Health
Weight
Published July 06, 2009 @ 08:09PM PT
I never know quite how to react when people tell me they're losing weight. Sure, if they're going to bring it up and seem happy about it, I'll congratulate them. Seems only polite.
But I'd feel odd being too enthusiastic about it. It seems like an implied criticism of their previous weight and a reinforcement of society's tendency to pass harsh moral judgment on weight in excess of an ideal that hardly anyone can live up to. Which is rich, considering that this is the same society that glories in supersized junk food and sodas, ever on the hunt for the faster, cheaper bite.
Indeed, as Ellinorianne writes at DailyKos, the food most Americans commonly eat has often been designed to increase our calorie intake on purpose. The book she's talking about is David Kessler's, The End of Overeating:
... The most stunning thing about the book is the food industry's push to make more highly palatable, cheaply made foods to make sure we can eat more calories in less time. I don't even frequent many of the places mentioned in the book and when I do, I tend to stay away from the fried foods, etc. (I have a soft spot for California Pizza Kitchen's Japanese eggplant pizza with the whole wheat crust) and usually eat half of what's put in front of me, it's just so much food.
So not only are we eating larger portion sizes but consuming foods that are easier to eat, less chewing (I'm serious, they do this on purpose) so that every bite is more calorie dense and unfortunately much lower in nutritional density. It's the trade off and it's killing us. And these foods are convenient and cheap for many families. ...
Then she talks about how she doesn't want to lose the weight she's struggling with out of shame or insecurity, but broadly, because she wants to have a healthy relationship with food and her environment. That, I can wholeheartedly congratulate.
Though losing weight for its own sake ... I'm a medium sized person, 5'6", a little squidgier than I was as a teen and about 20 lbs heavier. I usually wear a medium, or ladies' size 6 or 8, depending, though in a store where the sizes run smaller than the department stores I normally shop, a 10.
At 34, I feel that while it would certainly behoove me to exercise more so my deskbound job doesn't land me in a cardiac unit at 50 (which feels alarmingly close, I must say), I'm a perfectly reasonable size for a person to be.
Last year, I ended up on a shopping trip with a 12 year old cheerleader who's slight and small, with a slightly convex stomach. She was worried that everything made her look fat and her stomach look huge. Nonetheless, she could have been wearing a muumuu without anyone thinking she was doing so because she had anything to hide.
After a mere 20 minutes of this, I felt hideous. While I remember that, as a child, adults looked different enough that it was hard to wrap my head around the fact that we were all one species, and I know she didn't mean anything by it, it was making me and all the adult women around me squirm. What a monster I must be, what a behemoth, I thought.
All the progressive humanism in the world wasn't enough to keep my self-esteem up during this temporary, entirely oblique onslaught that wasn't even directed at me.
I shook it off, leaving me with only a niggling, residual feeling of stupidity. But I'm still totally baffled by the fact that we've managed to create a world where a very fit 12 year old, a cheerleader who also runs track and probably wouldn't weigh 100 pounds in soaking wet denim, can look in a mirror and see only FAT! That is just so unbelievably frakked up that I don't think I have the words for it. It's an outrage.
It's particularly awful in light of the fact that heavyset women face significant pay discrimination because it's been completely normalized to say nasty things about overweight women and assume their incompetence, their unworthiness to even be seen in public. It's so bad that it was relatively easy to document shopping discrimination against larger women, which is economically foolhardy behavior, considering that it turns away potentially paying customers.
After all, women are supposed to be 'lovely' and to smile and to be pleasing, visually and otherwise. At all times, all ages.
For women, beauty is also explicitly equated with virtue in the popular stories that l and every other little girl grows up with. If you think 'ugly stepsister' is a meaningless turn of phrase, think again. Goodness means beauty and beauty means being thin, but not too thin, and fit, but not muscular, because that's gross. So stay away from the free weights, missy.
In the US, fat is the universal sin of our era. It's one of the main reasons why it's so hard to have a sensible public conversation about food that doesn't end up making everyone feel as terrible about themselves as being compared with a 12 year old athlete.
I don't know how to fix any of that, so I suspect I'm just going to keep feeling extremely awkward when people brag to me about losing weight and I worry that they're doing it so others will know that if they're fallen, they're at least trying to be righteous. And I just, I mean, come on, people, it's a little extra weight. You'd think they'd done something horrible, maybe tanked the world economy like those vile SOBs at Goldman Sachs, but let me tell you, those bastiches don't feel sorry about that at all.
On the scale of sin, we spend too much time worrying about the petty imperfections of ordinary people, while thieves, mass murderers, poisoners, defrauders, greedheads and blackmailers get to run our major societal institutions with near impunity. Why do we let them do that? Adding insult to injury, not only is nothing ever done about it, they don't even get a tenth the disapproval directed at them as a person does for being seen eating a dessert while overweight?
Wtf is wrong with us? I submit that it is not principally the size of our buttocks.
Ending Childhood Hunger by 2015
Published July 01, 2009 @ 01:50PM PT
Guest editorial by Jim Weill, FRAC president
It’s always shocking to hear how many Americans can’t afford enough healthy food to get through the month – 36.2 million people live in such households at last count – but it’s especially troubling when you consider how many of the hungry are children. More than 12 million children – nearly 17 percent of all children in the country – live in homes that are struggling with hunger, hindering them from growing, learning and succeeding in school.
During the presidential campaign, President Obama pledged to end childhood hunger in America by 2015. It’s an ambitious pledge and one that he’s clearly standing behind. According to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, the president instructed him that “what I want you to do first, the most important thing in this job, is to make sure America’s kids are well fed.”
As a nation we have only six years to reach this goal of ending childhood hunger and it will not be easy. But the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) has described the essential strategies needed to make the 2015 pledge a reality. They are the measures required if we’re serious about ending the scandal of childhood hunger in the U.S. and bolstering the health and futures of our children.
Robyn O'Brien: The Unhealthy Truth
Published June 30, 2009 @ 12:00AM PT
I can't call in queer to work today, they don't excuse you for that kind of thing around here, but hopefully I can plead wedding madness in re my brevity of posting. I'm sure at least Robert Wager misses me ;)
Anyway, go read Civil Eats, where Naomi Starkman has interviewed Robyn O'Brien, author of "The Unhealthy Truth," and explainer of why we a) don't need biotech to feed the world and b) would really like to know what we're eating.
You could also check out Jill Richardson's sampler platter of food news. You know you'll like it.
Total(ish) Recall
Published June 28, 2009 @ 11:55PM PT
ObamaFoodorama discusses the ineffectual food safety measure known as a voluntary recall. LaVidaLocavore has more on the food inspection details
The FDA can't even make food processing plants show them their customer complaint records, their pest control records, or their contamination control plans. Let's contrast that toothlessnes towards large corporations with the micromanagement the federal government is trying to impose on individual ranchers in the form of the National Animal ID System.
... Mr. [Jay Platt, the third-generation proprietor of Platt Ranch,] called the extra $2 cost of the electronic tags an onerous burden for a teetering industry and said he often moved horses and some of his 1,000 head of cattle among three ranches here and in Arizona. Small groups of cattle are often rounded up in distant spots and herded into a truck by a single person, who could not simultaneously wield the hand-held scanner needed to record individual animal identities, Mr. Platt said. And there is no Internet connection on the ranch for filing to a regional database.
... “My main beef is that these proposed rules were developed by people sitting in their offices with no real knowledge of animal husbandry and small farms,” said Genell Pridgen, an owner of Rainbow Meadow Farms in Snow Hill, N.C., which rotates sheep, cattle, pigs, turkeys and chickens among three properties and sells directly to consumers and co-ops.
“I feel these regulations are draconian,” Ms. Pridgen said, “and that lobbyists from corporate mega-agribusiness designed this program to destroy traditional small sustainable agriculture.” ...
Why would the FDA have virtually no power to compel the food production and distribution industries to prevent people from dying of E. coli contamination, all while it's on the verge of having draconian authority over every aspect of animal movement on small farms and ranches?
Consider it a map of public power - Nestlé has it, Platt and Pridgen don't. It's obvious whose side the government is on.
How Convenient
Published June 26, 2009 @ 09:55PM PT
As Greg Plotkin commented in the post about the USDA food desert report, "Price is important, as is access and nutrition education, but sometimes I think we underestimate the power of convenience as well."
Can't argue. In fact, that reminds me of a great blog post I read at Pandagon a couple years ago.
An archive crash seems to have taken out the memorable, original post, but I found another fan, Harold Henderson, who partially preserved (woohoo!) this Chris Clarke essay on how responsibility for maintaining environmental and social virtue falls mainly on women. (I'm including almost the entire post below, but as non-quoted commentary amounts to about two sentences and there isn't context otherwise ...):
Clarke: "In a paper published a couple weeks ago, Dr. Sherilyn McGregor of Keele University in Staffordshire points out that when environmentally sound living requires extra work, that work is usually 'women’s work.' ... What decisions are environmentalist citizens asked to make? Choosing the green laundry detergent and toilet paper and buying organic groceries. Carrying cloth bags to the supermarket. Using non-toxic cleansers. Adding corporate citizenship to one’s list of brand loyalty factors and schlepping the Seafood Buying Guide around. Sorting trash into the proper containers for recyclables, compost, and landfilling.
"Of course, we men carry all those containers to the curb, which perfectly balances the division of labor. But then you add Environmentalism 2.0 to the mix, and you have the Slow Food (read: hours spent in the kitchen) and Local Food (read: hours spent shopping) movements, and with that kind of scheduling pressure a woman likely wouldn’t even have enough time left in the day to type up her husband’s poetry."
Henderson: That's not random snark -- Clarke is specifically referring to poet Wendell Berry's anti-computer tirade of a few years back, in which he explained that his wife types his stuff on an old Royal typewriter. It's all very well, as Keele writes in her paper, to idealize participatory citizenship as in Athens of old. But "as feminists have noted, these Athenian citizens were freed for politics by the labour of foreigners, slaves, and women who were not granted the status of citizen. Citizenship, understood as being about active participation in the public sphere, is by definition a practice that depends on 'free time'; it is thus not designed for people with multiple roles and heavy loads of responsibility for productive and reproductive work." ...
As Henderson points out elsewhere, all the unpaid work people (usually women) do isn't even recognized by society as work that takes real time or effort. The work of taking care of other human beings, especially, gets no respect at all.
On top of that work, most families with children can't afford to live on one income. (Even though Mom often still does the majority of childcare.) Maybe part of the calculation goes like, 'well, either we spend an hour and a half cooking, more time cleaning up, etc., or we order take out and help the kids with their homework.'
Families can no longer count on having the unpaid, professionally disdained, ineligible for Social Security, morning-to-night labor of a grown adult to pick up the slack.
So yes, people are tired and stressed and don't have much time and ... oh, f* it, we're getting pizza tonight.
The USDA report also mentioned that the amount of time people spent getting to the grocery store in food desert areas was higher than the national average. Even if you have a car, that takes a bite. Do you go right after work, in rush hour traffic when everyone else is going and the checkout lines will all be five people deep? Do you go later at night, after dinner, when a person should be able to have a little time to relax? Do you go only on the weekend, knowing that most of the fresh produce needs to be eaten in a couple days and will run out by mid-week at latest?
Yeah, you make time and go to the grocery store, but the longer it takes, the less frequently you're going to want to bother. There's no point making some sort of moral argument about it, that's just the way it's going to work.
So, once again and not for the last time, the food system doesn't just have one problem, and not all of those problems are directly related to food.
(Photo credit: Phillie Casablanca on Flickr.)
Food Deserts: Access in America
Published June 25, 2009 @ 11:50PM PT
The USDA has finally released an eagerly awaited repord on food deserts in America. These conclusions are presented in the summary:
• Of all households in the United States, 2.3 million, or 2.2 percent, live more than a mile from a supermarket and do not have access to a vehicle. An additional 3.4 million households, or 3.2 percent of all households, live between one-half to 1 mile and do not have access to a vehicle.
• Area-based measures of access show that 23.5 million people live in low-income areas (areas where more than 40 percent of the population has income at or below 200 percent of Federal poverty thresholds) that are more than 1 mile from a supermarket or large grocery store. However, not all of these 23.5 million people have low income. If estimates are restricted to consider only low-income people in low-income areas, then 11.5 million people, or 4.1 percent of the total U.S. population, live in low-income areas more than 1 mile from a supermarket.
• Data on time use and travel mode show that people living in low-income areas with limited access spend significantly more time (19.5 minutes) traveling to a grocery store than the national average (15 minutes). However, 93 percent of those who live in low-income areas with limited access traveled to the grocery store in a vehicle they or another household member drove.
... Urban core areas with limited food access are characterized by higher levels of racial segregation and greater income inequality. In small-town and rural areas with limited food access, the lack of transportation infrastructure is the most defining characteristic.
... Supermarkets and large grocery stores have lower prices than smaller stores. A key concern for people who live in areas with limited access is that they rely on small grocery or convenience stores that may not carry all the foods needed for a healthy diet and that may offer these foods and other food at higher prices. This report examines whether prices of similar foods vary across retail outlet types and whether the prices actually paid by consumers vary across income levels. These analyses use proprietary household-level data that contain information on food items purchased by approximately 40,000 demographically representative households across the United States. Results from these analyses show that when consumers shop at convenience stores, prices paid for similar goods are, on average, higher than at supermarkets. ...
Ezra Klein and Jane Black note at the Washington Post, it seems to be more a problem of having access to lots of lousy food instead of limited access to good food. This isn't antithetical to the previous general understanding of food deserts.
As the 2007 book Food Fight by Daniel Imhoff notes, "Food deserts aren't strictly a rural phenomenon either. Many inner-city urban areas, particularly low income neighborhoods, have become "underserved markets," where it is often easier to find a fast food restaurant or a convenience store than a grocery store with a variety of more healthy options. According Adam Drenowski, professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington, people are gaining weight and getting sick because unhealthy food is cheaper and often more available than healthy food."
Imhoff further says that between 1985 and 2000, the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables increased by 38 percent, while the cost of soft drinks plunged by 23 percent and fats and oils dropped around 15 percent.
Michelle Obama Linking Food and Health
Published June 20, 2009 @ 03:06PM PT
Via Obamafoodorama, the First Lady talks about food and health outcomes at the White House garden harvest celebration:
Michelle Obama: ... But unfortunately, for too many families, limited access to healthy fruits and vegetables is often a barrier to a healthier diet. In so many of our communities, particularly in poorer and more isolated communities, fresh, healthy food is simply out of reach. With few grocery stores in their neighborhoods, residents are forced to rely on convenience stores, fast food restaurants, liquor stores, drug stores and even gas stations for their groceries.
These food deserts leave too many families stranded and without enough choices when it comes to nourishing their loved ones. And sadly, this is the case in many large cities and rural communities all across this nation. So we need to do more to address the fact that so many of our citizens live in areas where access to healthy food, and thus a healthy future, is simply out of reach. ...
It's a resonant message, one that people across the country have been coming to independently, as evidenced by the spread of urban rooftop gardening and edible landscaping. (It's even spread beyond our borders, with Britain's Queen Elizabeth joining the kitchen garden movement.)
Even the American Medical Association, staunch opponents of serious health coverage reform otherwise, are saying that we need to reform food policy.
Indeed, money spent on good food policy now is far less expensive than treating diet-related diseases later.
We are what we eat, as much as we ever were. Why not take it seriously?
