Western culture is unhealthily preoccupied with food. North America’s relationship with food is fraught with alarming misconceptions and dangerous behaviours that if not honestly addressed, will only get worse.
If you look at food consumption and nutrition as a spectrum, in the middle you will find where humans ought to be. It is here that one can have McDonald’s for dinner and not feel guilty. It is here that calorie counting ceases to exist; where fast food three times a week isn’t acceptable, but a chocolate bar to treat oneself certainly is. It is where french fries and pizza are labelled neither “good” nor “bad” for you.
The middle of what I call the Food Attitude and Treatment Spectrum (FATS) is a place where we, as a collective society, must return. We are currently stuck in a micro-crisis of risky eating behaviours, featuring both extremes. We try to combat a growing obesity epidemic with increasing restrictions and labelling, whilst tackling the equally urgent occurrence of eating disorders by asserting that “real women have curves” and “every body shape is beautiful.” In between, you have yo-yo dieters, clueless anti-gluten, avocados—sorry, advocates—and “no-no” lists. Not one of these positions is appropriate when it comes to something nature intended to be relatively simple—food.
Our approaches to combatting obesity have been unsuccessful thus far because they’re really just icing on the cake, so to speak. Having calorie and fat content listed on every single menu item at restaurants not only makes dining-out a guilt-ridden and unenjoyable experience, but it is also ineffective. People knew just as well forty years ago as they do today that a salad has less energy than a deluxe cheeseburger. To assume that the posting of these numbers will spark a revelation within diners is insulting.
As a huge component of the obesity rates concern children, schools have assumed the right to police what students may eat, and what parents may feed their children for lunch. Pop is non-existent in public schools, teachers send home recommended snack lists, and pizza lunches are a rare indulgence. Students often return home with half-uneaten veggie-riddled lunches, only to grab a brownie or bag of chips and sit in front of the computer for five hours while pretending to do homework.
Instead of telling people what to eat, it makes much more sense to give them the information they need to make these decisions for themselves. It may seem like a strange comparison, but this is also the case with preaching abstinence versus sex education. Teens are going to have sex one way or another, so they may as well get the education they need to have sex safely. Similarly, people are going to eat impure foods at times, so we should be teaching them moderation, not chastising the occasional dessert.
Another major component of the obesity crisis is our increasingly sedentary lifestyle. This is not new information, and yet we seem to think that implementing 20-minutes-a-day of movement will magically cure the root problems of weight gain in children. Children now are learning to use iPhones before they can form sentences, and by eighth grade geography, cannot read a map unless it was created on Google. The growing reliance on technology has made life more convenient than ever, but it has also made us lazier than ever. This, combined with helicopter and/or lazy parents who would rather their child watch television uneventfully than have to supervise them during playtime in the neighborhood, has led to a cooped up and stimulation-free environment in which our children are growing up.
Finally, the numbers game is dangerous on the other end of the spectrum. When we warn that every extra calorie or gram of fat will radically alter one’s body in horrifying and permanent way, and that to respect oneself this must be avoided at all costs, we do no favours. Just as excess weight is unhealthy, so too is a raging obsession in which worthiness is equated with the number on the scale or the visibility of bones in the mirror.
Food is not supposed to be our enemy. It does not exist to shame us; to determine what we deserve or what we do not. Foods are neither bad nor good for us; they are all comprised of the same nutritional elements. Food is meant to provide sustenance, so that we may keep on living. To deprive ourselves of this simple fact is to live a little less.