Fear of fat, fear of sugar

Talking about food - personal, family and cultural eating choices - with friends and family can be nearly as cheeky as openly announcing one’s religious or political beliefs. Why so? My guess is that agriculture, like politics and faith, is necessarily both personal and beyond the individual. Cultivation, farming and orchestrated diets have been with us since we first set down the bows and picked up the hoes 10,000 years ago near the Tigris and Euphrates. In all that time, only in the past 50 years or so has the dialogue changed from how can we get food to how do we deal with all of this food.

Recently, my personal interest in food, agriculture and Epicureanism has driven me to question some of our culture’s commonly held beliefs. Although not in the majority, I’m not alone either. Berkley radicals, Brooklyn-ites and Madison liberal foodies are, knowingly or unknowingly, joining ranks with concerned rural family members, small farmers, the Amish and city folk, dying to get some soil under their finger nails, like me. There’s also the rest of the population who dare to trace our nation’s health crisis from farm, or processing plant, to plate. Like good Christians and Green-washed, born-again Democrats, we’ll make you uncomfortable doing what comes easy: “Did you know the aspartame in Diet Coke makes you want to eat more?” “Light beer like Michelob Ultra won’t make you lose weight!” “Are those tomatoes local?”

Of course, nothing’s worse than someone else telling you what to do. Foodies, however, don’t want your soul or your vote; we just want you to understand that food industrialists are duping us all into eating unhealthy and unnatural foods that are slowing destroying our food pathways, local economies and bodies. That’s all. And any problem we’re having articulating this situation arises from the fact that currently there are no clear or simple alternatives to the current system. Not only are there no clear alternatives, but the slightly hazy one’s have been demonized by Those in Power in order to maintain their power. Make sense? But we’re not the system; we’re just me and you, and your friends and family. So let’s try to shrug off one misconception at a time and understand the forces behind that kind of thinking.

Here’s one that has been bothering me recently: our nation’s fear of fat and sugar. Since humanity humanized, we’ve been seeking nourishment. Here’s the forms it comes in: water, fat & oils, sugars and proteins. I cannot live on protein and water alone, not only would it be unhealthy, but also no fun. Yet the messages we’re receiving are dying to convince us butter, milk, cheese, cane sugar, beet sugar, honey and full flavored beers are killers and must be reduced or avoided all together if you wish to cash in your Medicare.

This is absolute malarkey. First of all, for all of the “unhealthy” foods mentioned above, alternatives have been substituted and touted by their producers. Margarine, soy and skim milk, processed cheese, artificial sweeteners; these foods are no reasonable alternates, neither in healthfulness or flavor. Although cholesterol free, margarine simultaneously increases your body’s cholesterol while its trans-fatty acids rearrange your tissues. (The stuff is one molecule away from plastic) Soy is too highly inadequate nutritionally to be used as a milk replacement, and in fact inhibits the body’s intake of essential nutrients. Skim milk, the once worthless byproduct of cream products, contains practically no nutrients or fat, so you may as well drink water. Processed cheese has the same health benefits as margarine and artificial sweeteners trick the body into processes reserved for simple carbohydrates, increasing feelings of hunger. Light beer just sucks.

And your milk, butter and carbohydrates, all full of natural fat? “Saturated fat does raise blood cholesterol levels, and high blood pressure is associated with an increased risk of heart disease; but the other foods in a balanced diet can compensate for this disadvantage.” Harold McGee said that, and if I were you, I’d listen to him.