An article on the NYT talks about Julia Child and how she changed the way people eat in US but not enough -- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02cooking-t.html for more info (or click the link below).
While I do agree with the author, who mentions in his article that people are buying more and more food and cooking from scratch less and less, I do have a lot to nitpick. Yes, I'm sure you are all shocked... ;-)
Let's just start by the sentence (paraphrased) "you can tell how thin a population is by how long they spend cooking". Really?!? I'm willing to bet that Italians spend more time cooking than people in France, Germany and the Netherlands. And yet, those people are thinner on average than Italians. And, before anyone says anything, I find that all those countries have equally delicious foods. To me, anyway. Brazilians spend way more time than Americans cooking, but less than Italians, but in general, Brazilians are also thinner than Italians.
He also mentions that "the time and work spent in cooking, as well as the delay in gratification built into the process, served as an important check on our appetite. Now that check is gone, we're struggling to deal with the consequences"... that does make a "nice" statement, it does feel good to say it, no? Go on, try it yourself, say it a couple of times out loud, I'll wait. No, really, say it like you are talking down to someone you don't like. Yes, just like that... doesn't it feel good? It's a nice statement to have to swing around like the proverbial dead cat: "You are fat because you are not as virtuous as I am or, in any case, as you should be! You shameless person, be virtuous!". There, go on, tell everyone! Even if you're not thin, surely there are people who are less virtuous and deserving of being called on it. Like I've mentioned before, it's more often than not all about how virtuous one is and everyone else is not, find your place in the hierarchy, even if you're not the most virtuous person, there are millions of less virtuous people after you in the line.
But take the same countries the author is extolling the virtues of -- I'll give you a minute or so to think about it -- you don't have the entire family cooking and, by far, usually the person cooking is the heaviest, oh, heck, I'll say it, the fattest person in the family; in fact, the tradition in many of those countries is/used to be that the wife cooks, the husband makes the money. And yet, interacting with the food, with all the supposedly smells, sights etc does not make the wife a skinny top model. I wonder what's wrong with the science behind the statement? Maybe there was no scientific research on it, or if there was, the data collection or analysis was, how do they say it in English, flawed?
Another fake science in the writing, you ask? Oh, sure, Americans are eating so much that we added another half meal to our diet! -- geez, half a meal!, I tell you! And yet, in many of the thin, virtuous countries, they have at least two or three meals more than we have here. If anything, it seems to me that we in America are fat precisely because we have too few meals, when we have a meal we don't stop to savor the food, we grab it and hurry in front of our TVs or desks at work and eat without paying any attention, so we only stop when we're very full. Countries where people are typically thinner start with a light breakfast, have a snack in the middle of the morning, eat a very decent lunch, another snack in mid-afternoon, then eat a decent dinner, and may even have another snack before bed. Consequences? They are not always feeling like they are hungry and/or starving, so they eat less than half at each main meal than we do here. I can tell you point blank that I have never ever been able to eat two large pieces of meat and a pound of pasta when I lived in South America -- I routinely finish a plate just like that (Veal or Chicken Parm with Pasta, for those who are wondering) here for dinner after having had lunch and possibly even breakfast. That dish alone would be three meals in Brazil.
I think one of the things that he is right about is that stuff that used to be a treat, because they are so much freaking work to make, like french fries, are now easy to get. He may be also right that foods that are made in an industrial setting (and no, I'm not removing restaurants from this) do tend to use ingredients that may facilitate processing, consistency etc and those ingredients may contribute to weight gain and be detrimental to one's health.
But the jump from there to how fat you can get is more than wrong. There's no touching the fact that in America, it's not about loving food and having pleasure in eating, you are a freakish moron with no self respect or willpower the moment you are caught eating, it's as bad as if you were having sex in front of everyone in the restaurant. God forbid if you ask for a regular soda instead of diet if you are packing 3 extra pounds on you! You should have been asking for water to begin with! Even if you dieted seriously for 4 weeks and this is your first time in a restaurant with a regular soda, we don't care! Food is not to get pleasure from, pleasure is for sinners! Are you a sinner? Why aren't you working on your desk to begin with? Virtuous people work hard, not smart, and they certainly can't afford to stop working for one hour a day to freaking enjoy food, no sir, they should be shoveling their gruel as fast as possible and be thankful they even have some grub with an economy like that, which, by the way, is bad because of sinners! Like you! Who like to eat! I'll betcha that while you're there eating enjoying your food, you're thinking about when you're gonna have sex, aren't you?!?
Meanwhile, in other countries, people enjoy their food, which means they can eat a bit less because they can still have more ice cream, or cake, or pie, tomorrow, or even by the weekend, so it's no biggie if they don't feel like they have to have it now. Also, if they are having it, they are not ashamed of it, so they can have just a bit of dessert instead of thinking "Oh, well, I fell off the wagon already, no point in feeling shame three times this week, I might as well have half a cake or an entire pint of ice cream", which, unsurprisingly, is probably what makes people gain weight... even if they spent hours making the thing from scratch, like all the goody-two-shoes supposedly did.
I can tell you that in countries that it's not a shame to eat, people can easily tell you how many calories stuff has, even if they don't know that an humongous 24-32 ounce ice cream shake with chocolate syrup and whipped cream on top at Cold Stone Creamery has about 1,500 calories or so, they know that it has more calories than a meal should have and, while it's OK to have it once or twice a year, it's not the kind of thing you should be getting everyday as a reward for dieting so hard. Also, I've never seen anyone out of US holding a cookie that is 6 inches in diameter getting surprised that it has over 800 calories -- we are not so removed from food that we don't know that it's flour, sugar and butter, so it's gonna pack a bunch of energy.
And I'll tell you a secret, sometimes some of us would be thinking about sex while we were eating, but then again, people think nothing of nudity on TV in many other countries.
I think all this Puritan repression on anything that is not work is what causes more problems than it solves. Once the undertones of "you should be working for you food" and "if you enjoy all the food you eat no one will give me credit for being virtuous and thin and restraining myself from eating" disappear, I expect the population will get back to a healthier form. Maybe they won't be size zeros, but being a size zero is not healthy either. Haven't you heard the latest research, that being a little bit on the heavy side is healthier?
Here, I have ice cream, chocolate cookies, yellow cake and, oh, bread and chicken-fried steak in the fridge, what are you having for a snack?
While I do agree with the author, who mentions in his article that people are buying more and more food and cooking from scratch less and less, I do have a lot to nitpick. Yes, I'm sure you are all shocked... ;-)
Let's just start by the sentence (paraphrased) "you can tell how thin a population is by how long they spend cooking". Really?!? I'm willing to bet that Italians spend more time cooking than people in France, Germany and the Netherlands. And yet, those people are thinner on average than Italians. And, before anyone says anything, I find that all those countries have equally delicious foods. To me, anyway. Brazilians spend way more time than Americans cooking, but less than Italians, but in general, Brazilians are also thinner than Italians.
He also mentions that "the time and work spent in cooking, as well as the delay in gratification built into the process, served as an important check on our appetite. Now that check is gone, we're struggling to deal with the consequences"... that does make a "nice" statement, it does feel good to say it, no? Go on, try it yourself, say it a couple of times out loud, I'll wait. No, really, say it like you are talking down to someone you don't like. Yes, just like that... doesn't it feel good? It's a nice statement to have to swing around like the proverbial dead cat: "You are fat because you are not as virtuous as I am or, in any case, as you should be! You shameless person, be virtuous!". There, go on, tell everyone! Even if you're not thin, surely there are people who are less virtuous and deserving of being called on it. Like I've mentioned before, it's more often than not all about how virtuous one is and everyone else is not, find your place in the hierarchy, even if you're not the most virtuous person, there are millions of less virtuous people after you in the line.
But take the same countries the author is extolling the virtues of -- I'll give you a minute or so to think about it -- you don't have the entire family cooking and, by far, usually the person cooking is the heaviest, oh, heck, I'll say it, the fattest person in the family; in fact, the tradition in many of those countries is/used to be that the wife cooks, the husband makes the money. And yet, interacting with the food, with all the supposedly smells, sights etc does not make the wife a skinny top model. I wonder what's wrong with the science behind the statement? Maybe there was no scientific research on it, or if there was, the data collection or analysis was, how do they say it in English, flawed?
Another fake science in the writing, you ask? Oh, sure, Americans are eating so much that we added another half meal to our diet! -- geez, half a meal!, I tell you! And yet, in many of the thin, virtuous countries, they have at least two or three meals more than we have here. If anything, it seems to me that we in America are fat precisely because we have too few meals, when we have a meal we don't stop to savor the food, we grab it and hurry in front of our TVs or desks at work and eat without paying any attention, so we only stop when we're very full. Countries where people are typically thinner start with a light breakfast, have a snack in the middle of the morning, eat a very decent lunch, another snack in mid-afternoon, then eat a decent dinner, and may even have another snack before bed. Consequences? They are not always feeling like they are hungry and/or starving, so they eat less than half at each main meal than we do here. I can tell you point blank that I have never ever been able to eat two large pieces of meat and a pound of pasta when I lived in South America -- I routinely finish a plate just like that (Veal or Chicken Parm with Pasta, for those who are wondering) here for dinner after having had lunch and possibly even breakfast. That dish alone would be three meals in Brazil.
I think one of the things that he is right about is that stuff that used to be a treat, because they are so much freaking work to make, like french fries, are now easy to get. He may be also right that foods that are made in an industrial setting (and no, I'm not removing restaurants from this) do tend to use ingredients that may facilitate processing, consistency etc and those ingredients may contribute to weight gain and be detrimental to one's health.
But the jump from there to how fat you can get is more than wrong. There's no touching the fact that in America, it's not about loving food and having pleasure in eating, you are a freakish moron with no self respect or willpower the moment you are caught eating, it's as bad as if you were having sex in front of everyone in the restaurant. God forbid if you ask for a regular soda instead of diet if you are packing 3 extra pounds on you! You should have been asking for water to begin with! Even if you dieted seriously for 4 weeks and this is your first time in a restaurant with a regular soda, we don't care! Food is not to get pleasure from, pleasure is for sinners! Are you a sinner? Why aren't you working on your desk to begin with? Virtuous people work hard, not smart, and they certainly can't afford to stop working for one hour a day to freaking enjoy food, no sir, they should be shoveling their gruel as fast as possible and be thankful they even have some grub with an economy like that, which, by the way, is bad because of sinners! Like you! Who like to eat! I'll betcha that while you're there eating enjoying your food, you're thinking about when you're gonna have sex, aren't you?!?
Meanwhile, in other countries, people enjoy their food, which means they can eat a bit less because they can still have more ice cream, or cake, or pie, tomorrow, or even by the weekend, so it's no biggie if they don't feel like they have to have it now. Also, if they are having it, they are not ashamed of it, so they can have just a bit of dessert instead of thinking "Oh, well, I fell off the wagon already, no point in feeling shame three times this week, I might as well have half a cake or an entire pint of ice cream", which, unsurprisingly, is probably what makes people gain weight... even if they spent hours making the thing from scratch, like all the goody-two-shoes supposedly did.
I can tell you that in countries that it's not a shame to eat, people can easily tell you how many calories stuff has, even if they don't know that an humongous 24-32 ounce ice cream shake with chocolate syrup and whipped cream on top at Cold Stone Creamery has about 1,500 calories or so, they know that it has more calories than a meal should have and, while it's OK to have it once or twice a year, it's not the kind of thing you should be getting everyday as a reward for dieting so hard. Also, I've never seen anyone out of US holding a cookie that is 6 inches in diameter getting surprised that it has over 800 calories -- we are not so removed from food that we don't know that it's flour, sugar and butter, so it's gonna pack a bunch of energy.
And I'll tell you a secret, sometimes some of us would be thinking about sex while we were eating, but then again, people think nothing of nudity on TV in many other countries.
I think all this Puritan repression on anything that is not work is what causes more problems than it solves. Once the undertones of "you should be working for you food" and "if you enjoy all the food you eat no one will give me credit for being virtuous and thin and restraining myself from eating" disappear, I expect the population will get back to a healthier form. Maybe they won't be size zeros, but being a size zero is not healthy either. Haven't you heard the latest research, that being a little bit on the heavy side is healthier?
Here, I have ice cream, chocolate cookies, yellow cake and, oh, bread and chicken-fried steak in the fridge, what are you having for a snack?
