You Are What You Grow (NYT)

[jpak]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/magazine/22wwlnlede.t.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

A few years ago, an obesity researcher at the University of Washington named Adam Drewnowski ventured into the supermarket to solve a mystery. He wanted to figure out why it is that the most reliable predictor of obesity in America today is a person’s wealth. For most of history, after all, the poor have typically suffered from a shortage of calories, not a surfeit. So how is it that today the people with the least amount of money to spend on food are the ones most likely to be overweight?

Drewnowski gave himself a hypothetical dollar to spend, using it to purchase as many calories as he possibly could. He discovered that he could buy the most calories per dollar in the middle aisles of the supermarket, among the towering canyons of processed food and soft drink. (In the typical American supermarket, the fresh foods — dairy, meat, fish and produce — line the perimeter walls, while the imperishable packaged goods dominate the center.) Drewnowski found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots. Looking for something to wash down those chips, he discovered that his dollar bought 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice.

As a rule, processed foods are more “energy dense” than fresh foods: they contain less water and fiber but more added fat and sugar, which makes them both less filling and more fattening. These particular calories also happen to be the least healthful ones in the marketplace, which is why we call the foods that contain them “junk.” Drewnowski concluded that the rules of the food game in America are organized in such a way that if you are eating on a budget, the most rational economic strategy is to eat badly — and get fat.

This perverse state of affairs is not, as you might think, the inevitable result of the free market. Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots?

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[unpossibles]

1. interesting.

I also think our culture's lack of encouragement to actually do things doesn't help - and add to that the price of joining most gym chains, as well as the way foods and fad diets are marketed and there's a huge problem.

I guess I got lucky in that when I was barely rubbing two cents together broke I lost weight, but a big part of that was that I bought a bicycle because I had no car, and because I knew how to cook (and would take advantage of eating leftovers to make cooking more cost-effective), I started buying simpler ingredients and less junk food.

[Mist]

2. Did Drewnowski mention anything about fast food? Can seem like a bargain to

some (especially young men, who aren't given to cooking) but loaded to the max with fat calories.

[juno jones]

3. It's also cultural

Think back to Bush1 and the 'broccoli statement. I worked for awhile for a premier caterer in Sacramento. He had several autographed president's pics on the wall. He said that Clinton was the most fun to cater for even tho he was dem (my boss was repub, although of the more classical strain, he was a good employer, paying well and giving benefits...)because Clinton had a good palate and would eat anything. His pride in having served food to the other 3 (Reagan, Bush1, and little boots) was diminished somewhat by the fact they were 'meat-n-potatoes' guys. They wanted nottin' fancy and wouldn't even eat vegetables.

Gone are the home ec programs that endevoured to teach nutrition and supply the necessary skills with which to cook 'real food'. If you don't know what to do with a carrot, you are more likely to get something that you don't need to do anything with-thus the junk. There is also the 'real men don't eat this or that possibly effeminate food' thing. It goes hand and hand with our overbearing macho society where we tell everyone to 'suck it up' and rely on the stupidest, most immature outer appearances and behaviors to prove 'manliness' and worth. Interesting that that dollar would buy enough beans and rice for a few days, definitely more nutritious than cookies and quite caloric...however you have to know something about food preparation to get at that nutrition, and sadly, many people no longer have those skills (or think that they must have a woman around to do those things for them).

[AndyTiedye]

4. It Is Also That the Beans and Rice Take Hours to Prepare

The poor are having to work more and more hours to make ends meet.
Where are they supposed to find the time to do all this cooking?

Home Ec? What Home Ec? They didn't even offer Home Ec to *guys* when I was in school.
The girls got Home Ec, we got Shop. It seemed to me we were getting the short end of the deal even at the time.

[formercia]

6. The bean pot

Lumberjacks spent sunup until sunset in the woods but there was always a pot of beans ready in the evening. You dig a pit, burn down a pile of coals, set your bean pot in the coals and cover. 12 hours later, the beans are done.

But, then, everything is covered in concrete and asphalt and the only thing people know is the soylent green from the vertically integrated, cookie-cutter economy.

Say a bushel of wheat goes for $10. in bulk. The processor turns around and turns it ito pasta, the cheapest is about 50 cents a pound. There's enough wheat in a bushel to make almost 100 pounds of pasta. It's easy to figure who gets screwed, the farmer and the consumer.

[we can do it]

7. Crock Pots, Anyone - You Don't Have To Sit and Watch Them

You can eat decent meals cheaply, it takes a little imagination, possibly reading, but it is possible.

[tridim]

5. I think Mac and Cheese and hot dogs are the worst culprits

Both are foods that I know often end up on the tables of poor families.

[Gelliebeans]

8. Over the years

I find myself shopping in the perimeter of the store and bypassing the middle all together.