I have written a lot about food in recent months, which has
always been one of my loves and one of my demons. My teen years and beyond were full of fears
of fatness and led to a well-established love-hate relationship with all good
things edible. Of course now I look back
and realize I wasted all my thin years worrying about being fat, only to get to
the point where I should worry and I really don’t feel it.
Most people recognize that our culture is obsessed with body
image. Anorexic runway models, women’s
magazines full of diet recipes and magic tricks to lose weight: “The only diet you will ever need!” and “Lose
10 pounds in three days!” their covers scream.
Supermarket scandal-rags wallow in before and after celebrity pictures and
embarrassing candid shots of celebrities unknowingly baring their cellulite to
the public. The women’s magazines are
famous for splitting their stories between diets and dessert recipes, never
acknowledging the contradiction.
Geography and culture seems to dichotomize us as well. In big cities, sleek designer clad women and
buff gym-toned men populate the streets.
In rural areas obese men and women compete for aisle space with stick
thin teenage girls who will rapidly grow up to be obese women. In past centuries excess weight was a sign of
well-being, showing that you had enough means to eat a lot of rich and fatty
foods. Total reversal in our current
time. Obesity thrives on cheap food,
fast and otherwise. Lean meats and fresh
vegetables are not priced for the minimum wage-earner or food stamp user. Just as we have begun to understand our
health care system is broken, our food distribution system is as well and goes
hand in hand with the health care issue.
Somewhere, somehow, there’s got to be a meeting ground in
the middle. Health is not sustainable on
a diet of fried foods and snacks in bags.
Working in health care it’s hard not to notice the correlation of the
severity of chronic illness and patients who ignore the doctor-prescribed diet
and eat like everyone else around them.
It’s also hard to ignore that the fast food industry, with its popular “dollar
meals” is the easiest, cheapest and quickest way to deal with hunger. There are rarely fast food “dollar meal”
salads; in fact, a salad is probably one of the more expensive items you can
purchase in a restaurant, (unless it’s a salad composed of iceberg lettuce
(green-tinged water), cheese, croutons and drenched with ranch dressing.)
There is a health food movement out there, but it is going
to take a long time for it to filter down to a user-friendly format in the
rural south. People don’t like change
and they will always be drawn towards the path of least resistance. In rural areas, where you would think there
would be local produce, fresh fruits and vegetables are rarely local and also
rarely fresh. The occasional farmer’s
market sometimes appears with seasonal vegetables, but nothing to compare with
the huge markets you can find in places like New York, Washington D.C., San
Francisco and even Atlanta. For now,
grocery shopping and eating out will continue to be mirrors of the world
pictured in the schizophrenic women’s magazines while I continue to dream of
the food revolution that will save me from myself.
