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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] The American Fast Food Syndrome
  • Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 11:07:36 -0700


The American Fast Food Syndrome
http://civileats.com/2011/01/13/the-american-fast-food-syndrome/
by Kristin Wartman Thursday, January 13, 2011 by Civil Eats


Working with people as a nutritionist, I’m often met with resistance. I try
to explain making healthful food choices without using trigger words like
organic, sustainable, or even local. “When I hear the word organic I think of
Birkenstock-wearing hippies in Cambridge, Massachusetts or Berkeley,
California,” one of my clients told me recently. Other clients have referred
to whole, organic foods as “yuppie food.” There’s no doubt that food choice
and diet is an indicator of class and culture, but what perplexes me is this
notion that eating a diet of processed, sugary junk foods is what the “real”
Americans eat.

According to food historian Felipe Fernandez-Arsmesto, food has always been a
marker of class and rank in any particular society. He writes that, “Food
became a social differentiator at a remote, undocumented moment when some
people started to command more food resources than others.” He goes on to
write that, “Class differentiation starts with the crudities of basic
economics. People eat the best food they can afford: the preferred food of
the rich therefore becomes a signifier of social aspirations.”

But this isn’t true in modern day America. The preferred food of the rich is
now considered elitist and scoffed at by many Americans. In fact, there is
data to suggest that even though many Americans can afford higher quality
foods, they chose to eat cheaper and less nutritious foods. Jane Black and
Brent Cunningham recently wrote about this in the Washington Post: “Many in
this country who have access to good food and can afford it simply don’t
think it’s important. To them, food has become a front in America’s culture
wars, and the crusade against fast and processed food is an obsession of
‘elites,’ not ‘real Americans.’”

I would argue that the advertising agencies that work hand-in-hand with the
big players of industrial food should take much of the blame for this change.
Within the span of three short generations, Americans have come to accept
industrial food as their mainstay—not only have they accepted it, they defend
it like they’d defend the American flag as a symbol of their patriotism and
allegiance with “real” America.

But there’s some perverse logic at work here and it strikes me as vaguely
similar to the Stockholm syndrome—a paradoxical psychological phenomenon in
which hostages express adulation and positive feelings towards their captors.
While Americans are not experiencing a physical captivity, they are deeply
mired in a psychological condition in which they’re captive to industrial
food products and the corresponding ideologies that are ultimately harming
them. Call it the American Fast Food Syndrome.

Part of the problem is that most Americans lack the knowledge that industrial
food is a recent development in the history of agriculture. While human
beings have been cultivating food for more than 10,000 years, industrial
agriculture, as we know it today, has only been around for about 60 years. To
many Americans, industrial food is simply food and they assume this is the
way it has always been—Americans have all but forgotten that food might be
the product of a farm and not a factory. I think it’s safe to say we’ve
reached peak indoctrination: two out of three Americans is obese or
overweight and one out of five 4-year-olds is obese. This is more than just a
coincidence as we embrace our American industrial food diet wholeheartedly.

The fact that food advertising is a completely unregulated force doesn’t
help. Advertisers spend billions of dollars on campaigns to make us want to
buy their products. In her book Diet for a Hot Planet, Anna Lappé writes of a
sly technique advertisers often use, “The food industry…is skilled at
inoculation messaging, and part of its success comes from the ‘we’re one of
you’ pitch.” She adds later, “The message, whether from Perdue, Nestle, or
Cargill, is that these companies are like us; they care about the same things
we do. It’s a message that forms another strand of the inoculation strategy.”

This “we’re one of you” ideology coupled with the food product’s
corresponding affordability is slick marketing at its best.

You may remember a similar strategy used by Sarah Palin and John McCain in
their 2008 Presidential campaign. Palin’s constant invocation of Joe the
Plumber, Joe Six Pack, and soccer moms was the same “we’re one of you”
rhetoric. Palin worked this angle again recently when she came running to the
defense of the “real” Americans as she personally gave out cookies to
elementary school students in her effort to stop the food police from
depriving children of their god-given right to eat sugar-laden, processed
foods.

These messages, from advertisers and politicians alike, are drowning out a
sensible approach to healthy eating and improved quality of life for many
Americans. I know that when people stop eating processed foods and start
cooking whole foods, it’s nothing short of a revelation. My clients
experience a transformation when they cut out junk foods—they lose weight,
improve chronic health conditions, and feel better than they ever have
before. Unfortunately, many Americans who really need guidance on healthy
eating and cooking don’t have it. What they do have is a constant barrage of
advertising for cheap industrial foods paired with the all-American rhetoric
of Sarah Palin and her ilk.

Until all Americans see industrial food for what it really is, educating on
healthier food options will remain a cultural battle. We can blame specific
ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup or trans-fats indefinitely, but for
a large portion of Americans their cultural identity is tied up in Big Macs,
fries, and Cokes. As long as the food industry continues to succeed at
imbuing their products with a particular sense of American authenticity, and
as long as Americans continue to buy this image, while rejecting the organic,
sustainable, and local food movement as part of some liberal agenda, we will
remain a country in the midst of a dire health and food crisis.
© 2011 Civil Eats
Kristin Wartman is a food writer living in Brooklyn. She has a Masters in
Literature from UC Santa Cruz and is a Certified Nutrition Educator. She is
interested in the intersections of food, health, politics, and culture. You
can read more of her writing at kristinwartman.wordpress.com.





  • [Livingontheland] The American Fast Food Syndrome, Tradingpost, 01/13/2011

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