You make so many great points in this post, Carol. I like your rejectionism toward that attitude that “people die all the time.”
You’re onto something by validating both personal responsibility and the role of society in people’s diets. The person is always interfacing with social milieus and structures. You mention “seeing the social forces.” That’s really important, because if a person can see and understand something of these, then she can figure out in what ways those are a plus or a minus for her.
Then, anyone would need a way of dissenting sometimes from what society lays down. Those mechanisms of expressed self-differentiation are not automatically endowed. In contrast, there’s usually a dynamic maintenance – or even self-perpetuation – of existing social norms; they enjoy a certain incumbency. It’s very easy for a person to do what “everybody” seems to be doing, especially with eating, because one simply consumes what is present in the milieu.
As far as diet goes, one mechanism that a person could adopt in order to advantageously get outside of what a certain social milieu or food system is laying down is to make her own body and her own nourishment a high priority. (I think there’s a paradigm shift in going from eating to nourishment.) This would involve learning something of human physiology, nutrition, and food ingredients, as well as one's own authentic likes and dislikes (and everyone’s body is a little different, also.) Those likings or cravings that are not so great for health need a function of knowing “when to say when,” which is a judgment that the person is responsible for (and necessarily so because the Krispy Kreme donut company, for example, has an interest in people eating lots of the product.)
With volition and mental preparation, a person can undertake his journey in getting control of his food and making authentically satisfying decisions about that. Of course, there may be obstacles to obtaining the food that’s deemed to be preferable. You mention a few of those. I would add a couple of others, such as winter weather conditions, and the lack of a car.
One big step towards providing the means for people to obtain better food is increasing the SNAP benefit and updating the list of eligible items.
Your account of your preschooler lobbying for a Happy Meal is an excellent case in point, illustrating a number of interacting systems which mediate food choices. There’s McDonald’s as a capitalistic (which defines some existential parameters) corporation, marketing lucrative items to little consumers. McDonald’s is really good at this. There’s the toy that the kids will gravitate toward. There are the enticing – maybe addictive – french fries and chicken nuggets. The apple slices, I suppose, are mainly for parental buy-in.
Your kid is also systemic. He knows that he covets the Happy Meal, and that mom and dad are powerful agents who can get that to appear before him, and who are at least sometimes persuadable.
You have an interest in your kid’s nourishment, and that’s basically systemic for most parents. I think you have doubts as to whether the proffered Happy Meal is entirely consistent with that interest.
Yes, definitely far more than doubts about a Happy Meal! In fact, it took years to socialize my kids into wanting to eat healthfully voluntarily - there are just so many powerful forces out there pushing in the other direction. And you don't want to create a "forbidden fruit" (or in this case, "forbidden junk/processed/industrial food") situation in which what's been put off-limits becomes even more desireable and enticing. Eventually, the battle was won, but it was long and hard, and made me appreciate just how impossible it would be for others with fewer time, resources, and support, as well as pre-existing knowledge and habits around healthy eating and food. An eye-opening experience, to say the least.
The socialization in healthful eating for kids is one of the big issues today. The battle was won, and that's an important success for all involved. Because so many families are just in a disadvantageous position for fostering healthful eating, society, working in appropriate ways through government, has to be involved on behalf of this general objective. For example, some federal school lunch standards need to be there, and the SNAP benefit program does also. I would add to that federal financing for grocery stores and restaurants in underserved areas that are certified as offering healthy food. If we're simply going to improve the competitiveness of the nation, then everyone has to be eqipped in certain key sectors. Nourishment is one of those.
Excellent post! You speak the truth. In regards to the "isolate-vaccinate framework", how about this real-world example I saw one day of Krispy Kreme handing out free donuts to those who got the jab? It's sad to me that donuts can be an incentive to getting a medical procedure. That's present-day America for ya. I'm afraid that our "health care" system is really a "sick care" system. It's gonna take a LONG time for this ship to turn around, if it ever does. Your words out in the universe help immensely. Thank you for taking the time to write this essay.
An essential column. Good timing for me, as Jan and I recently completed our "Wake Up to the Best Sleep Ever," online course. Drawing on work in numerous hospitals helping people sleep, as well as research on dreams in which I taught people not only to fall asleep easily but to wake up in their dreams, the course is an attempt to address the fact that at least 100 million people in the US do not get even the minimum necessary hours of sleep (and those who do often do not have restful sleep, defined as getting at least several hours of "Delta wave" sleep - the deepest most restorative sleep).
First let me start by addressing many common progressive concerns:
1. Time.
Food: If the only choice was the current Standard American Diet (SAD) and home cooked, locally grown, all organic, whole foods of the kind Michael Pollan recommends when he says "eat real food, not too much, mostly plants), you' just created a whole set of guidelines that virtually eliminate about 90% of middle, working class and poor Americans (and a surprising number of upper middle class and wealthy ones as well!).
However, if we can be much more flexible, there's a simple interim answer that everyone could adopt tomorrow, that would be reasonably inexpensive, would not involve ANY preparation, and is not blocked by the problem of "food desserts" so common in poor and rural neighborhoods - frozen and canned foods. I know, the foodies are going to be screaming, but again, if you have to choose between fried food and Big Macs, and reasonably healthy, reasonably decent tasting frozen/canned foods, I think it's reasonable to say try this once a week and gradually add 2 or 3 nights a week. Start with pizza - you can heat up frozen pizza at home in less time than it takes to order pizza. And slowly over time, you can add healthy options that are easy to prepare (non fried chicken that you can buy at any supermarket in the country, for example.
I have to say again because one gets this so often online, I'm NOT saying this is ideal, I'm just saying if you recommend something nobody is going to do, why not try a graded approach instead? Over time, experimenting wtih various canned soups, frozen vegetables and fruits that can be thrown in smoothies (yes, you can get a perfectly good blender for $30 at Walmart and yes, I've talked with hundreds of very poor people, often just on the verge of homeless, who have asked me how to eat better and I've recommended smoothies, as well as canned and frozen food, and they - AND THEIR KIDS - love it.
Exercise: the basic recommendation is 20 minutes, 3x a week. It is virtually free to walk. What about dangerous neighborhoods? If you commute to work anywhere outside your neighborhood (and I"m including commutes by subway or bus), walk after work. Get there a little early a walk 10 minutes, then walk 10 minutes after, just 1 work day a week, then go to a park on the weekends with the kids or parents or whoever, and walk both weekend days.
And start with just one weekend day. Doing this weekly for several months builds up the habit, improves health, and makes it much more appealing to try to fit in 10 to 20 minutes once during the week. it's also possible, if you bring already prepared frozen food to work, if you can heat it up in the microwave, to take 10 minutes of your lunch break to take a walk which will refresh you and make you more relaxed and productive when you get back to work.
Sleep: This is a tough one. About 16% of Americans have shift or night work. But that leaves 84%. This is a matter of time management and it actually is harder than dealing with exercise or food, because ideally, the sleep experts tell us, it's best if you get to sleep the same time 7 nights a week and get up the same time EVERY morning.
For all these things, the individual approach is possible but ideally, social support (including governmental means to provide a good foundation and economic means for that social support) is necessary.
There are countless scientific studies about what promotes behavior change. Much of the popular literature talks about cues, triggers, rewards, etc. But the #1 factor in change is support - for teens especially, if their peers are eating healthy food, they're like to; if their peers are eating junk food it's going to be VERY hard to eat healthy.
That's a start. It requires, really, as you indicate implicitly, a revolution. But a revolution well worth it.
It's interesting (if discouraging) that you have experienced, and therefore expect, so much pushback on the suggestion of eating frozen or canned soups, vegetables, and fruits - huh? This seems odd to me. Isn't there research showing that frozen fruits and vegetables can retain more of their nutrients than fresh ones that sit around a long time? Regardless, any sort of ultra-purist approach when it comes to food seems ill-advised, to say the least.
Wherever we're starting from, I think that all of us can benefit from small, doable positive steps towards greater health - doing what you can and celebrating that is far better than aiming for perfection, inevitably falling short, and then feeling bad about it.
Yes, I spend too much time with "foodies" who engage in battles between vegan, Keto and other diets that make Trump and Biden supports look like best buddies by comparison (i'm only partially kidding - food fights on Facebook are often far more toxic than political discussions)
I couldn't agree more. My mother was actually involved at Duke University in the 1940s with the original folks developing frozen food, and I still rely on it for a portion of my fruits and vegetables. I actually like canned soup as well, but my wife doesn't so we've kind of phased it out.
meanwhile, when I write about food suggestions for a mainstream audience, I always suggest prepared dinners, since so many folks (a) don't have time for food prep; (b) don't know much if anything about cooking vegetables; and (c) feel overwhelmed at having to learn something new about food prep.
Thanks for your understanding. Now if we could only as a culture put as much energy toward putting together small, doable positive steps toward positive cultural health - THAT would be a revolution!
Bravo, Carol!
Thanks, Lara!
You make so many great points in this post, Carol. I like your rejectionism toward that attitude that “people die all the time.”
You’re onto something by validating both personal responsibility and the role of society in people’s diets. The person is always interfacing with social milieus and structures. You mention “seeing the social forces.” That’s really important, because if a person can see and understand something of these, then she can figure out in what ways those are a plus or a minus for her.
Then, anyone would need a way of dissenting sometimes from what society lays down. Those mechanisms of expressed self-differentiation are not automatically endowed. In contrast, there’s usually a dynamic maintenance – or even self-perpetuation – of existing social norms; they enjoy a certain incumbency. It’s very easy for a person to do what “everybody” seems to be doing, especially with eating, because one simply consumes what is present in the milieu.
As far as diet goes, one mechanism that a person could adopt in order to advantageously get outside of what a certain social milieu or food system is laying down is to make her own body and her own nourishment a high priority. (I think there’s a paradigm shift in going from eating to nourishment.) This would involve learning something of human physiology, nutrition, and food ingredients, as well as one's own authentic likes and dislikes (and everyone’s body is a little different, also.) Those likings or cravings that are not so great for health need a function of knowing “when to say when,” which is a judgment that the person is responsible for (and necessarily so because the Krispy Kreme donut company, for example, has an interest in people eating lots of the product.)
With volition and mental preparation, a person can undertake his journey in getting control of his food and making authentically satisfying decisions about that. Of course, there may be obstacles to obtaining the food that’s deemed to be preferable. You mention a few of those. I would add a couple of others, such as winter weather conditions, and the lack of a car.
One big step towards providing the means for people to obtain better food is increasing the SNAP benefit and updating the list of eligible items.
https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/usda-announces-important-snap-benefit-modernization
Your account of your preschooler lobbying for a Happy Meal is an excellent case in point, illustrating a number of interacting systems which mediate food choices. There’s McDonald’s as a capitalistic (which defines some existential parameters) corporation, marketing lucrative items to little consumers. McDonald’s is really good at this. There’s the toy that the kids will gravitate toward. There are the enticing – maybe addictive – french fries and chicken nuggets. The apple slices, I suppose, are mainly for parental buy-in.
Your kid is also systemic. He knows that he covets the Happy Meal, and that mom and dad are powerful agents who can get that to appear before him, and who are at least sometimes persuadable.
You have an interest in your kid’s nourishment, and that’s basically systemic for most parents. I think you have doubts as to whether the proffered Happy Meal is entirely consistent with that interest.
Yes, definitely far more than doubts about a Happy Meal! In fact, it took years to socialize my kids into wanting to eat healthfully voluntarily - there are just so many powerful forces out there pushing in the other direction. And you don't want to create a "forbidden fruit" (or in this case, "forbidden junk/processed/industrial food") situation in which what's been put off-limits becomes even more desireable and enticing. Eventually, the battle was won, but it was long and hard, and made me appreciate just how impossible it would be for others with fewer time, resources, and support, as well as pre-existing knowledge and habits around healthy eating and food. An eye-opening experience, to say the least.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
The socialization in healthful eating for kids is one of the big issues today. The battle was won, and that's an important success for all involved. Because so many families are just in a disadvantageous position for fostering healthful eating, society, working in appropriate ways through government, has to be involved on behalf of this general objective. For example, some federal school lunch standards need to be there, and the SNAP benefit program does also. I would add to that federal financing for grocery stores and restaurants in underserved areas that are certified as offering healthy food. If we're simply going to improve the competitiveness of the nation, then everyone has to be eqipped in certain key sectors. Nourishment is one of those.
Excellent post! You speak the truth. In regards to the "isolate-vaccinate framework", how about this real-world example I saw one day of Krispy Kreme handing out free donuts to those who got the jab? It's sad to me that donuts can be an incentive to getting a medical procedure. That's present-day America for ya. I'm afraid that our "health care" system is really a "sick care" system. It's gonna take a LONG time for this ship to turn around, if it ever does. Your words out in the universe help immensely. Thank you for taking the time to write this essay.
Thanks, Brooke! That example you gave is sadly on point.
An essential column. Good timing for me, as Jan and I recently completed our "Wake Up to the Best Sleep Ever," online course. Drawing on work in numerous hospitals helping people sleep, as well as research on dreams in which I taught people not only to fall asleep easily but to wake up in their dreams, the course is an attempt to address the fact that at least 100 million people in the US do not get even the minimum necessary hours of sleep (and those who do often do not have restful sleep, defined as getting at least several hours of "Delta wave" sleep - the deepest most restorative sleep).
First let me start by addressing many common progressive concerns:
1. Time.
Food: If the only choice was the current Standard American Diet (SAD) and home cooked, locally grown, all organic, whole foods of the kind Michael Pollan recommends when he says "eat real food, not too much, mostly plants), you' just created a whole set of guidelines that virtually eliminate about 90% of middle, working class and poor Americans (and a surprising number of upper middle class and wealthy ones as well!).
However, if we can be much more flexible, there's a simple interim answer that everyone could adopt tomorrow, that would be reasonably inexpensive, would not involve ANY preparation, and is not blocked by the problem of "food desserts" so common in poor and rural neighborhoods - frozen and canned foods. I know, the foodies are going to be screaming, but again, if you have to choose between fried food and Big Macs, and reasonably healthy, reasonably decent tasting frozen/canned foods, I think it's reasonable to say try this once a week and gradually add 2 or 3 nights a week. Start with pizza - you can heat up frozen pizza at home in less time than it takes to order pizza. And slowly over time, you can add healthy options that are easy to prepare (non fried chicken that you can buy at any supermarket in the country, for example.
I have to say again because one gets this so often online, I'm NOT saying this is ideal, I'm just saying if you recommend something nobody is going to do, why not try a graded approach instead? Over time, experimenting wtih various canned soups, frozen vegetables and fruits that can be thrown in smoothies (yes, you can get a perfectly good blender for $30 at Walmart and yes, I've talked with hundreds of very poor people, often just on the verge of homeless, who have asked me how to eat better and I've recommended smoothies, as well as canned and frozen food, and they - AND THEIR KIDS - love it.
Exercise: the basic recommendation is 20 minutes, 3x a week. It is virtually free to walk. What about dangerous neighborhoods? If you commute to work anywhere outside your neighborhood (and I"m including commutes by subway or bus), walk after work. Get there a little early a walk 10 minutes, then walk 10 minutes after, just 1 work day a week, then go to a park on the weekends with the kids or parents or whoever, and walk both weekend days.
And start with just one weekend day. Doing this weekly for several months builds up the habit, improves health, and makes it much more appealing to try to fit in 10 to 20 minutes once during the week. it's also possible, if you bring already prepared frozen food to work, if you can heat it up in the microwave, to take 10 minutes of your lunch break to take a walk which will refresh you and make you more relaxed and productive when you get back to work.
Sleep: This is a tough one. About 16% of Americans have shift or night work. But that leaves 84%. This is a matter of time management and it actually is harder than dealing with exercise or food, because ideally, the sleep experts tell us, it's best if you get to sleep the same time 7 nights a week and get up the same time EVERY morning.
For all these things, the individual approach is possible but ideally, social support (including governmental means to provide a good foundation and economic means for that social support) is necessary.
There are countless scientific studies about what promotes behavior change. Much of the popular literature talks about cues, triggers, rewards, etc. But the #1 factor in change is support - for teens especially, if their peers are eating healthy food, they're like to; if their peers are eating junk food it's going to be VERY hard to eat healthy.
That's a start. It requires, really, as you indicate implicitly, a revolution. But a revolution well worth it.
It's interesting (if discouraging) that you have experienced, and therefore expect, so much pushback on the suggestion of eating frozen or canned soups, vegetables, and fruits - huh? This seems odd to me. Isn't there research showing that frozen fruits and vegetables can retain more of their nutrients than fresh ones that sit around a long time? Regardless, any sort of ultra-purist approach when it comes to food seems ill-advised, to say the least.
Wherever we're starting from, I think that all of us can benefit from small, doable positive steps towards greater health - doing what you can and celebrating that is far better than aiming for perfection, inevitably falling short, and then feeling bad about it.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
Yes, I spend too much time with "foodies" who engage in battles between vegan, Keto and other diets that make Trump and Biden supports look like best buddies by comparison (i'm only partially kidding - food fights on Facebook are often far more toxic than political discussions)
I couldn't agree more. My mother was actually involved at Duke University in the 1940s with the original folks developing frozen food, and I still rely on it for a portion of my fruits and vegetables. I actually like canned soup as well, but my wife doesn't so we've kind of phased it out.
meanwhile, when I write about food suggestions for a mainstream audience, I always suggest prepared dinners, since so many folks (a) don't have time for food prep; (b) don't know much if anything about cooking vegetables; and (c) feel overwhelmed at having to learn something new about food prep.
Thanks for your understanding. Now if we could only as a culture put as much energy toward putting together small, doable positive steps toward positive cultural health - THAT would be a revolution!