Not-so-smart foods

There’s the American Heart Association’s red stamp of whole-grain approval. Then there are banners about trans fat, fiber, sodium, omega-3 and vitamins galore. And in a store near you, there’s a new label to guide your shopping: Smart Choices. Unfortunately, this label, along with so many others, may only confuse the search for smarter choices.

The problem with the Smart Choices label is not simply that unhealthy products like sugary cereals and drinks get a mysterious, official-looking check mark—the truth is that a brand like Froot Loops, complete with a huggable cartoon mascot, already markets itself to kids and families looking for easier, affordable options. The Smart Choices label may boost sales, but is ultimately a redundant part of a well-established product’s popularity.

There is a significant cause for concern, however, based on how ranking members of the Smart Choices oversight board justify the program. The lightening rod has been board President Eileen Kennedy, Dean of the highly-regarded Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. When she defends the program, she betrays a shockingly elitist attitude towards the folks who may rely on Smart Choices labeling. As the Times quoted her, she envisioned Smart Choices being helpful for a parent “rushing around, you’re trying to think about healthy eating for your kids and you have a choice between a doughnut and a cereal […] So Froot Loops is a better choice.”

OK. So amidst the piles of rubbish that these poor lost souls have confused for food, the green Smart Choices check mark will guide them to the choice least likely to kill them? This is just a baby step better than pasting skulls and crossbones to the really unhealthy choices. The program infantilizes consumers and subjects them to the dubious claims of a supposedly-expert committee.

Perhaps it’s a ruse, a stunt pulled by a veteran and well-respected educator at the highest echelons of the food system.

The genius is that it works perfectly as an academic exercise for prospective Tufts nutrition graduates: illustrate the inadequacies of the existing nutritional guidelines, as set by the USDA, by creating a list of unhealthy foods allowed by those same guidelines. The chairman of the committee nearly confirmed that such an absurdity might be true, telling CBS News that the committee believes “the smart choices program, taken in its totality, will encourage people to eat in line with U.S. dietary guidelines for Americans.” Sadly, that might be true, which demonstrates how corrupt the standards are. Even so, an elite dietician institution has no business playing along.

Food deserts: Lines in the sand

Food deserts have kicked up quite a bit of press recently for being large contributors to rising and disproportionately high rates of obesity and other health complications, particularly among inner-city residents. Several cities have taken steps to help stock healthy options (and remove unhealthy ones) in areas without nearby supermarkets, yet there are lingering questions: where do food deserts come from, and how can knowing that help us alleviate their consequences?

Unlike their sudden appearance on the news sheets, food deserts do not just emerge, without notice, like a 40-day flood. Moreover, the so-called grocery gap is not just a matter of too-few supermarkets to go around—as a recent USDA report shows, between 2% and 6% of U.S. households lie beyond walking distance (from ½ to 1 mile) of a supermarket and lack car access, making shopping difficult. In other words, food deserts not only reflect location and availability of food, they are also the symptoms of a fractured food system in which words like healthy, natural, fresh and whole exclude rather than invite people to join in eating good food.

A prime example of how a simple idea perpetuates inequalities: the food co-op. Initially branded in the same class as living co-ops, or communes, co-ops suffered their demise beginning in the 80s as people associated them with the yuppie invasion. Now, they’re coming back as eco-chic, part of the green, health-conscious spirit that belies a certain level of socioeconomic privilege.

But, this need not be the case. By definition, co-ops have nothing to do with trendy boutiques, but are means for cost sharing, consumer empowerment and community revitalization. Rather than see co-ops as pricey natural-foods havens, why not re-envision them as verdant commons to sow over the nation’s food deserts? They can roll back prices while rolling back the highly-processed wheat, corn and soy that dominate most food shelves, particularly in urban bodegas.

Reseeding a food desert is not a euphemism for selling out to a major grocery chain, but rather a call to reclaim food independence by reconstituting the rules by which we choose what to eat. By thinking of fresh food as a privilege for the wealthy, rather than a basic need that all consumers would demand, a producer or seller draws lines between people, neighborhoods and their access to food.

In New York City, for one, there are promising signs: expanded farmers markets marketed towards less-wealthy customers and food stamp recipients; initiatives to license fruit carts in low-income areas; and city-wide health and nutrition campaigns. These are the first movements in a long effort to create a more just system, one that does not differentiate nutritional value, freshness and wholesomeness based on untested assumptions.

Mincing words

This blog is not just about getting back to the garden, even though this year marks the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, which once defined a generation’s desire to get back to its roots, and now represents the profitable value of nostalgia.

And this is not just a blog to celebrate the Obamas’ attempt to revive that ancient institution, the household vegetable patch. (Unfortunately, that idea ran into some sludge when the feds tested the soil and found worrisome levels of lead, which have since been reduced).

The Garden Salvaged is also about recovering identities and histories that have become lost, forgotten or distorted through the too-close lens of daily life. Our identities stem from our most basic choices: what we eat, how we treat our bodies, who we listen to for advice. And yet, the importance of those decisions often fades into the background amidst the bustle and complexity of our lives.

Hopefully, the stories told on The Garden Salvaged help us to look more closely at the world around us; to find sustenance in our daily rhythms; and to recover the life we imagined, using what’s available.

Though hunting-and-gathering seems anachronistic amidst today’s industrial food complex, the spirit of salvaging persists—gathering the materials to make a home in a chaotic world is as essential as it ever was, even if you don’t want to make a salad from your neighbor’s weedlot.

Beggars can’t choose, but picky people can pick…poorly

If beggars can’t be choosers (which is, of course, a lie), why can picky eaters (particularly kids) get away with a diet consisting solely of highly-processed, mono-color packaged foods?

When I was little, I ate PB&J sandwiches every day for ten consecutive years. I only ate fried chicken strips or mac and cheese if I went out anywhere. And if I couldn’t get those things, I whined. I feel fortunate that my palate of acceptable foods underwent a long (and continuing) transformation, but the same is not true of everyone. And why should it be? Those foods I loved are among the array of eatables that best arrest human taste buds (sugar, salt and fat). For some, it can be a lifelong affair.

When I asked my parents what I ate as an infant, they did not remember a diet skewed towards junk, but rather a mixed bag of fruits, veggies (lots of autumnal roots) and dairy. So if not nurture, is it simply nature that draws us toward to not-really-food aisle? Can we blame our biological disposition to prepare for famine by storing up on fats, salts and sugar? Or can we blame the seduction of advertising exposed to most of us since infancy?

A recent article in The New York Times tries to pick apart the origins of our dietary habits. It basically comes out on the side of nurture, saying that parents are accountable for the lifestyle choices their kids make. The article focuses on the dilemma facing parents whose kids make poor nutrition decisions. The concern, now, is not just that some guardians may let kids run amok in candy land, but that that others may go too far demanding healthy behavior from their children. Researchers now see a spate of disordered eating resulting from being obsessively “healthy.” (Not surprisingly, obsessive “healthy” eating easily dips into the unhealthy category when it involves too few calories and nutrients to support an active, growing body.)

So, should adults just wait for teens to outgrow their unhealthy picks? And what about those who don’t have a health-conscious parent modeling good decisions—is their future diet predetermined? Certainly, the solutions to a growing diet-related health crisis cannot hinge upon such passive assumptions. The Times article includes a few examples of proactive parents, one of which has a mother sharing a gym membership with her teenage daughter who has gained some pounds. This may sound like a great alternative to ego-bruising lectures and unsustainable diets, but gym memberships aren't in the budgets for a large swath of the public.

Rather than focusing on ways to escape an unhealthy eating cycle, let's focus on making the cycle healthier to begin with. Until schools stop stocking and serving trash in the form of lunch, and until we hold the industry and nutrition communities accountable for their labeling schemes, the picks for pickiness won’t improve.