The fanatics of food
When a link to this Atlantic article came to me through Pocket (which thinks it knows what I might like to read and is often right on the money), the title put me off. It’s called “Eating Toward Immortality,” and since not a single one of us is the least bit immortal, what could that title possibly mean?
But the futility of trying to eat as though diet could make a person immortal is pretty much the point of the piece (which is oldish; it’s from February of 2017). But its futility doesn’t stop the effort from being intense:
Today’s token foods of health may seem tainted or passé tomorrow, and within diet culture, there are contradictory ideologies: what is safe and clean to one is filth and decadence to another. Legumes and grains are wholesome, life-giving staples to many vegan eaters, while they represent the corrupting influences of agriculture on the state of nature to those who prefer a meat-heavy, grain-free Paleo diet.
Nutrition science itself is a self-correcting series of refutations. There is no certain path to purity and blamelessness through food. The only common thread between competing dietary ideologies is the belief that by adhering to them, one can escape the human condition, and become a purer, less animal, kind of being.
This is why arguments about diet get so vicious, so quickly. You are not merely disputing facts, you are pitting your wild gamble to avoid death against someone else’s. You are poking at their life raft. But if their diet proves to be the One True Diet, yours must not be. If they are right, you are wrong. This is why diet culture seems so religious. People adhere to a dietary faith in the hope they will be saved. That if they’re good enough, pure enough in their eating, they can keep illness and mortality at bay. And the pursuit of life everlasting always requires a leap of faith.
To eat without restriction, on the other hand, is to risk being unclean, and to beat your own uncertain path. It is admitting your mortality, your limitations and messiness as a biological creature, while accepting the freedoms and pleasures of eating, and taking responsibility for choosing them.
Now that we have so much abundance, many of us have come to feel bad about that abundance and those choices. We are exhorted to make not just good choices or better choices, but the perfect choices for health and for the environment, without even knowing what the best choices would be, and often denying ourselves the delectable pleasures that beckon from every grocery shelf, every magazine, and every street.
The article is interesting at several points. I was amused at the joking reference to juicing of moss – since I just got a food processor finally, I thought, hmm – might be something to try. But I think moss looks nicer when left to grow normally, and anyway, the harvesting could take days.
Philip: “and anyway, the harvesting could take days.”
Having lived on a farm for a few years, I know something that people who live in cities might not know: animals that live off grass eat A LOT OF IT! If all you (generically — not necessarily you, Philip) know of cattle is that they have their head down when you drive by, you’ve missed the larger truth: they have their head down and are chomping grass almost every waking moment.
Except, of course, when they’re chewing their cud, which takes a few hours a day, but otherwise, they don’t have a lot of down time from eating. That’s the reality of grass: it is not energy dense. Eat a lot, drink a little, sleep a little, repeat. That’s a cow’s life.
And I’m sure getting your nutrients from moss would be, as you say, a slow process.
“You are not merely disputing facts, you are pitting your wild gamble to avoid death against someone else’s.”
If you have rejected belief in an afterlife, what else is there than extending this life to the maximum extent possible?
“To eat without restriction, on the other hand, is to risk being unclean, and to beat your own uncertain path. It is admitting your mortality, your limitations and messiness as a biological creature, while accepting the freedoms and pleasures of eating, and taking responsibility for choosing them.”
Que sera, sera
When we realize that all of history’s holy men could not have been delusional, nor that all the witnesses could not have been liars… Then add the fact that the fundamental physical constants; such as the speed of light, vacuum permittivity, the Planck constant, and the gravitational constant G, upon which physical reality rest… are impossibly precise. So much so that “if the universe had physical constants with even slightly different values, the universe simply could not support life: it would expand too quickly, or never form carbon atoms, or never make complex molecules like DNA”.
The conclusion that we are part of something far more meaningful than our brief lives is IMHO, inescapable.
The “Food Pyramid” that the USDA has been pushing for 50 years probably caused the epidemic of of obesity and diabetes Type II.
Certain dietary choices that have been linked to heart disease, such as an 8 oz (230 g) serving of hamburger daily, were technically permitted under the pyramid. The pyramid also lacked differentiation within the protein-rich group (“Meat, Poultry, Fish, Dry Beans, Eggs, and Nuts”).[16]
In April 1991, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) halted publication of its Eating Right Pyramid, due to objections raised by meat and dairy lobbying groups concerning the guide’s display of their products. Despite the USDA’s explanations that the guide required further research and testing, it was not until one year later—after its content was supported by additional research—that the Eating Right Pyramid was officially released.
The Mediterranean Diet thing originated in the Korean War when young soldiers who were KIA were found to have significant coronary artery disease. This was attributed to cholesterol and eating red meat. Some “scientists” then fed rabbits, which are pure herbivores, meat and concluded that, when they found cholesterol in their arteries, that cholesterol caused heart disease.
Thus, we have been instructed to eat carbohydrates for the past 50 years. Obesity resulted and then type II diabetes. Robert Atkins MD, a cardiologist advocated a meat and fat based diet, arguing that they reduced appetite and would cause one to lose weight in the 1970s.
He was vilified. When I wrote my History of Medicine book in 1998, I could find no positive reference to him in Pub Med, the medical literature source. When he died from a slip and fall on the ice, there was widespread rejoicing at his death on the internet.
The Atkins diet is a low-carbohydrate fad diet promoted by Atkins
It was such a fad that it continues as “The South Beach Diet:” and continues to be popular.
In the Korean war KIA study there was no comment on the role of smoking.
From The Atlantic’s article:
Which reminds us that Olympia Dukakis, in Moonstruck, kept telling her husband, Cosmo, that “you’re gonna die anyway.”
. . .
The day I left home is the day I gave up oleo. (Grew up on it after Grandpa sold our tiny dairy herd.) Butter tastes better — butter IS better! And no, Parkay will NOT Fool Mother Nature. :>))!!
I’m just so overjoyed that the PTB are now telling us, rather cautiously, that “one or two eggs a week” shouldn’t hurt us.
Excuse me, but in the 50’s we all knew that eggs are “Nature’s perfect food.”
Complete proteins are found in eggs, in nearly all milk products, and in fleisch — whether meat or poultry. Also in most fish (if not all — I forget)
I drink an Ensure every day (Café Mocha “Hi-Test”–don’t like the chocolate), which has 30 g. of milk protein. So I thought I should see whether it’s got complete proteins. Didn’t find out about Ensure specifically, but the info in the above para is the result of that very recent research.
And I never gave up meat, including liver. Deal with it. :>)))
And right on cue, someone tells us how everyone is wrong, but it’s OK, he’ll set us straight. They really can’t help themselves.
PS. I tried to locate the tables that gave the protein listings for hundreds of foods. But no luck. Sorry.
Ages ago I used the read the front page of the NYTimes on the web and I marveled at the omissions and literary manipulations. They must have had a special thesaurus of pejoratives.
Look at some of the words in the first two paragraphs quoted:
token foods, tainted, safe, clean, filth, decadence, corrupting influences, purity, blamelessness, dietary ideology.
Of course, the author is trying to make a point and has maybe gone over the top. I read the whole moderately long piece. She is definitely pointing out the absurdity, but seems to be explaining it through some kind of evolutionary psychology which strikes me as quite odd. I don’t think one can be cynical enough about the food fanaticism culture she describes.
How to explain it? People read too much garbage on the internet and Facebook without skepticism. The solution; stop reading it.
Everyone knows about anorexia nervosa, but now we have orthorexia nervosa; the fear of eating insufficiently perfect food. I’ve read it’s real and people have died of it. I do think she is correct in saying that some people are trying to perfect themselves through diet.
Some particular publishing nutritionist has gotten quite hostile about folks who describe foods as healthy. She says people and animals are health or not, and foods are nutritious or not. But she is trying to nudge people from one rational thought process to a slightly different one. The Atlantic piece is about an entirely irrational “nervosa” (dare I say unhealthy) way of thinking.
I assume everyone knows about Michael Crichton’s “Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.”
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
Sort of like crooked lawyers like Cohen attach themselves to rich guys like Trump.
I gained weight by being sedentary while eating fatty foods. I lost 30 pounds by eating lean meat, vegetables and white rice for dinner, oatmeal and some protein for breakfast, and for lunch some poultry and greens. Basically I payed attention to my macros and if I could fit in some “treats” then I would if I felt like it. It ain’t rocket science. Add in at least 45 minutes of exercise five days a week.
I didn’t pay attention to the food pyramid or whatever the USDA promoted on their dinner placemat. I didn’t go vegan or vegetarian; never saw the need to (health-wise and ethically, plus at the time I learned to really cook, so giving up meat was nonsensical since many, many amazing dishes had meat).
Some science is needed, but I don’t let “research”, “science” and “data” be my gods.
I follow certain guidelines (dietary and lifestyle, mainly primal) for compressed morbidity : reducing the length of time a person who is close to the end of life spends sick or disabled.
I believe in an after life, but while I’m here, I’m going to focus on living ‘lifestyle induced illness’-free. I had cancer in my teens, and understand that everything can change on a dime, and bad things cannot be prevented. However, I’m going to not make my odds worse…
There are a lot of things I disagree with in terms of diet, but I think that even approaches that I find less than optimal are probably better than SAD (standard American diet) and sedentary lifestyle.
I gained weight by being sedentary while eating fatty foods. I lost 30 pounds by eating lean meat, vegetables and white rice for dinner, oatmeal and some protein for breakfast, and for lunch some poultry and greens.
Heh, I lost 30 pounds while remaining sedentary by eating *exactly* the same food as I had when I put it on. I just ate less of it. Watching people’s faces as I ate KFC for lunch while telling them I was losing two pounds a week was quite amusing. (Of course I was only eating half as much of it as I had previously.)
It’s just calories in versus calories out. That part of the science is very simple really.
One word: BACON. Deny bacon is the food of the gods is to live with a denied pallet. 😉
I will support and encourage anyone to eat anything they want to eat especially if it keeps or makes them healthy. We have three grown children with spouses from late 30’s to early 50’s and one family is vegetarian with three kids but they eat some fish, lots of dairy and eggs and they work out and are almost skinny and very healthy. Another family, daughter and her husband are the oldest and they became vegan over a year ago and both lost a lot of weight, she is back to high school weight and he, being a football player size man is much healthier now however they recently started eating fish and eggs but no dairy however when he goes dove hunting with me he makes an exception for grilled doves wrapped in bacon. Our son an his daughter both work out, do all sorts of outdoor stuff in Colorado and he like to hunt and cook and knows how to quarter and elk and cook doves and grouse like an expert however he likes to drink tea instead of coffee but he does not want his water brought to boil in a microwave, has to be done on a stove top so there’s that. With this goofy family and six grandkids when they are with us we love to cook and serve what they eat however my wife and I are carnivores who eat small steaks once a week charred on the outside and cold in the middle, we like fresh vegetables and try to limit carbs and both of us weigh about the same that we did over 25 years ago and our health numbers in spite of stuff that needs regular checkups are improving.
Having said all of that about our families goofy choices and reading about other commentors experiences I grew up at time when we know animals had to die to make meat and we helped my grandmother catch chickens to chop their heads off and make dinner. In grade school I knew how to shoot rabbits and dress them out for my mom to cook and it made me feel a bit more grown up and responsible without any feelings of guilt, in my thinking that was why rabbits and other critters were there, to feed us. My grandsons were on dove hunts with us helping pick up birds and clean them from the time they could walk and when my 15 year old granddaughter was five years old she was helping hunt quail, I cleaned the first one and she said ewww that’s gross as I showed her the liver and heart and then she said let’s do another one.
Being good Southern people we also knew people died and from grade school on we had funerals where we said good bye to the deceased, even a second grade classmate. I know there are people who think they can eat their own special stuff and try to live longer and perhaps avoid death but it will catch up with all of us some time or another and being a go to church guy most of my life helps me celebrate the fact I am still alive and in bonus time after having cancer three times, every day is a gift and my wife who was a widow when I married her over 25 years ago makes a joke saying she gets to go first the next time around. All I know about our demise is we will just have to hang around long enough and see how it all plays out.
I have so very many friends and family members who subscribe religiously to one diet or another — ovolactovegetarian, paleo, low-carb, organic, gluten-free, nut-free, local, antihistamine, I can’t keep track of it all — and one particularly dear relative who is probably orthorexic. All of them are sure they have found the one true way, and I suppose it’s possible that, for that particular person’s metabolism, there is some one true way.
But meanwhile I muddle along, trying not to eat too much of the fattening things or too little of the good things that make eating worthwhile, without making a big thing out of it, and I seem to stay healthy, if not quite as slim as I wish I were. I do avoid the things that I’ve discovered make life less pleasant for me – like caffeine, unfortunately – but I try not to avoid anything more than I have to. Of course I want my nice clothes to fit, and mostly they do, but it seems unnecessarily self-punitive to avoid experience with food just because something says I should, as if there were something wrong with living here on the earth and having the opportunity to taste and enjoy. Moderation in all things seems to me to be an obvious and workable guiding principle.
I don’t understand why so many people are so susceptible to food ideologies, while others aren’t. It puzzles me very much, especially when I’m scrambling around trying to prepare my kitchen for the latest guest who can’t or won’t eat this or that — but who isn’t necessarily any healthier or thinner than I am.
Okay, I’ll limit myself to just three from J P Sears.
How to Become Gluten Intolerant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oht9AEq1798sIk8
If Meat Eaters Acted Like VegansScaring Vegans with Bacon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax-1G2YlVtA
Edit is gone, lets try that again.
If Meat Eaters Acted Like Vegans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0O_VYcsIk8
I have the impression that women are more likely than men to go off into fanatical concern about what they eat, eccentric theories about same, etc. I’m wondering if that’s actually the case, or just a matter of what I’ve happened to notice.
After reviewing “Sleeper” I’ve been forced to conclude we’ve been eating all the wrong health foods.
There is a long, unfortunate history of people defining themselves as a tribe by the foods they eat. We, the People, eat the good foods and (our Gods tell us to) prohibit the bad foods. Those who do not eat as we do are not people.
As the USA fractures in tribal jealousies, diet becomes more important to define who is ‘one of us.’
In my exercise group, we’ve been (amicably) fighting Diet Wars for a while. I’m LCHF, another is vegetarian, another is on Weight Watchers, and our leader is Eat to Live (vegan, no salt, no oil). The odd thing is that we’ve all lost weight and feel better. We conclude that different bodies need different things and have declared a truce. I confess I enjoyed my vegan friend telling me that her doctor had ordered her to eat fewer beans, more fat, and some eggs. It was generous of her to tell me, considering the War. I did not do a victory dance.
“The odd thing is that we’ve all lost weight and feel better.”
Exercise will do that. Sorry Kate, but why focus only on the dietary aspect?
BTW, my impression is that value of dietary fat is or has made a big comeback after having been incorrectly maligned for decades.
_____
There is a bit of backlash movement typified by a new food product called Soylent. (Yes, after the movie, and no it’s not green.) It’s an old concept. Drink a fortified milkshake or similar as a meal substitute. This drink however, is designed to be 1) low or modest cost and 2) 100% nutritiously complete.
So you can either obsess over your food or you can just drink some glop and focus your mental (and financial) energies elsewhere.
I remember when butter was bad for us, so we were supposed to eat margarine, because it was healthier. Today, that has been reversed. I am sure that we could brainstorm at least a dozen or more examples of the same phenomena. These are not accidental. They happen because some industry association with deep pockets, biased “medical studies”, and unscrupulous lobbyists abuse the system to make it happen.
My recommendation is: Eat fresh foods as much as possible. Eat in moderation. Eat what your body is telling you it wants. Ignore “fad” diets. Exercise regularly. Cooking and eating well is one of life’s pleasures and a human art form that we can all practice. Enjoy your life.
Hi Kate,
” The odd thing is that we’ve all lost weight and feel better. ”
I’ve wondered for a while if the reported (and apparently real) weight loss from decades of radically different diet plans was actually the result of simply paying attention to what one was eating. Once the novelty wears off, the bad habits creep back, along with the weight.
There might be an interesting study in comparing obesity rates between the general public, and those who *must* pay attention to diet, for medical or religious reasons.
TommyJay, what was constant was the exercise. We’ve been doing it together for years, and no one changed that pattern. The changes were dietary. In my case, I was following the now-discredited FDA recommendations and getting heavier. When my blood sugar numbers went bad, I went low-carb-high-fat and lost thirty pounds and my pre-diabetes status. No change in exercise. For me, it works.
Sonny Wayze, I think you’re right about paying attention to diet. In my case, I’ll need to stick with this because of the threat of diabetes. If I fall off the wagon, my medical problems will return. Fortunately, I like the food I now eat.
TommyJay, you can’t out-exercise a bad diet. I’ve read that weight loss is 80% diet.
Sonny – paying attention? Probably. I track my diet in excel with calories and macros – fat, carb, protein, and fiber. While I like to think I’m LCHF (being a primal eater), I don’t get upset when I see higher carbs because I ate bread at a restaurant.
I also track my exercise in excel too (I’m on week 149). If I miss a lot in a week, I note down why. It’s remarkable how much I’m not sick from cold/flu anymore!
No matter what, in the long run, you can’t outrun the fork. 🙂
I am enjoying fermenting drinks…kefir,ginger ale, lemonade, etc. Try as hard as I could to like it, I hate sauerkraut, even though it’s supposed to be good for you. I am disabled and keeping regular is a challenge. These drinks keep me healthy. The rest of my regimen is iffy, every day is different. The fork is fun!
For those whose plumbing becomes clogged, may I recommend the Atomic Bomb Blast. This remedy was given to me by an experienced R.N., and I find it also all over the Net. Simple recipe:
2 tablespoons prune juice, warmed (I don’t get it hot)
2 tablespoons milk of magnesia, stirred in
Drink. It’s not my idea of a gourmet treat, but it’s not as awful as some things. And in my experience, it really does work.
Of course prunes and prune juice have been a daily occurrence at our mothers’ and grandmothers’ houses since before the Deluge; but prune juice (or prunes) alone stopped doing much for me years ago. The Bomb Blast works, after anywhere from 3 to 36 hours (for the severely stopped-up).
Those who cannot tolerate such discussions, I recommend stopping here.
We used to use “black and white” enemas on cases of Fecal impaction. The classic “black and white” used molasses and MOM but the results were risky. I used mineral oil and peroxide. Worked like a charm. I had a patient with low pressure hydrocephalus who had not had a BM ion several years. He had to be disimpacted every month. I used the mineral oil and peroxide and then took out his colon,. He was still constipated but improved.
After reading all this, I am grateful that I only have to eat a daily salad and 1/4 cup of nuts and drink a lot of water.
Food is fuel for the mind and body. That’s pretty much it.
Jeff Brokaw:
I have to disagree.
Food is far more than fuel, although fuel is one of the things it is. It is also art, culture, habit, desire, and a great pleasure.
Neo that is a good point and I won’t argue it.
My point was overstated and pithy but intended to be a reminder for those folks who treat food like a religious sacrament yet have no real appreciation for any of those things you mention.