The Consequences of our Food Choices, Part 1

I'm about to fly out to Washington DC where I will give an invited talk at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. I'm quite thrilled and honored to be presenting at this conference, and I'll be discussing my most recent studies on food choices. I almost didn't post today, but I don't want to start that trend again... so, here's a little something based on the work that I will be discussing.

For the past couple of years, I’ve become increasingly interested in understanding how and why we choose to consume certain foods over others. I believe this research is important because our food choices are both personally and socially relevant to issues such as our physical and psychological health, the environment, social justice, our economy, and our political structure.

Perhaps the most obvious impact of our food choices is on physical health, and this tends to be what most people focus on. In the past 25 years, we’ve seen huge changes in obesity rates. In fact, less than 10% of our population was classified as obese in 1985, and nearly 30% falls within that category now. Nearly 7 out of 10 American adults are classified as either overweight or obese. Everyone likes to pick on Americans, perhaps because we started the trend, but obesity is a global crisis. And obesity in children is even more alarming, because we form many of our food preferences and eating habits during early childhood, and rates in the Americas exceed 30%.

So, what’s going on? Well, it’s a complex issue but I think we are gaining some insights. While it’s certainly the case that we’re not getting enough exercise, that fact hasn’t changed in the past 25 years. Approximately 20% of adults got the recommended amount back in 1985, and that figure hasn’t changed. So if we’re not expending fewer calories, we must be taking more in than our bodies can use. We’re eating more processed foods, which are calorie dense and nutritionally poor. And we’re taking in more sugar and fat than ever before. The average 10-year old is consuming 46% of their daily recommended calories from added sugars and fats, when only 5% is recommended by the USDA.

This lifestyle is reeking havoc on our bodies, with 4 of the top leading causes of death being attributed to our diets, or lack thereof. In fact, obese individuals are 2-3 times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than their slimmer counterparts, and are at a much greater risk for developing Type 2 diabetes.

Let’s move beyond health, which is something we don’t often do. Our food choices are depleting essential resources necessary for maintaining life and are environmentally costly in a number of ways. For example, agriculture is responsible for nearly 70% of all water usage. It takes a lot of water to grow and produce the food that we consume, with some foods like meat and dairy requiring substantially more than others, such as peas.

And the type of agricultural system that we have perfected in this country is creating a toxic environment. What water isn’t utilized by our crops and livestock is often polluting the water we need for drinking—97% of our waterways contain detectable amounts of agricultural pesticides.

Let’s talk social justice for just a moment. Often the farm workers growing and harvesting our food suffer the most, and many of these workers are poor minorities. Research funded by the National Institute of Health blames occupational chemicals for increases rates of prostate cancer in farm workers.

Food also requires a great deal of energy to produce and transport. I heard Michael Pollen say that it takes 7 liters of oil to produce 1 Big Mac, and we’re certainly using more than our fair share of oil. In fact, we use nearly twice the amount of oil as other developed nations.

We fight wars for black gold so that we can create food-like products that require much more energy than we get out of them. It takes 2200 energy calories to produce 1 calorie of a diet soda. Does this make any sense? Is anyone else asking themselves this question right now? What do we do… stay tuned!

Venice Harvest Xchange, a movement towards food sanity

The VHX is a movement, not merely an event. Last Sunday my friends and I held the first "official meeting" of our new food club, the Venice Harvest Xchange. Modeled after the San Francisco Underground Market, backyard gardeners, urban foragers, and food producers who cannot afford a commercial kitchen license, now have a venue at which to offer their goods. Sunday brought out 12 food producers and over 100 attendees, who tasted, traded for, and purchased whole foods like kale, rainbow chard, salad greens, lemon verbena, hummus, celery and apple cardamon soup, an assortment of dried mushrooms, spinach and feta quiche, raw chocolate raspberry bars, roasted peppers preserved in garlic infused oil, plum butter, chocolate flourless cake, cilantro pesto, cabbage wraps topped with cashew cream, fresh fruit smoothies, and the most delicious and healthy granola that I've ever had the pleasure spooning into my mouth (thank you, Andre!). The hit of the day was the wood-fired pizza, baked in a hand-built earth oven (designed by Andre and built by he, Nicolas, and yours truly), which was loaded with heaps of fresh vegetables, basil, and a hint of mozzarella. What a joy it was to see this event finally come to fruition, after living it out only in my mind for the past 2 years.

Consuming locally produced and sourced food (as opposed to food-like products) should not be a privilege, available only to those who can afford to stroll the farmers markets or the isles of upscale groceries that claim to offer "whole" or "conscious" foods. That said, I don't take my privileged food access lightly, especially here in the United States, where our food is literally killing us. The over-consumption of food is to blame for 3 of the 4 leading causes of death, making our water toxic, and contributing to serious changes in our climate, not to mention reeking havoc on our social and political reputation. Ironically, the problem with our current food system is a direct result of its success. In fact, we have been so successful at industrializing agriculture that we now produce about 3,800 calories per person per day, leaving nearly 70% of all Americans either overweight or obese and costing society billions of dollars in healthcare costs annually. Retired military officials recently claimed that food has become a threat to national security. In a report entitled “Too Fat to Fight,” it is claimed that “being overweight or obese turns out to be the leading medical reason why applicants fail to qualify for military service.” At the same time, many Americans live in “food deserts” and struggle to obtain food. Something has gone terribly wrong, and what can we do to fix it?

Return to VHX. I am not such an optimist, or perhaps such a fool, that I believe the VHX is the ultimate solution to our food crises. It is a start--giving freedom to those who want to speak to the chef, know where their food comes from, and support a local economy that promotes bartering over buying. I do hope that it continues to be educational, fun, community oriented, and most of all open to anyone who wants to participate. Other markets, including the San Francisco market that gave rise to my idea to form VHX, have been shut down for fears of "food safety." Did you know that the FDA inspects less than 1% of all food imports, down from 8% in 1992? Ask me how I made my hummus, now that's food safety.

On Being a Freegan

I don't like labels, but I'll take this one. For the past few months, I've been living off the waste of capitalism. Without a doubt, I eat better than most of wealthy American. I certainly eat better than I used to, even when I restricted myself to shopping only at the local farmers markets and the amazing Co-Opportunity in Santa Monica. These days, my diet consists of blueberries, strawberries, bananas, pears, apples, oranges, fancy salads and packaged greens, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, celery, artichokes, eggs, the occasional melon, and other surprise treats like coconut water, lychees, roasted pistachios, and apricot walnut tarts. Much of the food I haul out of dumpsters parked behind nearby grocery stores is organic and consists primarily of fresh produce, bread, meat, and eggs. lt must be sorted, bits of it composted, and typically comes wrapped in packaging that needs to be recycled. Dumpster diving is less convenient and a little more time consuming than shopping just for what I plan to consume over the course of a week, but the food is free and I can't stand by quietly knowing that so much quality food is going to waste, especially given how much energy it takes to produce what we put onto our plates.

In Los Angeles alone, there are 1.7 million food insecure people living with hunger and malnutrition. At the same time, millions of pounds of food are trashed each day, translating into 3,000 pounds per second! Put simply, the quantity of food waste and packaging that ultimately ends up in a landfill, taking hundreds of years to decompose and producing harmful greenhouse gases, is an atrocity on multiple levels.

My friends have taken to eating the food I bring home from dives. They look forward to their weekly deliveries, and I'm working on setting up a specified delivery point at a friends house where we've stashed a spare refrigerator to store our loot so that I can eliminate the work of delivering (as if it's work to visit with friends). Ultimately, what I'd prefer is to see this food going to people who need it, not that my friends, many of whom are artists and earn very little money, don't fall into that category. But with so many people living with hunger just in my city alone, there should be a better way of distributing what grocery chains deem waste. I know many organizations are working on trying to foster 0-waste food policies, so hopefully my days of freeganism are numbered. In the meantime, I'll happily perch myself on my front stoop devouring a baby spinach salad laced with goat cheese, cranberries, and candied pecans. One woman's waste is another woman's treasure. Yum!