Food Politics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%27s_Food_Guide

Also geared toward military use. I didn’t know that. Thanks for inspiring me to look into the matter.

- Shawn from Canada

[...] Marion Nestle julkaisi blogissaan sotilaille tarkoitettuja ravitsemusohjeita 150 vuoden takaa. Mikä on muuttunut? Vai onko mikään? [...]

Human physiology and human nature don’t evolve very fast, certainly not in just a century or two. It isn’t just official dietary guidelines. Seems sanctimonious health profiteers have always been with us, too. Probably always will be.

“She was a subscriber to all the ‘Health’ periodicals and phrenological frauds; and the solemn ignorance they were inflated with was breath to her nostrils. All the rot they contained about ventilation, and how to go to bed, and how to get up, and what to eat, and what to drink, and how much exercise to take, and what frame of mind to keep oneself in, and what sort of clothing to wear, was all gospel to her, and she never observed that health journals of the current month customarily upset everything they had recommended the month before. She was as simplehearted and honest as the day was long, and so she was an easy victim. She gathered together her quack periodicals and her quack medicines, and, thus armed with death, went about on her pale horse, metaphorically speaking, with ‘hell following after’.”
Mark Twain, describing Aunt Polly in Tom Sawyer, Chap 12.

This one states that people should eat and animals and vegetables. The latest guidelines seem to suggest that eating animals causes cancer, heart disease, and diabetes and has been telling us to eat most of our energy from grains, breads, and cereals.

The USDA has been recommending 33% of our servings should come from meat and vegetable.

What constitutes a “junk food?”

I would also like to point out that just because a group of people have been stating something for an extended period of time, it doesn’t make it true.

“In alimentary rank animal food must take precedence of all other kinds.”

Seriously?

Junk Food: Ready-to-eat food with little or no nutritious value.

Often with high calories relative to nutrition. Usually highly processed. Product often bears little resemblance to its source.

Don’t get hung up on guidelines, which are always shifting due to changes in scientific studies. The basics remain the same (which I seem to recall was the point of this post by Ms. Nestle).

If a cartoon character is the spokesperson for your breakfast choice, it’s probably junk food. If your lunch is 800 calories and you don’t work on an Amish farm, you’re probably eating junk food. If you buy your snack in a bag at 7 Eleven, it’s probably junk food. If your dinner comes in a tub or cardboard box, it’s probably junk food.

It’s fun, I suppose, to snipe about the food police or nutritional jockeying about carbohydrates and protein or what supposedly causes cancer this month. But if you don’t see the difference between an apple and a bag of Doritos, there may be no hope for you.

Thanks, Mugsy

So a 12 oz ribeye is junk food?

How would you define nutritious value?

Do you see the difference between an apple and kale? What about an apple and whole wheat? Are these synonymous?

Sorry if you think I’m being difficult, but in science, you need to have properly defined values or what you end up stating has little meaning.

@ Bob. I agree. With science there should be a clear set of values to really give meaning to the question What Is Junk Food? But…since we’re not able to study nutrition quite like other things–we can measure the output or blood level of a pharmaceutical, but there are many variables with studying how people eat, food recalls (foods eaten, portions, truthfulness…).

‘Would a 12oz piece of beef be considered junk food?’ how big is the family that will be sharing that piece of meat? Since it, in one American super-portion, contains ~84 grams of protein, perhaps TWICE the amount of protein a human would need in a SINGLE DAY– especially if part of an already protein intense diet, it could be considered junk.
That saturated fat, calorie and protein load, since it is well beyond the protein the body needs, the human body will just be making carbohydrate energy out of it, or storing it as fat, and is of little nutritional value. 888 Calories, 24g Saturated Fat, 84g Protein.
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/beef-products/3272/2
Portion sizes must be considered in this huge gray area of ‘what is junk food?’.

Clearly though, since soda, like most sugar sweetened beverages, is only a source of Calories in the diet, via sugar(s)/HFCS, soda is a junk food. Most people in the United States are not benefiting from consuming those extra calories.

[...] Food Politics » Dietary Guidelines, 1861 (they haven't changed much….) [...]

Bob,

I don’t think that there’s too much of a debate in this country over the relative merits of kale over apples or ribeyes over beans. There’s a subset of Americans who are interested in food issue, and in that group, yes, folks may argue about the relative worth of those items and which of them constitute junk. In my book, none of those particular items would be categorically junk food, because all do contain relatively high nutritional value and have been eaten by humans for thousands of years.

Funyuns, on the other hand are clearly junk. How many Americans really eat apples, kale, or even ribeyes on a regular basis? None of those items are packaged and distributed on the scale that chips, soda, and burgers are. When it comes to obesity and nutrition issues in the US, we have quite a way to go until we are debating about how American kids (and adults) are loading up on apples and steak.

I am very interested in scientific data concerning the nutritional value of food and the best balance for optimal health. But I do not think that most Americans care about kale (though I think that number are growing at a good pace).

We do know some things pretty clearly. For example, added sugars do not improve the nutritional value of food unless you happen to be climbing Everest and need quick energy. Also, basic math clarifies that eating meal portions at fast food restaurants on a regular basis will quickly lead to an excess of energy and, thus storage of that energy as fat. And we know that a large bag of Doritos contains almost an entire day’s worth of calories. And I can tell you from experience, it is nearly impossible to stick to the portion size limit of a few chips.

Most Americans, with hectic lives and tight budgets and convenient access to fast food choices, is dealing with food with those broad strokes, not debating about whether to eat an apple or kale. Who cares if a ribeye is junk food? It barely registers on the public consciousness. And who could blame them? The system is rigged in favor of the high caloric junk. And, yes, that stuff is pretty clearly junk.

Hey Bob! I think that your comments are interesting and that you can find alot of information on this topic in the Book that Ms. Nestle wrote entitled “What to Eat”. 6 months ago I started to change my diet(for weight loss and health reasons) and I had the same questions you brought up and this book answered many of those questions, gave me sources for the ones it didn’t answer, and basically gave me confidence that I could choose healthy foods for my family in the jungle taht is food marketing these days. It also helped me to kill off cravings I had been having for “junk” foods because it explained what’s in alot of them(not real food), and how the companies are able to get them to market. I’ve been able to change so many things about how I eat based on the information in this one book, it’s amazing to me. I’ve lost 32 lbs and I am able to eat 1 serving of chips if I want chips(average portion is between 14 and 22 chips, more than enough for me now that I’ve stopped eating huge portions of everything except vegetables). What I love the most about this book is how it explains the health claims on various foods. I literally cannot say enough about this book, I recommend it to everyone in sight.

In my research, I find that nutritional advice from the mid-19th century frequently is more sound than most of what comes after; what changed was the advent of “nutritional science,” in particular the transformation of food into calories, fats, proteins and carbohydrates, and later vitamins, minerals, micro-nutrients and the like. This abstraction of food makes possible most of the nutritional craziness of the 20th century and our own day, as most notably when ultra processed foods tout their nutritional superiority in the language of science.

@ Mugsy

I’m enjoying your clear and simple comments! Hard to believe they leave questions in the minds of others.

I think people confuse nutrition with healthy eating habits. If you eat too much kale (admittedly difficult), it would not be “healthy”.

We should all remember Marion and Michael Pollans admonitions to eat real food, in reasonable amounts–mostly from plant sources.

Lots of people eat food that may not be outright unhealthful (steak), but if they are eating more than a deck-of-cards sized serving, then the food is not so “healthy” (however, it would still have the edge over a bag of chips–obviously).

I think that it is a mistake to simply equate obesity with unhealthy eating. There are many issues at work there, including genetics, psychology, and activity levels.

HOWEVER, I attended a business breakfast this morning and the size of my fellows was striking. If we were to take photos of a similar gathering at ten year increments going back to 1960, we would be alarmed. How would we feel if an enemy were to infiltrate our food supply with the purpose of immobilizing our population with dramatic weight gain and the associated mobility and health complications?

I write this as someone who recently dropped 75 pounds (in six months). I did not adopt a trendy crash diet. Instead, I simply eliminated processed foods and paid attention to portion size. I am astounded at the results and the lack of hunger or suffering on my part.

It makes me think that there is little difference between me and the corn-fed steer in a feed lot. With the American junk diet, individuals have little choice but to pack on the pounds. It is not a matter of will power or immorality. If you mindlessly eat what is placed in front of you (at restaurants, convenience marts, most rows of the grocery store, on most street corners) you will become obese.

I thought that I ate a reasonably healthy diet before (no fried mozzarella sticks or Twinkies). Yet, when I turned to a menu of real food—advocated by Dr. Nestle, Michael Pollan, and others—weight loss was almost effortless. What does this say about the American food supply?

And it is not just about adopting an elite whole foods diet. When I was growing up, people ate fairly uninteresting (but substantial) meals of meatloaf and boiled peas. These were not trendy health foods. Yet people around those tables did not carry the girth that I saw at my breakfast meeting this morning.

Something dramatic has happened to the American food supply. since I was a boy in the 1960s. Madison Avenue has been heavily marketing to the appetites of the baby boomers, tapping into our hard-wired preferences for sweets and salts.

There has been plenty of analysis of the various specific additives and cultural changes that have brought us to this place. But the broad correlation that I cannot help but see is that when people stopped cooking their own food, they got fat. One defining thread through all junk food is that it is ready to eat.

To me, junk food is food that has not been prepared by human hands.

[...] At the Food Politics blog Marion Nestle recounts a Civil War monograph in “Dietary Guidelines, 1861: They Haven’t Changed Much”. [...]