Caught Between Fast Food and Slow Food
The names of the products vary, but Mom’s blessing is certain, the kids’ delight guaranteed. Kookoo-Kolored Loops, Choco-Delite, Fruity Vita-Grains, Pizza-Plops—They’re fast! They’re easy! They’re vitamin-fortified! Would mom serve something that wasn’t good for you? The message gets repeated often enough, you start to believe it. You’re happier believing it when you—the actual modern mom, just home from work, exhausted and half-starved yourself -- bang open the door, searching, panting to yourself, "Quick, Mom—anything? What’s for dinner?" Even if you’re not a mom, you’re in a hurry. Discovering a dusty can of condensed mushroom soup can seem a saving grace, flavoring anything with a quick, salty glop. It’s that, or Macaroni Helpmate, or hit the road again for a fast Kentucky Fried Chimichanga or a quick Burker Queen and reconstituted fries. Let’s face it--there are only so many hours in a day. Who’s Home Anyway?In an ideal world, you have a partner who cooks at least half of the time. Or one who gets the kids cleaned up to go out for dinner and helps pay for it. But you and your partner both work more hours than your mom and dad did. Juliet Schorr, author of The Overworked American, estimates that the average American now works 199 hours more each year—five weeks more --than he or she did thirty years ago. Karen Nussbaum, organizer of a national movement called Take Back Your Time, and former director of the Women’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor, reports 66 percent of women with children now work 40 hours or more every week, compared to 60 percent of women without children, many of whom are 50 and older. Meanwhile the average American dad is putting in an average 48 hours per week on the job. One study cited in Bill Doherty’s Putting Family First showed that dual-income couples spend only 12 minutes a day talking together. Doherty, a family therapist and faculty member of the University of Minnesota, claims that "the number of families that usually eat dinner together has dropped by a third since the late 1970s." Despite the findings of the federally-funded Adolescent Health Survey of American teenagers, which linked regular family meals with a wide range of positive outcomes, such as higher academic success, better psychological adjustment, less alcohol and drug use, and lower suicide, today’s families seldom have the luxury of a full-time wife. Give Me a "Wife" Not a Sales PitchRemember her? In the old days, she tended to the kids and the house and to everything nice in the world, like libraries and hospitals and charitable clubs and churches, taking kids to enriching civic and cultural activities—all those things we still try to do. And what about the all-important task of preparing a supper at the end of the day to make everyone feel good, loved, and connected? With more time spent away from home, who can do it? Enter Big Food Companies to save you! Since frozen food and TV dinners, they have helped us to manage all that busy families now have to manage on less time. But at what cost, some are beginning to ask? Can our payment of the bill be calculated in pounds as well as dollars? In addition to working more hours than our parents, we eat about 500 calories more each day. Obesity rates in this country and Vermont have risen to the highest levels ever. Fifteen percent of our kids are now overweight, and even Vermont’s Medical Society and Public Health Department are up in arms about it. As those ads featuring mom remind us, food on the table has traditionally been women’s work. But the subject of American food has lately been widened by many who see a bigger picture, and for women sick of self-examination on the subject of food, it’s about time. Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation has reached bestseller status, revealing a food system aimed at profits, not health. This year, Slow Food USA held its national meeting at Vermont’s Shelburne Farms, where chefs and farmers raised questions about sustainability and local food culture. And last month, Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, presented at UVM’s Conference, "Who Decides What You Eat?" She invites us to look beyond women’s personal management of that most persistent question: "What’s for dinner?" A molecular biologist and chair of New York University’s Dept. of Nutrition and Food Studies, Nestle points out that America’s food industry, worth $900 billion a year, gains nothing by your eating less. Instead they invest billions in marketing your need to eat more. Higher profit margins lie in processed foods; water, salt, fat and sugar are the most cost-efficient additives, so you get plenty of these. Minimum-wage labor is also more profitable—so only about 20 percent of our food dollar goes to those on the farm. That’s on average. The corn in cornflakes is less than 10 percent of the retail price. Who Says It’s HealthyNestle described the process of developing dietary guidelines, updated by our government into that food-pyramid graphic now seen everywhere. You might have assumed that the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) was in charge of this project, protecting your health. In fact, the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture), whose mission is to promote agriculture, got the job, and these days USDA’s mission can more accurately be read to promote large, industrial agriculture. Agribusiness loves huge farms, lots of machines, herbicides, pesticides and global markets, with ties to the food industry. Both made sure you never heard the word "less," as in "eat less meat" or "eat less sugar," as nutritionists originally proposed for the food-pyramid. Finished guidelines now read "choose a diet low in saturated fat" or "choose a diet moderate in sugar." Harvard’s School of Public Health researchers, among others, question many of the pyramid’s assumptions, such as that all dairy products and fats are equal, and that there is no difference between whole grains and processed ones. New guidelines are now underway to protect consumers. Not everyone buys this scenario. Margo Denke, a nutritionist at the University of Texas, admits the food industry has had "undue influence on the deployment of nutritional policy." But she argues that no one "commands" American food choices. People can and will vote with their forks. Still, if Lucky Charms -- which Nestle says ought to be labeled as candy -- can carry an endorsement from the American Heart Association based on sprayed-on vitamins, whose job is it to question the food industry’s "contributions" to health organizations? How do we protect against special-interest influence on our health champions? Agribusiness and food corporations have more power than Mom when it comes to what gets put on our grocery shelves. Yes, she votes with her fork, but she’s not the one making $900 billion a year putting food on our tables. Shopping and cooking costs her money and time. And fast food, besides being fast, comes cheap. By contrast Vermont’s chef-and-farmer-organized Slow Food movement can seem a bit elite, going in for artisan cheese and slow-cured hams, for local, old-time methods, and local distribution. Such food demands higher prices. Marion Nestle says that commercial, processed food is cheaper in part because of government subsidies of agribusiness. Such subsidies don’t consider America’s health. For instance, fruit and vegetable growers get no subsidies, especially smaller growers. Smaller, local growers, like moms, also don’t give huge campaign contributions that help influence national policy. Food FightIt may be time for a food fight. Said Nestle in a recent interview: "In whose interest is it for people to eat healthily? I can’t think of a single industry in the U.S. that would be better off if people ate healthily. Not the insurance industry, because prevention is expensive and treatment is less expensive. Certainly not the drug industry or the diet industry or the food industry. I can’t think of a single one, and that’s not good. So you try to change societal priorities, in the same way that in many circles it became socially unacceptable to smoke." Educating ourselves about food systems is important. Nestle says that schools can provide healthy school lunches for kids that taste good. "You need a principal who cares, a food director who knows food, and involvement of the parents." She argues that programs, such as food stamps and school lunches, can continue to be a valuable asset to communities, if tweaked and made simpler. Developing food systems that provide safe, delicious and affordable food—even when you’re out of time and want someone else to cook—is surely part of the solution. But here, as elsewhere, time will matter. Changes are now happening, school by school, table by table. With so much at stake, Vermonters are already sitting down together over larger common interests, breaking bread together, talking about some exciting possibilities. Want to Find Out More? Some Quick ResourcesHelp with Taking Back Your Time: http://
www.simpleliving.net/timeday/ |
The
scene is familiar. You see it in magazines, on television, over and over:
"Mom, what’s for dinner? What’s for snacks?" A dozen
kids pile in from outdoors, appetites worked up. Modern mom looks unflustered.
She beams as she sweeps open her cupboard doors, or her refrigerator or
freezer, and pulls out something sure to please.