Farewell fair food pyramid. No more will you mold meals into grain-heavy diets rich in corn and potatoes. We had some good times, but the USDA has finally said it is time to move on. With the release of the new “Choose My Plate” eating guide, the USDA included bulleted guidelines about how to balance our diets. The first vital bullet beneath the quartered plate says “Enjoy your food, but eat less.” If changing the food pyramid (or simply telling people to eat less) can remedy the nation’s expanding middles, perhaps we just escape having a collective eating disorder.
Not having a diagnosable eating disorder and having a healthy relationship with food two very different things. The expanding waistlines of American youth are proof enough that we, as a country, are anything but healthy in our relationships with what we eat. In fact, according to a CDC study released in 2010, not one single state in the the USA met the Healthy People goal of <15% obesity. The nation weighed in at an astounding 26.7% obese, with the heftiest individual subgroup reaching over 41% obesity. Only Colorado and Washington DC were able to squeak in below 20%. We look in the full length mirror and gasp, but is anyone surprised?
As animals, we are supposed to eat when there’s excess to prepare for the coming lean months when food is scarce. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it) those lean times don’t come in the same way they did when our dinners depended on our skills as a farmers, hunters, or gatherers. Our nation’s farm subsidies are geared at keeping grain cheap so that calories are easy to find. Easy calories are a good thing in many ways, though not exactly perfect. Now that imperfect solution is going right to our middles.
Grain is CHEAP so that’s what our food system wants us to eat. As omnivores, people were built to eat a little bit of everything , and at one time that meant a lot of vegetables filled in around the edges with “everything” else. Today, we see high fructose corn syrup, white flour, and patties of corn-fed beef portrayed on signs in brightly colored paper and celophane wrappers at highway exits and during every commercial break. No wonder we can’t appropriately answer the Omnivore’s Dilemma “What should we have for dinner?”
One answer, says Todd Essig and the New York State Psychological Association in Psych Matters, is to “Eat Local and Laugh.” Basically, they propose that we need a change toward increasing our enjoyment of food instead of the calories, or amount of food. “The goal is to take as much pleasure as one can from food choices rather than constantly hunting and gathering more calories.”
“Huzzah!” say the foodies who have long been concerned with the quality and emotional connections associated with food. Essig’s idea is that local food has that “feel-good experience” we crave from our food, and it isn’t because of the prestige of opening a $100 bottle of wine, the tastiness of soaking every morsel in heavy cream, or the excess of binging out on 50 chicken wings. “Buying food from local farmers and producers (presumably at a farmer’s market) is a way to socialize and make connections. It’s also a lovely sensual experience — a place to soak up rich colors, smells and tastes of fresh food,” says Eliza Barclay on NPR’s Health blog.
The experience of food is what foodies, farmers, and experts of the psychological community tell us we’re missing in our corn-induced coma of empty calories. In the modern American mindset, food is a problem to solve each evening when we get home from work, and not the enjoyable experience it should be. Searching the pantry for something to serve or digging through the freezer for something to thaw are both more cumbersome than ordering a pizza or “grabbing something” while we’re out.
When did eating and grabbing become the same thing? And how can we respect the process of eating if “grabbing” is all it really is? No wonder we eat so much. We’re only trying to feel satisfied with what we’ve had, and what we generally have is not lovingly selected or prepared. What we generally have is whatever we “grab” while we do something else. Might it be possible, with enough self-peptalks, that we could look forward to creating a nice dinner around that handful of cut sage, bowl of sweet green peas, or bunch of fresh spring onions? One day, just maybe, we might look forward to what can be made with excellent and affordable ingredients in our home kitchens instead of pushing through the chore of making dinner.
Our dysfunction with food may be evolutionary, biological, social, and at some level unavoidable, but it doesn’t have be the green-eyed monster it has become. What we need as a culture is a new relationship with cooking, eating, and enjoying our food, and short of investing in expensive exotic delicacies there is a much easier, environmentally responsible, socially beneficial, and cheaper option available. Whether or not we choose to buy bannanas in the winter, or import coffee from Brazil has no bearing on whether or not we take advantage of mouthwateringly ripe local strawberries in May or vine-ripened tomatoes in August. There is no food quite like the perfectly ripe fruit of summer, and even the most fast-food-addicted amongst us can agree on the bliss of biting into a slice of a cantaloupe that has been filling the car with its sweet aroma during the entire ride home.
The time spent to visit the market is slowly becoming part of the pleasure of eating. The time spent assembling food for the table must be approached as a time for enjoyment and exploration and not a chore needing completion. Searching for the last box of macaroni amidst the can goods and searching for the perfect peach amidst the market stalls are simply not equal activities and must, for us, evolve into entirely different categories of activity. The delight in food raises our appreciation for where we buy, what we eat, and how we prepare it. We need to rediscover pleasure in every stage of the eating process, and then, says Ennis, “you just may be surprised at how what used to be a site of struggle becomes part of a well-lived life.”
