, naturally occurring color that is. I have always attempted to make my plate look as attractive as possible and have always gotten comments from friends about how colorful and crafted my salads look. Just look at the photo above of Marion Nestle from her Food Politics blog and try to tell me that the array of yellow, red, and orange does not catch your eye.

As a citizen, moreover, we must advocate for more nutritious school lunches, more access to sustainable food, and regulations on marketing lies and campaign financing.

In the words of Michelle Obama, then, LET'S MOVE!

Preventive Medicine

All of this talk about health care is making me hungry for some preventive medicine...or..however you want to say that creatively.

Anyways, preventive medicine is a great way to include principles of sustainability in the health care reform because what is good for your health and what's good for the planet often coincide.

Take, for example, your food and beverage. New York talked about passing a tax on sugared soft drinks to much outrage from conservative talk radio. However, the Center for Science in the Public Interest presents this calculator that shows how much revenue could be gained from placing a small tax on sugared beverages. Getting people to eat a more healthful diet (less high-sugar, high-fat, high-sodium, highly processed food in favor of more whole foods) benefits the environment because of the energy savings from the production process--the bottling, packaging, high-fructose-corn-syrup making process that characterizes our food industry.

What else would be a part of preventive medicine?

Also valuable to both people and planet would be an increased sin tax on cigarettes, another possible source of revenue. Cigarettes, unlike other drugs, have a direct health effect on those around the user (not just the user him/herself). Smoke pollutes the air and your lungs, releasing toxins into both. If we want clean air and healthy people, smoking needs to go down.

It would not be politically feasible to levy too high of taxes on these goods; HOWEVER, the volume of the purchases produces the revenue. Money can be reinvested in healthful school lunches and anti-smoking campaigns (and the people-friendly cities noted below), and overall consumption would go down a bit (maybe just slightly--but every bit makes a difference). Food companies would be able to innovate their way out of the problem if need be--finding ways to offer healthier options to the American public. (How nice would it be to see fewer--and more prounounceable--items on the ingredients of your food!)

However, the energy you take in is not the entirety of preventive medicine; one must also think about the energy put out, i.e. exercise. Making cities and suburbs more friendly to walking and biking as alternative means of transportation keeps waistlines thinner and emissions levels thinner as well.

Healthy people, healthy planet, healthy budget, healthy reform.

The photo comes from the CSPI's site (linked above), where you should go to take action!

The Norms of Food

In the article "School Lunches Around the World" in the Huffington Post, Marlene Phillips discusses the new Country Watch column from the website School Food Policy. These columns highlight the vastly different mentality that other countries hold toward food, in contrast to the US.

Think back to your high school cafeteria or even the "upgrade" to your dining hall. What food surrounds you? Burgers, fries, pizza, fried foods, overly sugared and overly oiled entrees. Of course, there will be a salad bar, but it, too, feels institutional. This "cornucopia" of the American diet does not change much from elementary school to college--the food quality might get a bit better, one would hope.

Let's take a short world tour to see how other countries engage in the ritual we call lunch...

For Japan,
"Japanese schoolchildren eat lunch in the classroom, and students take turns serving the meal and cleaning up afterward. Their teacher eats the same food with them -- typically rice, soup, fish and milk -- and pays close attention to manners."

The lunch here is actually made into something that teaches manners (the serving aspect) and a balanced diet. It is simple but appealing. Even better, the schools send out a calendar to the parents each month detailing the benefits of the food provided; I doubt most schools in the US would want to detail the "nutritional benefits" or detail the "organic and local variety" of their lunches (Sidwell, excluded).

To move from healthful and simple to a healthful gourmet, look at France,
"Here's what students in one Paris school district ate for lunch last Tuesday: cucumbers with garlic and fine herbs; Basque chicken thigh with herbs, red and green bell peppers and olive oil; couscous; organic yogurt and an apple. For snack, they had organic bread, butter, hot chocolate and fruit."

Reading this made me jealous. I would love to see this in any public school cafeteria or, even more so, in college. A colorful lunch, rich with produce and organic options--and some seasoning. Moreover, how awesome would it be for school to give organic bread, fruit, and hot chocolate as a snack?

When thinking about the environment, health, and community building (aka socialization process), I think Italy would win:
"On a recent Friday, students in the northern city of Piacenza ate zucchini risotto and mozzarella, tomato and basil salad. Tomorrow they're getting pesto lasagna, a selection of cheeses and a platter of garden vegetables. Meat only shows up on menus only once or twice a week, and it's usually not the main course."

I would have to say that the zucchini risotto and tomato and basil salad sound like better meatless options than the mediocre pizza that often characterizes our schools.

Such a diet not only confers environmental benefits (i.e. those conferred by organic diets, local diets, and vegetarian diets), but also promotes good health. Marlene Phillips makes a good point when she notes that we end up paying "twice" for these meals: once for their existence and a second time for the health detriments caused by them. A nation plagued with rising obesity rates and diabetes rates could save money on health care if the national diet of fat, salt, and sugar was eschewed for something like the examples above. I think it would be fascinating to see the economics done on the correlation of such a diet and health care costs; it is very difficult to extract the individual costs of many of the problems people face, but a good diet and exercise are always habits good for a healthy person and, likewise, a healthy planet.

(Photo courtesy of School Food Policy)