What I Eat by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio (March 2019)
Today I wanted to share the best of What I Eat, Menzel and D'Aluisio's engaging account of what different people from around the world eat on a given day.
Individual health was a recurring theme throughout this book. What I Eat demonstrates in pictures what one of its essays explicitly stated – for the first time in human history, as many people are overfed as underfed. Those in the former category tend to live in richer countries where increased wealth has taken people away from simple diets. They’ve abandoned basic practices such as time spent cooking that are regularly correlated with better nutritional health. Standard diets for these wealthy citizens emphasize starches, red meat, sugar, and dairy, all products associated with improved health the minute they are removed from the dinner plate. The influence of organizations motivated by sales goals has flooded grocery stores with packaged foods available in huge portions at discount prices meaning wealthier societies tend to eat larger portions with more frequency. All of this adds up, a combination that cannot be overcome even with the healthiest diet composition. Our genes may have changed (or they may be expressing themselves in new ways) but for the most part eating habits are to blame for our expanding waistlines. Like with many problems, what came about over a long time cannot be solved overnight. The authors are left with little to say beyond repeating the age old advice to eat less, move more, have plenty of fruits and vegetables, and try to avoid junk food.
The latter underfed group tends to live in cultures with limited resources. These are places where investing in animals (including pets) is often seen as a liability. The result is that the range of animals eaten is much wider than in wealthier countries yet most of these unusual meat sources are inefficient compared to our standard Western fare. Poorer societies tend to cook all of their food to ease digestion and increase caloric value (digesting raw food uses more calories). Poorer countries experience nutritional deficits due to a lack of variety in their diets. There is less said in terms of advice here (likely because the audience of the book is primarily in wealthy countries) but the underlying implication is that the lacking infrastructure must be built up first before things will change for the underfed.
The question I’m left with is whether bringing underfed societies into the class of the overfed means we expose them to the same problems that saddle wealthy societies. Our lifestyle has left our captive animals afflicted with a range of diseases and conditions not seen in the wild (a fact the authors explain by the animals being prevented from hunting for their food). For the herbivores, the problems are purely the result of our laziness (any animal that likes salt might eat a plastic bag). Most animals do not even have their preference for cooked food accommodated by their handlers. The challenge of lifting all countries out of food insecurity isn’t to simply replicate the mistakes of the 20th century. It requires a little more thinking so that everyone’s interests over both the short and long term are appropriately considered and fairly accommodated. Simple rules of thumb might go a long way toward these sustainable outcomes. A farm should never produce more manure than can be reused on the land from where it came, for example, because this shifts the burden of waste management off the farm to where it can only prove harmful.
One up: Those that look across cultures can sometimes produce brilliant insights. One Chinese student questioned the point of hamburgers, comparing it to cake – there’s no central taste. I kind of agree in the sense that my approval rating for the burger drops each year but I’m more intrigued by this idea of a ‘central taste’. Readers in the know, please get in touch.
One down: The authors mention that the first caloric calculations did not properly account for the energy required to digest food. Interesting, but I suspect sloppy wording. The caloric calculation likely measured the caloric value and nothing more. Even if most people are concerned with the net value – the difference in calories consumed and calories spent – the failure of the food’s caloric value to meet this assumption can hardly be blamed on the original calculation.
By the way, for those interested proteins and dietary fibers tend to overestimate calorie counts.
Just saying: In terms of non-food items, I pulled two thoughts I liked. First, research suggests children move more during free play than during organized sports. And second, you are only as young as the last time you changed your mind.
