This response was for Daily Kos but I knew it would be welcome here as well...
Yesterday I wrote a diary entitled, The Unbearable Weight of Being Obese and was overwhelmed by the response. I want to follow it up with some important points I think that are relevant to not only a community diary but to the progressive political movement that many of us here at Daily Kos support.
With the emergence of recent books such as Pollan's, The Omnivores Dilemma and his other book, In Defense of Food we've seen a growing movement for how we relate to our food, it's impact on our environment and the questioning of large AG Business and Corporate influence on our food choices.
Another important book to emerge on the topic is David Kessler's The End of Overeating a book I own and started to read just last night after having poured over the 900 plus comments in my diary.
What I walked away with from those comments is that many have conquered their food obsession but struggle every day still. There were so many great recommendations, tips and diet advice. The most important point I want to make is that everyone is different and that the road to recovery takes us each on our own path. Some things may work for you that may not work for others. The ultimate change though is eating less and moving more.
But as Kessler discusses, it's not as easy as that. There were commenters that pushed the meme that the obese and overweight are just weak willed. It's a common misconception among non-dieters or those who have conquered their taste buds. But as Kessler argues, it's so much more complicated than that and that the pull of fat, sugar and salt overrides any mechanism that our body has to protect itself from such overindulgence.
Kessler relates in the first few chapters (That's only as far as I've gotten) the comments of an food insider, somewhat like the insider that blew the lid off of the cigarette industries' secrets to getting people hooked on their drug of choice, nicotine. Well, food has a delivery system as well and in order to keep people coming back the three most important factors are fat, salt and sugar and that the infinite combination of such can keep us coming back to the same foods that threaten our very health in quantities that are dangerous.
Kessler is on a crusade to change how we see food...
What we need to do is change how Americans look at food. We were able to demonize tobacco, but you don't need tobacco-you do need food, and you can't demonize food. You shouldn't demonize food. But we need to be able to look at food and say, "Boy, that's nutritious; that's going to satiate me; I'm going to feel good after I eat that." Or to look at that huge portion and say, "That may taste good for a couple of seconds, but I'm not going to like myself in twenty minutes if I eat that." My mental representation of that stimulus defines my behavior to a great extent.
For decades, the food industry has been able to argue that they're just giving consumers what they want, meaning giving them what tastes good. And it does. It's very sensory-stimulating. We now know that certain centers of the brain become activated and don't shut off for millions of people who overeat. For them, [those centers] don't shut off until the food's gone. And they stay activated. So the food industry is not just giving consumers what they want-it is also creating a product that excessively activates the neural circuitry of millions of people.
So with that, there's a joint responsibility. Just because it affects my neural circuitry, whether consciously or unconsciously, doesn't mean I as an individual don't have responsibility; but the food industry also has responsibility.
And so I believe this is the time to seize on this topic and talk about it more. Bill Maher often proselytizes the benefits of a vegan diet by deriding the American appetite but even he recognizes the influence of greed on what gets sold in our Supermarkets to our health insurance. It's a great rant and one that I often make in private...
And on that same show Maher interviews Michael Pollan, something you should watch as well if you are just jumping into the conversation...
I even got a note on my Facebook page from The Colbert Report, The Colbert Report discusses profit vs. health in the American food industry with Eric Schlosser.
I want to state again that it is about politics. And Eric Schlosser wrote a book regarding the political and social impact of our food choices in Fast Food Nation.
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (2001) is a book by investigative journalist Eric Schlosser that examines the local and global influence of the United States fast food industry.
Just as fast food is an industry so is the vast number of diets and diet food fads. This is all part of an industry that primarily thrives on profit not by doing what is best for the consumer. It's a thread that goes through many of the criticisms that have come up about our food system and how it's changed the shape of America in last thirty years.
And now we have a documentary that attempts to tie all these themes together in Food Inc. by Robert Kenner...
In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli-the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.
Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield's Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms' Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising-and often shocking truths-about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.
And here is the trailer...
So the conversation is more than just, stop eating, eat better or change yourself. We really have to examine how the food industry has been complicit in this far reaching change in how Americans see their food.
Thanks to everyone who commented and encouraged. The personal is political and this is one of those issues that reaches deeply into many lives, from the rich to the poor to the obese and the underweight. We must examine our relationship to food, how it's produced and the very survival of our planet. Food sustainability is an issue for everyone because it winds up on your table and in your body.
