Saving the World
The quick answer: The cure to the global chronic disease epidemic rests on the power of thoughtful and caring people to influence the lifestyle of those they know.
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Stoics and Epicureans
It’s the comments that make this blog work; I’ve said that before. So it caught my eye that this week’s topic, fasting, drew just three comments. By comparison, bread, a topic from early in the year when there were fewer readers, drew over fifty. “Food for thought,” I muttered to myself.
My thought wandered to the Greek philosophers. Remember the stoics? Stoics sought harmony with Nature, through the practice of virtue. Pain and pleasure must be ignored, they reasoned, in the quest for virtue. If a stoic visits your home, what do you feed him? Raw carrots, but only after doing the stadium steps until you both drop.
The stoics’ opposites were the epicureans who, though wary of strong passion, found comfort in life’s pleasures. Not quite hedonists, they took comfort in true friends, and in the tranquility of a life well lived. Got an epicurean coming over? Make a carrot cake and settle down for a comfy visit.
So you’re thinking, “What am I? Sometimes I want to be stoic, but other times I’m totally epicurean.” Think about how you bathe. Do you like a quick shower with cool water to stimulate? That’s your stoic. Or does a long bath with a favorite book and a candle burning sound better some times? Yeah.
The Industrial Revolution
Modern, post-Industrial Revolution society has brought out the epicurean in us all. Yes, we still work hard, though not physically, but look where we spend our money. The rise in sugar consumption since WWII is a good measure of our epicurean drift. Think about the automobile. The first cars were open to the air and you had to crank them to get started. Now we’ve powered about everything we can on cars; there’s even one that claims to do its own parallel parking. I suspect the pendulum has swung about as far as it can. Blame it on the Industrial Revolution.
In three generations—about a century—the Industrial Revolution changed everything about life in western society. And we are like people whose house has burned down, picking through the rubble to save what we can. China is the most interesting country in the world today because they’re rushing through industrialization in just one generation. It’s a crazy mad dash and as food tradition is thrown aside, chronic disease is on the rise.
The solution, as always, is conflicted. Take tobacco, for example. According to a Reuters’ report, tobacco causes 1 in 3 cases of respiratory disease, 1 in 4 cancers, and 1 in 10 cases of heart disease. Now that’s a fine business: tobacco, all diseases considered, kills half its users. Smoking is rampant in China. Here’s the conflict: China National Tobacco is owned by the government and provides 9% of its income. The U.S. tobacco companies have no qualms about exporting their stuff and the Japanese government, a power in the region, owns half of Japan Tobacco. There’ll be no mercy shown.
People Helping People
Next week the United Nations convenes a landmark meeting driven by the horrific rise in global chronic disease. The meeting will focus on four: cancer, cardiovascular, diabetes and respiratory diseases. (Besides lung cancer, the main respiratory diseases are asthma and emphysema, which when advanced become chronic obstructive respiratory disease, or COPD.) You can expect to see news story about this meeting.
The intentions of those attending the United Nations conference are good, I suppose, but will they make a difference? I’m not hopeful. Food Inc. will be circling the meeting, looking to protect their right to sell food-like products as food.
Real change comes from the everyday interaction of regular people; we’re social creatures so we like to move together. We like helping, and sometimes need to be helped.
This brings us to a book coming out next month: The Kitchen Counter Cooking School. This isn’t a plug for the book—I haven’t read it, so don’t know if its any good. But I like the idea of the book. The author, Kathleen Flinn, a business world refugee turned chef, trained at Le Cordon Bleu, makes an offer to nine hapless novices—free cooking lessons. The inspiration comes from a chance supermarket encounter with a woman loading up on processed foods. (A prior book, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry, tells of her adventures at the world’s most famous cooking school.) A true believer in home cooking, Flinn’s underlying question was, “What holds people back from cooking?”
Think about the math. If each of the 9 women Flinn taught in turn each taught nine others, and this continued for ten turns, the majority of the world's cooks would have been trained in healthy cooking. Women can change the world and a good place to start is the art of making dinner. We need to move faster, the poor Chinese, rocketed into the post-industrial era, need help but so do the people around us. Next week’s topic is home cooking. It’ll be fun.
What can we do to change the food people eat? Please comment.
Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 3:13PM | by Skip Hellewell | 22 Comments | Share Article | Email Article
Reader Comments (22)
All I know is, I can't fast because I take medication that makes me sick if I don't eat. Also, I love water too much. So I fast from other things (Internet, reading for fun, teasing my cats...) and it works out.
I think it's hard for people to cook because it's a habit and convenience thing. When I was pregnant, I could not cook. I could barely get off the couch, I was so sick (for the whole 7 months.) My husband would come home from a hard work day and didn't want to cook, so we just got in the habit of eating out. It's a lot easier, let's face it. And for a while I truly believed it was cheaper to eat out than cooking. I have been trying to change our habits and currently am impressed with us because I've cooked 8 nights so far this month. I know, 8/15 is kind of lame. But for us it is huge. We are saving so much money and my husband has lost 10 lbs. Of course I have lost nothing because I have no metabolism. Sigh.
Anyway, I don't really know how to change the world. I am starting with just my little apartment. Feeding my son apples instead of Chex Mix. Trying to eat yogurt for breakfast instead of Poptarts. I don't want my little boy to turn out like me, overweight for my entire life, so I am trying to change for him.
I think about this topic a lot. I'm feeding my family really well right now...but what about when my kids go off to college, or marry some girl who was raised on mac n cheese?! (Heaven forbid!)
I think that good health (just like any other lifestyle) can only truly be taught one family at a time. I can't go next door and tell my neighbors to stop with the soybean oil, but I can teach my own kids. And by teach, I mean train. When my kids are old enough, I plan on handing over a lot of the family cooking to them. I want them to go off to college with a few years of experience in healthy cooking, and to not be afraid of it.
Jamie! I'm so glad I'm not the only one worried about future daughters in law. I worry that they'll use boxed cake mixes. I know, I know, priorities.
I couldn't agree more that the key to fixing our eating is to raise and train cooks. The trade offs that come from "convenience foods" are not worth our health--or our pocketbooks. The rise of the modern food industry and their quest to make processed foods our center with the clarion call of "fast" and "convenient" have ruined us. These foods were new and cool to our parents, or grandparents, and as a result, we are facing two generations of people who do not know how to cook from scratch. It's shocking. We have to get back to from-scratch cooking that emphasizes seasonality and frugality.
Kris, going from eating out all the time to 8 out of 15 cooked at home is an excellent start!
I taught a class at church on healthier baking. I brought whole grain bread and muffins for everyone to try. I told the ladies to start small. If they didn't make anything from scratch at home their best bet was to start with white flour and white sugar in their baking. At least their foods wouldn't have all the extra added in. Then when they get the hang of baking and cooking at home they could go for even healthier ingredients. You can't jump in and change everything all at once in most cases- it is just too overwhelming.
I am always willing to help people learn to cook or bake. I post on facebook what things I am baking all the time. That is how I got asked to teach about healthier cooking/baking. I have had several people ask me for help or tips. Just letting people know that you know how to work in the kitchen will probably open up opportunities to share. I don't think a lot of people would even know who to ask for help in learning to cook their own foods, so we need to make sure they know we have the skills and are willing to help should they be so inclined. Some people just don't care, but those who do will approach you.
Kris, congratulations on your progress. Give yourself a pat on the back. If you look back in the posts, there is guidance on home-made breakfasts that are both cheap and wholesome.
Carina, you write very well. And you're right, there has been a great loss of cooking skills. If we stay the course and vote with our dollars, Food Inc. will have to reinvent itself and that will be a great day.
Laura, you're right, it is hard for people to ask for help. Perhaps the book clubs that are so popular could be diverted to cooking clubs for a year. Anyone have a better idea?
I am 17, and have spent a year or so changing the diet of myself and my family back to traditional, home cooked and whole foods. Whenever I spend time with friends, the things they eat, disgust me somewhat. All I can think of when I see chicken nuggets is the "meat slurry" which goes into them, and all I can think of with candy is the bucketload of chemicals that are being dumped into my friends' bodies. My younger sister has resisted the changes to the food we eat more than anyone else. One day, as she was eating RedVines, I asked her what she liked about them. She replied that they were "good." I asked if she had ever really tasted them. Taken the time to slowly chew a piece, smell it, savor it, and try to notice the layers and nuances of flavor. After trying this, she had no interest in eating more, as the candy was a lot tastier when eaten quickly for a blood sugar boost without noticing the chemical taste and lack of flavor. I think that the importance of taste is a component that seems to be missing in American culture (vast generalization). Eating slower, and paying more attention to our food would help us to choose higher quality options. Try with a square of dark chocolate. You can search on the internet "how to taste chocolate." More likely than not, you will find that you are more satisfied from the one square tasted carefully than you would be from eating the entire bar. We have noticed that Lay's potato chips burn our tongues now with the amount of salt present. I think that the more often you cook at home, the more convenient it becomes, and having the ability to have other people cook our food for us (or a factory cook for us) has changed our perception of convenience somewhat.
I have one friend, whose parents do not cook at all. Their dinner every day comes from a restaurant. They are now on a "healthy" kick, which includes low-calorie ice cream bars, and I can't believe it's not butter. I wonder how I could share with her the cooking skills I've learned, so that she could fix meals for herself and not always have to eat out; or how I could share some information about nutrition with them without sounding preachy? Any ideas would be great.
My grandmother has type 2 diabetes, and I have been trying to help her make changes to possibly eliminate her symptoms long-distance. She is starting to realize that her mother and grandmother; who baked their own bread, drank whole milk, raised their own chickens, had the butcher grind meat from sirloin rather than buying packages, and cooked all of their own food; knew more about keeping her healthy than most of her doctors seem to. Her mother and father lived to 98 and 96 respectively (even eating dessert everyday, homemade non-the-less), and her father ran sprints every morning until his death. She, at 80 has difficulty walking. In recent conversations with my grandmother, I learned that my uncle, who passed this winter from complications of multiple sclerosis was allergic to corn. Upon learning this, when he was a child, my grandmother took corn and cornmeal out of his diet, not knowing something he would never learn; that corn was in his milk, meat, some of his fruits and vegetables, and anything in a box. I wonder if the constant exposure to something that he had a low tolerance for could have contributed to his auto-immune disease.
To wrap up, the cookbook you mention reminds me of Jamie Oliver's "Food Revolution." I believe he asked each person he taught to cook to teach 2 or 3 others. I'll definitely be taking a look when it comes out!
I think you're right on the money with that last couple paragraph's Skip. People don't cook because A) They're afraid/don't know how or B) Think they don't have time. I know those were my excuses. I needed someone to teach me to cook. To show me how. And to mess up for themselves and show me how to improvise when something goes wrong. I spent a lot of time on the phone getting cooking instructions from mom. Google has also been a saving grace. You can find answers to anything on google. The best thing I learned was to have a backup plan when you're trying something new. Even if it's just quick grilled cheese and a can of soup. Having a backup plan helps you feel better if something goes wrong. Then you're not so disheartened and won't try again.
And honestly there are a lot of recipes out there. You'll never get bored if you just keep a favorite folder full of food blogs and recipe sites. And there's also a lot of recipes that are just as fast to make as a box of mac & cheese. But much tastier, healthier and more filling!
You can do it! Find someone who's willing to teach you a recipe or two. Or teach yourself via google! Or youtube! Youtube taught me to truss a chicken and thaw a turkey. There are resources available to everyone. Ask yourself what you'd do if you weren't scared then get to it!
I've started helping people in family change what they are eating first. I think it's harder with friends or strangers. I've learned so much from your blog that I like to pass the information along to them. If you give them the facts behind the reasons they are more likely to believe what you are saying. I love to cook at home. I think people are looking at eating out the wrong way. It should be a special treat. The every so often kind of thing. That's how my parents raised me and that's how I will raise my kids. I turn my cooking at home into an adventure. Try something new every week. Try things from different countries. Make sure to get lots of varitiy. It makes it more fun. My brother and I joke about how good we are getting with cooking at home, that we won't invite people over for dinner because they will realize how good it is and will never leave.
Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution is doing amazing work to change people's attitudes about home cooking and school cafeteria food. The more support his movement gets the more it will grow—he is a fantastic spokesperson for healthy changes. You can sign his petition and learn more about his cause here: http://www.jamieoliver.com/us/foundation/jamies-food-revolution/our-campaigns
I was just about to make a comment about Flinn stealing her book idea from Jamie Oliver when I read the last comment....
I work with a young mom who was eating and feeding her children lots of processed foods and fast food. By taking to her I found out she had no idea for what to cook for her family. I made her a notebook of recipes my family likes and asked co workers to contribute their healthy family recipes.
I grew up in a household where money was tight, feeding ten people on a budget was rough on my parents..and some times on the kids! My mom and dad both cooked home made meals. We rarely had anything processed, in the spring dad would plant a garden and we would enjoy the fruits of his labor. I learned to cook around the age of nine, and then lost my love for cooking, unitil I got married. I knew how to cook..no Mac and cheese boxed dinners, or cake mixes here, but when i became a mother, I was at a loss. I fell into the trap of convience food, like that blue box of dehydrated cheese powder and almost chicken nuggets. After reading In defense of food and discovering this blog, our family eats every meal (with the occasional trip to cafe rio) at home, made with whole foods. We have cut out most meat in our diet and have stopped buying anything that is processed. I believe I am giving my children a healthier, fuller life because of these changes. You can eat a healthy whole foods diet on a budget. It is possible. My kids would rather eat a home cooked meal, they even bring a home lunch to school. I believe that feeding our bodies with the natural foods our Father provided us with, also feeds and nourishes our souls. I am now starting to teach my daughter how to cook, and she has asked if I would teach her friends as well. Nothing beats a home cooked, lovingly made meal.
After worrying for years about my parents' health and my inlaws' health as well, I've come to the conclusion that you can't make people change. Sounds like a no-brainer conclusion, but it really is true. Even after they flat out ask you, they often don't even really want your input. My mother-in-law asked me one time what she could do to get healthy and lose weight, and I told her how to make adjustments to her diet and that she needed to start exercising. That was too hard of an answer, and she just wanted an easy fix. She has changed nothing. She isn't truly ready to change.
I can control what I eat, and what I make for my family, and we are all better for it. I will teach my own children how to eat to feed their bodies the nutrients they need. I worry about my other family so, but they will come around on their own time. For now, at family gatherings I bring really delicious, healthy food. Something I know people will all enjoy and think about. When my parents come to stay at my house, I plan the meals and let them truly experience how I feed my own family. I've also revamped some of our favorite recipes to be healthier. In the end, I always have recipe requests. Last time they came, my mom and dad both asked for the carrot soup recipe.
It's frustrating to see people I care about not taking care of themselves. I desperately want them to be healthy. It's hard to realize you can't make people change even if you really want to. This is true with diet and everything else in life. But, leading by example is always the way to go. People become curious and want to know why you are happy and healthy. This has happened time and time again with family and friends who eat at our home. They want to know why we eat the way we do and it automatically opens up great discussions.
I agree with everyone else--the best way to change how the world eats is to change how YOU eat. People will change when they are ready to change, but if they know you eat differently, you will be the one they come to. As they say, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears."
As far as teaching others to cook--the simplest and most effective answer is: teach your children how to cook. It's not easy, but it IS an investment in the future. I have four sons; I understand the moms who worry about how (or if) their daughter-in-laws will cook. However, if you bring your child up in the way they should go (as the scripture states....loosely) they will not depart from it. Or, to be more accurate, they might depart for a little bit, but they'll always come around.
For instance, I am always wanting to chastise my kids when they load the honey or brown sugar on their oatmeal, and then I remember my own youth. I poured the sugar on!!! My mom didn't encourage that, she taught me good eating principles, but she never withheld it either. The older I got the less it appealed to me, and I don't have any binge tendencies since I never got it when I wanted it.
I lived in Shanghai, China for a year, and while there ate pretty much every single meal out, as a large section of the general population does. In fact, I would say that the average urban Chinese person (the peasants are too poor) eats out far more than the average American. This isn't a new development either; while eating out under Communist rule was not that typical (restaurants being capitalist and all), before 1949 urban Chinese also ate out all the time. There's lots of restaurants all over China dating from the nineteenth century or even earlier. Food tradition in China largely revolves around eating out, not home cooking.
I think you are overlooking the fact that home cooking (except for meals of the simplest description) is really a luxury. It requires access to a kitchen, a source of running water and indoor plumbing, lots of expensive paraphernalia (pots, knives, appliances), space for food storage, etc. Many Chinese, even in relatively wealthy Shanghai, don't have any of these things. Eating out is actually cheaper than eating at home.
Actually, the poorest Americans don't have the ability to cook either, for the same reasons. Even if you do have access to a kitchen, that doesn't mean that you have any dishes or pots to cook in (that stuff is expensive).
Of course it's nice to give free cooking lessons, but that is a minor issue (especially in a global framework). If you really want to change the way people eat, I think your efforts would be better directed elsewhere.
My favorite way to influence the people around me is to cook for them. I pull out the stops especially when I know that the person I'm cooking for has weight issues and is looking for answers. I'm a whole ingredients kind of girl, and my favorite reaction comes after the first bite...."oh, this is good!" Although I make a big effort for friends and family outside our home, I still try to give my kids consistently good, varied meals. Now I've got a groove after a few years, it hardly takes any extra time. I'm hopeful--when my sons' friends were over one day for lunch, my son tried to sell the delicious attributes to plums, after they both refused to try it: "Come on, guys! Plums are so good! You have to believe me!"
Food really is so tasty after eating the processed stuff, so rather than standing on a soapbox, I silently show the beauty of eating wholesome, whole foods, and let the food do the talking!
Grace, I totally agree. This seems like it's targeted towards middle-class families with SAHMs who provide the meals. For lower income families, not only is the paraphernelia for cooking expensive, so is transit to grocery vs convenience stores & time. When you're holding down 2 jobs to provide for your family and you have to commute via public transportation, there simply isn't ever TIME to do even the most basic of cooking. However, I wouldn't say that time would be better spent elsewhere. A lot of things need to change, including aid for lower-income families, and doing one without the other would do nothing.
To Grace in Shanghai: Please continue to write, we want to hear more. No kitchens in many Shanghai homes? China has made a reamarkable sprint into the industrialized age. Now come the consequences. We must continue to talk.
To Shanna: i don't know the answer for the two-job mom with limited means to shop, or even cook. These are critical problems but this one thing I believe: People, when challenged, are natural problem solvers. There is a better way.
For Laura: So true: we can't force people to change. But people, though sometimes self-destructive in the shortterm, are not immune to the good influence of those who love them.
Emily: You're a light upon a hill. From your large-family childhood, to your loss then rediscovery of cooking, you are the classic story.
Katherine: Just 17 yet so wise? Wish I had a son for you (to marry). You too are a light upon a hill.
Shanghai (like most Chinese cities) is largely composed of migrants from other parts of China, who sleep in dorms; on the floor of their workplace; in the pedicabs they drive, etc. Slightly richer people live in a rented room of converted houses/apartments, with a communal kitchen shared by the floor (so 30+ people might use it): this was the way everyone lived until they switched economic systems in the 1980s.
If you live in a real apartment, then you will have a kitchen, but they are pretty bare-bones compared to US kitchens (partly due to the methods used in Chinese cooking, partly because home cooking is relatively unimportant). Hardly anyone has an oven, for instance.
I just think that home cooking is something that isn't attainable for many people: if it was, they would already be doing it! I think a better solution is to focus on ways to make healthy convenience food (like a vegan McDonald's or something like that). There was a store like this in our neighborhood in Shanghai (Loving Hut, they are in the US too).
I think your blog is very interesting and will definitely be following to learn more!
That makes me so sad to think of how those people live in Shanghai, all so we can buy cheap junk at Walmart. True, this blog will not solve all the world's food problems. But, like Skip said, one family changing their diet and influencing those they love can make a real difference. I would say that the average American does have some spare time for cooking and probably has some pots and pans (Mark Bittman has a no-nonsense article on how to inexpensively outfit a kitchen on the NY times website). The time invested in cooking healthy meals for your family and sitting down to eat together is one that will pay huge dividends over time, both in terms of money and quality of life.
My in-laws eat a lot of processed food and as I have tried to improve our family's diet, it has created some family tension. The way you eat is a very emotional subject and when I talk to my mother-in-law about the way I want to feed my children I think she feels like I'm criticizing the way she raised her children. The phrase, "well, that's what I did with my kids and they turned out just fine" comes up often. I've resigned myself to the fact that we won't eat very well when we visit them but that it won't kill us so it's not worth upsetting anyone.
Skip, I found this website today and would love to hear your thoughts on it: http://www.rtnc411.org/tlist.html A post on MSG would be great, although to avoid it you really have to avoid anything processed, which can be very challenging, especially since it has addictive properties. I think this really goes back to the phrase in the Word of Wisdom, "the evil designs in the hearts of conspiring men."
I've thought a lot about the post this week and all the comments it has generated. I personally disagree with the idea that people don't cook because it's too expensive. Rather, I believe that our eating/cooking habits are mostly based on tradition. In this case, tradition means that we follow the path our parents, grandparents, or others who where responsible for providing the meals during our formative years. It could be as simple as hearing our parents say that cooking at home is too expensive... if we hear it often enough we begin to believe it, and we follow it without actually testing for ourselves to see if it really is true. Or, those cooking for us dislike certain foods, so they never cook them and therefore we aren't ever exposed to them. We are often required to acquire a taste for new foods. Not everything we try will be received amazingly the first time we present it. But, I am reminding of Alma's advice: to know if something is true, we have test it for ourselves. This blog is designed to get us to reexamine the word of wisdom and become healthier by adhering to its principles, but we will never reap the benefits unless we actually try to implement the healthy changes it may require.
For me, this means that in order to change current cooking trends, we really have to convince ourselves (and others) to let go of our old traditions and embrace new ones. This is a hard thing... we often live and die by our traditions, and as others have commented, those who aren't ready to change simply won't. But I believe that if we change ourselves, and then offer advice or help to those who are also ready to change, we truly can make the kind of difference the conference (and the book) would like to see.