In the comments of an earlier post, also about fat, Decnavda totally cracked me up by writing:
I am having a really hard time grasping the political alliances here. In this corner we have amp, a social democrat explaining why we can not trust anything the government researchers tell us about our health. In that corner, we have Young, a libertarian fighting the the PC fat acceptance activists, which presumably means she believes that we are facing a deadly epidemic that the government shouldn’t do anything about. This confuses me so much I can barely eat my Pop Tarts while I sit here in front of the computer.
For me, it’s enjoyable to have at least one issue that doesn’t fit on any simple left/right axis. Makes me feel less like a hack.
Speaking of which, this transcript of a conversation between Larry Elder, a right-wing radio host, and one of his listeners, is really something – the nakedness of the disgust is dazzling. One of those real “Toto pulling back the curtain” moments. (Curtsy: Big Fat Blog).
Linda: I’m hoping this tax [on fast food] will motivate people, get them to do their own cooking.
Larry: Why?
Linda: There are too many fat people — they’re all going to fast-food places. . . . I’m so glad they’re doing this. . . . Because they’re fat, fat, fat. They’re eating the wrong food. Stay home, do your own good cooking.
Larry: Do you engage in any kind of conduct that other people might condemn, Linda? Do you drink?
Linda: No . . .
Larry: Do you watch TV?
Linda: Yes, and I watch those terrible commercials from fast-food places, and I get angry. They should tax those commercials, too.
Larry: Maybe they ought to tax you for watching so much television. Why don’t you get up and exercise more?
Linda: People have no restraint. They need to be restrained.
Larry: You think the job of the legislature is to restrain them by taxing their behavior?
Linda: They’re fat. They’re unhealthy, they have diabetes, they have high blood pressure, and they’re at the fast-food place — and their children watch them, and then the children go there, too. It’s a disgrace! Cook, cook, cook.
Larry: What do you do when they cook junk . . . when they cook fried foods?
Linda: No, no. They have to cook healthy food.
Larry: How are you going to ensure that? This tax makes the price go up, and more people are cooking at home. How do you guarantee they won’t cook the same crap they went out to buy before?
Linda: If we have enough talk about healthy food, someday people will realize they have to cook healthy foods.
Larry: Why don’t you contribute to a fund for television Public Service Announcements, advising people what they should do? Why are you going to legislators to tax other people’s behavior that you don’t like? Unbelievable.
Linda: Why are the Oriental people and European people much healthier than the American people? The American people are obese! . . . I’m horrified by how many obese people there are.
Larry: What about Asians who are here? . . . Are they overweight?
Linda: Not as much as American people.
Larry: Well, how do you suppose they manage not to walk into a restaurant and get fat? And whatever they’re doing, why can’t everybody else do it, too?
Linda: That food is bad. Your mother can tell you that.
Larry: Should we tax people who order fried chicken at restaurants?
Linda: Why, that’s bad, too! Yes, yes, all that bad food should be stopped. . . .
Larry: So tax hikes for health are OK.
Linda: Something has to be done. It’s a start.
Larry: Why are you concerned about how fat people are?
Linda: People end up in the hospital, and we’re paying for their health problems. Not only that, but even to look at them! They’re disgusting to look at! Every time I come back from the store or walk around, I come back furious, seeing how fat they are!
Larry: I bet if you see a fat person smoking a cigarette, you’re ready to have a heart attack, aren’t you?
Linda: No, cigarettes don’t bother me. I’m not a smoker, but it doesn’t bother me as much as looking at an obese person. I mean, don’t they have mirrors? Don’t they look in the mirror and go, “Oh my God, I have to do something about this weight”?
But – but – fat people are fat, and therefore morally inferior!! I mean, uh -uh – unhealthy. Yes the moral superiority I feel to fat people is for their own good. That’s the ticket.
Anyway, that transcript is pretty hilarious.
This reminds me of John Adams’ Nixon in China. In the opera, there is a scene where Mao and company put on a play for Dick and Pat Nixon. It is, naturally, a tale of the revolution, the long march, etc. Anyway, it has evil landlords, foreign imperialists, and capitalists conspiring, and they’re wearing suits that make them look really obese. Then the revolutionaries catch them in despoiling a peasant girl (I think), and slay them, and the girl joins the Red Army. I was just thinking about what the fat represented, and to whom (who decided that they would be fat? Was it in the communist original that Nixon really saw? Was it an creation of Adams? Was it a decision by the director of this particular production?). In this case, the peasants were starving, and the fat of the conspirators probably represented decadent wealth. Now, I think that it is used to represent decadent laziness, but the decadence is mostly ascribed to the poor, not the rich. The conspirators were supposed to be, I think, simultaneously villainous and pathetic, greedy and conniving but no match for the might of the revolution.
Abiola Lapite notes that white women suffer the largest penalty, in wages, for being fat. There is one group that gets a slight bonus for being fat: black males. Abiola speculates, “The positive association for black men and obesity is also likely explained by the stereotypical association of obesity with jollity, which probably helps to make black men seem less threatening in the eyes of employers.” Since black men are often viewed as “dangerous” in our society, it seems like obesity mitigates some of that
I do think that fast food, whether it causes obesity or not, is probably a health risk, but I think Americans’ preference for dining out quickly is a fait accompli. What I want to know is why we can’t have healthy fast food. I know some dishes that are pretty quick to make, tasty, and use cheap ingredients. Who said the drive through meal had to be a cheeseburger and fries?
Nor is eleborately-made, time-consuming food always healthy. I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t recommend too many of Belle Waring’s recipes to the cardiac ward (which isn’t to say her recipes aren’t tasty! Well, I don’t really know).
Is it just a contingent fact of life that fast food is oriented toward meat and starches? I guess one factor is that fast food generally means finger food. Burritos/wraps are also finger food, so you can put rice and beans and the like in there, maybe with some guacamole, corn, pepper, or whatever, but how do you serve, say, pasta? Collard greens? (also, being vegan, I’d like to see broader fast food menus for selfish reasons, but I digress)
I’ve been getting pudgier over the past few… months? I have to say, the attitude of, “I really ought to do something about that” is in the back of my mind. I simultaneously think, “I don’t want to be bigotted against fat people, but I don’t want to be fat myself.” I suppose it’s more an indication of not liking the idea of being a bigot than not actually being a bigot. Which, I suppose, is fairly common. Many straight guys (including myself, I think) don’t want to be homophobic, but also hate the idea that they’d be gay.
The woman in the transcript is emotionally unbalanced and has no sense of how the average person would respond to her. In her daily life, she probably has as many if not more problems in adjusting to other people as do overweight people who are looked down on.
I suppose the concern on reading what she has to say is that she is simply saying what other people think, but have the good manners not to say.
I know that when I was struggling with shame after abortion, I used to think that the more rabid comments of extremist pro-lifers about women who have abortions were what all pro-lifers secretly thought, but were too polite to say.
I eventually came to realize that’s not the case.
People who spontaneously recoil in disgust at fat people (or at women who have abortions, or gay people, etc.) are in a much worse place than people who are fat, etc.
We should not fear, but should pity, people in this condition.
I look at myself, and at the aspects of other people that I spontaneously recoil from in disgust–and pray and hope that I will someday recover from this tendency.
I think that in any context where there are starving people, obesity is seen as a moral failing because it represents eating your surplus food rather than sharing it with the starving.
As for Larrry Elder, well, when the “libertarian” Elder became a shill for Dubya, I lost all respect for him (his touting of Kenneth Joseph, the “human shield turned supporter of the Iraq war,” who now appears to be a fraud, didn’t help my opinion of him).
Personally, my fear is that the government wil get too involved on either side, either trying to force everyone to have a politically correct opinion on the attractiveness of obesity, or trying to force people to eat healthier through taxation.
In any case, I would like to see more studies trying to determine the impact of weight on health.
Also, does anyone else find it irritating when people explain the recent studies in these terms: “it is healthier to be marginally overweight than to be a normal weight?” If being “marginally overweight” is healthier, shouldn’t that be redefined as “normal weight,” and the current normal weight be redefined as “underweight?” Doesn’t explaining it in this way reinforce the idea that being a healhty weight makes you fat?
While I’m obviously opposed to stigmatizing fat people, is there not some value to a “fat tax” aside from the faulty view that it will make people skinnier? (The tax would be attached to the fat content of the food, not to the weight of the person, of course.)
While weight is now no longer well corrolated with excess deaths, consumption of unhealthy foods are still correlated with diseases that taxpayers pay to treat.
Why would a McDonald’s tax be any different from a cigarette tax? Wouldn’t a fatty food tax decrease consumption of fatty foods, and as a result lead to healthier fat (and thin) people?
[Yawn.] If you want to escape the charge of punitive attitudes toward fat people, Richard, perhaps you’d like to retool your plan so that people could get tax credits for purchasing and cooking healthy, lowfat foods. You know, a little more carrot and a little less stick. Or would that just not be as satisfying from a “moral” standpoint ?
My Mom was an RN when in her 20’s and 30’s. She worked back in the late 1960’s (Great Society Era, kids) on a sort of “Maternity Bus” that travelled amongst the working poor around NYC and the boroughs. Nurses would travel to various neighborhoods to educate pregnant women and new moms about how to properly care for and feed their babies and children. They talked to the women and handed out supplies and literature for free. She has always told me that the (mostly) young women she talked to often started out suspicious and hostile toward the nurses. They were afraid that the Government was there to proclaim them “Bad Mothers” and to seize their children. Once the women figured out that this wasn’t the goal, and that the nurses wouldn’t look down on them as ignoramouses, they were relaxed and very enthusiastic about making the lifestyle changes that the program promoted.
Just a thought on how we could promote better health amongst the citizenry if what we really wanted to do was assist people, rather than encouraging them to wallow in self-loathing so we could feel better about our own problems.
In fact, let’s move the theory out of Libertarian Dreamland alltogether and propose a system in which coroporations like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola get taxed for constantly hawking cheap, fattening crap all over America and overseas, as well. You know, THEY’D be penalized instead of constantly encouraged and rewarded for doing it. Yeah, that’ll really go over well with the House and Senate, who are by and large nothing but wholly-owned subsidiaries of corporations anyway. Heh heh. I make me laugh. :/
Errr, one doesn’t need to smoke to live ? Is this a trick question ?
My guess is that a fatty food tax would simply cause the target audience for fast food to spend more money on it (at the expense of other foods or services), or eat less of it. If you’re already suffering from health problems that are manifest as obesity (and as has been pointed out about four zillion times on fat threads: Plenty of unhealthy people are skinny), just having a cheeseburger and fries every day instead of a cheeseburger, fries, and a root beer isn’t going to change you much for the better.
Also, I do look in the mirror quite often. My partner bought a wardrobe three months ago with a full-length mirror attached. It’s the first one I’ve been in front of in ages. I’m very much afraid that seeing my own fat can in the mirror once or twice a day has been a less than depressing experience. In fact, my can looks perfectly normal and fine to me. Perhaps not watching TV or reading women’s magazines has helped in that department. Oh, and being surrounded at work by all kinds of women of various sizes probably has something to do with it, too.
What I find comical is that people have suddenly decided that class of people are “marginally overweight” after years of aggressive targeting of this group for shame and scorn. Now, suddently, they are only “marginally” fat where before they were on death’s door. I think phrasing the study in that manner and refusing to adjust expectations of a “normal” weight to the group that’s shown to be the healthiest is because it will expose a mental disconnect in people. Because so much stock has been put into the obviousness of lean meaning healthy, giving even an inch on what is “normal” could provoke people to question the basis for the condemnation of fat people alltogether. For the culture of fear and scorn to work, not even a little fat can be okay.
Fat issues do seem to fall in the cracks of cultural ideologies. While lately right-leaning libertarians seem to be getting on board, we mustn’t forget that the founding philosophy grew out of radical feminism (specifically of the lesbian variety) and that all legislative victories have occured from the work of progressives. While both right and left have found reasons to embrace fat liberation, so too have both sides found reasons to hate fat people in their own political way. Liberals focus on anti-corporatism, casting fat people as the pitiful victims of big food but doing very little to hide their ultimate contempt for fatness. The exploitative and derrogatory nature of a film like “Supersize Me” fits in this model. The right embrace the moralizing that’s always been present in the diminishing of fat people. For them, its an issue of personal responsibility and moral weakness. Their villians are fat acceptance, who they improbably cast in the same light as Big Tobacco.
Both sides, though, harbor the absurd attitude that fat people just need to be told how disgustingly wrong we are in order to see the light. Like its something no one had ever mentioned before or as if we just didn’t know we were fat. Everyone pleas “good intentions” while they continue to gleefully abuse fat people. If the fear is the government getting involved on either side, I think the only position that could be reasonably dangerous is precisely where the government already is. Using its power to push the majority view that fat is bad. I cannot realistically concieve of an way the government could abuse power in favor of fat people. Forcing people to think fat people are attractive? Honestly, you think thats a reasonable fear? Sounds more like an anti-PC boogeyman to me. I don’t know of anyone advocating the government force people to date fat people nor could I imagine anyone making even a similiar suggestion on a different issue. The government is, however, actively stigmatizing fat people right now and many are urging more abusive actions.
“Fat taxes” just aren’t sound policy. For one, I can see no reason to trust their motives. They’ve always been intended as a fat people eradication policy. Its never been about the content of fat in the food but always in the person eating it. Many have gone so far as to suggest not even bothering with a food tax and just straight taxing fat people. I cannot trust a proposal like this simply because some of its supporters are repositioning it. Responding to complaints with, “well, what if we just call it something else,” is not really responding to complaints. There is no fat friendly way to attack fat people and I don’t see any good policy coming from the frantic efforts to eliminate fat people. Food is not like cigarettes. Having a candy bar is not an immoral or unhealthy act on its own, so there is no reason to punish people for it. If eating habits are a concern (and frankly, I’d like to see some concrete proof of that first; again, this feels like a “well, what if we call it this” situation where the same faulty assumpsions are still in play) then a more reasonable approach would be subsidizing healthy food. Not making moral judgements and financial penalties for eating “bad” food. Stigmatization of food like this just creates a situation where a persons’s relationship with eating will break down.
The tax credit wouldn’t work as well. You’d have to give it to health food producers, but you couldn’t guarantee the price decreases would be handed down to consumers. You might just end up increasing the profit margins on health food producers. Taxing fat content would be more likely to lead to either (1) higher prices for fatty foods, driving down demand, or (2) lower fat content in food to prevent paying the tax, which would be just as good.
As you said, thin people can be equally or more unhealthy due to eating fatty foods. The tax would only be “punitive” toward people who eat foods with high fat content, irrespective of their weight.
Where I eat there is a food court where you can get a healthy salad-type lunch for $6. It sits between the Arby’s and McDonalds, where you can get a meal for $4. There is also an intermediately-healthy Chinese food stall for an intermediate price. If you tax the fat content of the fast food, you could change the price structure, and remove the financial disincentive to eat the healthy foods.
I’m confused. Isn’t that exactly what I suggested?
[shrug.] I agree that it wouldn’t work anyway, Richard. That’s why I wrote what I did. It’s a nonsensical idea. I would, as I tried to relate by recalling my Mom’s old job, prefer tax-funded education to tax credit or tax penalties. The ultimate goal of educating people to consume more healthy food wouldn’t even need to have skinniness as the “carrot.” In fact, I think that hawking skinniness, rather than a love of good food is cruel, deceptive, counterproductive and a waste of time. I don’t want anyone to regard their body as a moral jail, or food as some kind “punsihment” for a very objective idea of what constitutes sin.
You are aware that a lot of people don’t have $4-$6 to spend on lunch, right ? Is there a cornocopia of fruits, veggies, and low-fat crackers available on Wendy’s 99 cent menu ? If so, I hadn’t noticed.
Okay, here’s a link, which will hopefully work. It’s to NYT, which is registration only, but it discusses a fascinating study that is beginning, at least I really, really hope, to unchain fat from food consumption. Not that consumption of fast food is good, but that the obese are not really eating more food, so much as, for reasons that are lifestyle and genetic in origin, they are moving less. We are all moving less, but this talks about the kind of movement we barely register during the day and that can hardly be ascribed to moral failure. It’s complicated, and my brief description doesn’t do it justice, but it’s worth reading to the end just to find out that the doctor who did the study also designed a treadmill/desk set up and walks slowly as he works all day.
What I was considering, but didn’t mention, was the relative lengths of the lines. McDonalds and Arby’s are always the longest (and the fastest moving). The people in the food court can all afford at least $4.
You’re making two points, though — the first is that “education” is the better answer, because if people had all the relevant information, they would eat healthier foods. The second, though, is that people can’t afford healthy food, so are forced by economic factors to eat the crud on the 99 cent menu.
I have no problem with education, but to the the extent the second analysis is correct, the education wouldn’t really work. The poor know they are eating dreck, but can’t afford to do anything about it.
Also, I think Wendy’s 99 cent menu has two salads on it. If you tax the fat in the burgers and the salad dressings, you can raise the prices on those, and the cheapest option would be the salad with a new fat-free dressing.
Well, you could have the equivalent of a tax by simply stopping all subsidies and farm support for the ingredients that go into fast food — like high fructose corn syrup, corn oil and other oils, etc. Why tax the food? The problem is that “cheap food” is usually as cheap as it is because of existing government programs. Corn, for instance, feeds most cattle so subsidies to corn farmers make beef cheaper. Although the whole apparatus is so complicated it wouldn’t surprise me if some agriculture programs actually make some food (dairy?) more expensive than it needs to be. Sugar is also heavily subsidized. Just saying.
Which only proves that examining this problem in isolation in pointless. Working toward a Living Wage Act and the shortening of the hours that constitute a “full-time” work week would do more to make people of all sizes healthier. It would be much better than our picking back and forth about which dressing should be cheaper.
Oh, and what Barbara said.
Hey Barbara,
That’s the best suggestion I have seen on this post so far. There is no good reason for the government to subsidize empty-calorie foods such as high-fructose corn syrup.
I’ve never seen anyone say “let’s tax the steaks at the Chart House.” It’s always put forward as taxing big macs. Which is one reason I’m against these “punative taxes” ideas – it always seems to come down to taxes on things used disproportionately by poor people. (I was opposed to the cigarette tax, too, for the same reason).
I’m also opposed to the idea of “fat taxes” for every reason BStu mentioned.
Cutting out corporate subsidies and letting the free market wind up where it winds up is an idea I have more sympathy for. Although it’s not like I’ve thought that idea through carefully. :-)
I feel I’m about to make myself unpopular here, but am I the only one who is bothered by our entire cultural obsession with “Good Food/Bad Food?”
It’s admittedly much nicer-sounding when it’s framed in terms of healthy eating, rather than in terms of weight loss, but it still strikes me as a Diet Culture paradigm: Food as the new Sex, complete with rampant obsession with how other people eat, much hand-wringing over those who don’t do it “properly,” the enshrinement of certain types of eating as morally virtuous and others as morally deficient, and worries that Bad People are leading Our Children to degenerate eating practices. In classic Diet Culture Think, you also get “be sure your sin shall find you out,” of course, which the Healthy! Eating! variety does not exhibit quite so blatantly, but it still often strikes me as a reflection of the same cultural obsession with this weird idea that foodstuffs have intrinsic moral qualities.
I’ll absolutely agree that the good food/bad food business is pure nonsense that’s having a negative impact on people’s lives. Stigmatizing food like that only corrupts an individual’s relationship with food and with eating. Having some french fries doesn’t make someone evil or immoral. The hyper moral relationship that is placed on specific foods isn’t healthy. Its creating a scenario where people avoid “bad” foods allowing cravings to build up while forcing “good” foods on themselves and resenting it. The result is often avoiding the “good” foods and binging on the “bad” foods. It’d be far healthier to encourage people to learn to listen to their bodies and just eat the food they want. Not the food they think they should have. Everyone assumes this is going to translate to eating cake 3 times a day, but that’s an outrageously paternalistic outlook. We should just learn to eat what we want and stop valuing and stigmatizing foods in such an unnatural way.
Well, when I said “good food,” Elkins, I was thinking more of the proverbial “Slow Food” model that got a little press in the papers for awhile. Far as I’m concerned, triple-cream French cheese is a “good/healthy” food, as long as I’m not eating an entire pound of it three meals a day, while never doing anything more strenuous than walking back to the fridge for another piece. A nice wedge of cheese and a bowl of fruit in the morning before heading out for a few hours of yardwork, however– That (along with a couple of mugs of coffee) is pretty much my ideal Saturday.
Anyway, food is a health issue, so I’m afraid that some “hand-wringing” would be par for the course. Just like education surrounding driving, workplace safety, et al. I do second the notion that would-be educators should stop automatically coupling the terms “fat” and “sick.” You’re right. It’s not helpful at all.
Not all discussions surrounding food need to be horrible or counterproductive, however. People used to peg off regularly of things like scurvy and pernicious anemia before knowledge of nutrients was discovered and widely assimilated, after all.
Barbara,
Place me in line behind Glaivester, I think that’s a great idea (post 12). My uncles (2 of them) are farmers and they don’t like subsidies. Especially corn subsides because it hurts their hay business (although they make a killing selling it to Kobe cattle farmers — must be some fine hay!). They’re all organic and got into it before the market exploded on that front so they’ve found and stuck with their niche and done quite well for themselves. I wonder how much better they would do if the market was not so heavily subsidized. I would also just add that in their region (Northwest Missouri) they are about the only family farm left in the area and they compete mostly against corporations (especially Tyson) who they say collect subsidies through management fronts. I’m not sure how that works, but that’s the word from them.
Food definitely has no intrinsic moral value, but foodmakers, well, that’s another issue.
I think objectively “unhealthy” food (Scrapple and Crackling Bread, if you don’t already know what it is, you probably don’t want to) can be really good food, and objectively healthy food can be bad (Balance Bars, anyone?), but just about anything should have a place in your life if you really enjoy it. Do you really know anyone who enjoys Balance Bars?
My real complaint is with the idea that food is fuel, or cheap convenience, or medicinal, etc., and that, as a nation we are so interested in pushing other values — saving time, avoiding cancer, or whatever, that we have given up on the things that really do make food enjoyable, such as taste, quality, and the chance to share family meals. And yes, really well-cooked, good food satisfies — that’s why, even though you often eat less of it, you are happier after having eaten well. I used to tell my husband that I’d rather eat a tablespoon of real ice cream than a pint of low fat, low carb, sugar free stuff. I’m not moralizing, I just think it’s sad that we have come to this sorry state on food.
What a nut this Linda is! She’s offended by looking at fat people? Maybe she should just stay home. Yet another person who thinks she has the right to never be offended…
Alsis:
That’s true, Alsis. But I do find myself wondering – did people who lived in places and in circumstances where sources of vitamin C were readily available foodstuffs really regularly die of scurvy before the cause of scurvy was well-known? Or did they eat those foods all on their own, without anyone having to teach them that if they didn’t, they’d get sick?
I don’t know the answer, but I do wonder. It doesn’t seem to me, for example, that before we started putting iodine in salt, you saw too many goiters in coastal regions. Goiters were an inland phenomenon, found in populations without access to the natural dietary sources of iodine found in seafood. And yet, there are plenty of people in the world who don’t like fish. Guess they were eating it anyway. How’d they know to do that? It probably just inexplicably looked good to them every once in a while.
When I worked at a grocery a number of years ago (*many* years ago now), I often had to refuse to sell vitamin supplements to people who were trying to buy them with food stamps. Vitamin pills were classified as “drugs” not “food,” which meant we weren’t allowed to take food stamps for them.
Now of course I realize that vitamin supplements are a truly CRAPPY substitute for having fresh fruits and vegetables in your diet, but these people just couldn’t afford enough fresh fruit and veg to make it a daily part of their diet. One vitamin pill a day, on the other hand, was at least something that they thought they could afford – and better you get your vitties that way than no way, right?
Except that they couldn’t.
These people knew damned well that their diets sucked, that they and their kids weren’t getting all the nutrients and vitamins that they needed. They just couldn’t do a thing about it. I guess I just don’t see how belaboring the point that a diet of all fat and starch and sugar all the time is kinda, gosh, bad for you really helps people at all. I mean, very few people actually eat that way by choice. Left to their own devices, I think that people are usually pretty good at eating the foods that their bodies need — assuming, that is, that they’re permitted access to those foods, and that their attitudes towards eating itself haven’t been warped beyond all recognition by cultural constructs which teach that any natural food cravings must be incorrect and bad and wrong, and that only rigorous application of intellectual override to what one feels like eating can suffice to enable one to do it “properly.”
All of which is really, I suppose, just a very long-winded way of saying that I agree with what you said before, Alsis, about thinking that it often makes a lot more sense to approach health issues from a wider socio- economic angle than to assume that the trick must somehow lie in tricking, bribing or bullying people into eating well-prepared flavorful food made with fresh ingredients and consumed at leisure.
Barb:
Agreed, Barb. And y’know, part of the reason that high quality ice cream is so much more satisfying than the low fat stuff is the butter fat. Fat’s not intrinsically Bad Food, and I think that our bodies know that, even if our brains don’t. Like you said, few people really like Balance Bars. I agree with you that our cultural attitudes towards food and eating have seriously messed around with our sense of satisfaction in eating — and yes, that is really sad. I guess I just worry sometimes that emphases on Healthy Eating or Slow Eating or the recent Evils of Fast Food craze can often serve to feed into exactly the same dynamic that the diet culture does – that in many cases, it can just become a way of replacing one fetishistic view of food with a different, but equally fetishistic, one. Some varieties of food fetishism are certainly more grounded in nutritional reality than others, but I don’t believe that any of them encourage a truly healthy attitude towards eating.
Or, as BStu put it far more concisely:
Yeah. That.
Goodness, I never put anything concisely. hehe
Taxing fat as a food product is a problem for just the reasons you state, though. Fat serves a purpose. Not only in affecting taste, but also in filling us up. I’m reminded of the various episodes of Alton Brown’s “Good Eats” where he vigorously defends fats and fatty food. I know he’s not quite on my side when it comes to fat people, but I appreciate his effort to redefine what qualifies as healthy eating.
I’m doomed. I don’t eat fast food – no fast food joints in our town – but I smoke, I drink, I eat too much chocolate (and I make my own chocolate treats), and I eat my husband’s home-made fried chicken. I not only drink, I drink absinthe. The Nectar of Satan, his little green fairy. I’m not fat, but maybe Linda will tax me so that I don’t get fat. Prevention and all, ya know.
Heh, why are all the vices so much fun?
I know what Scrapple is. My mom used to cook it for me when I was kid. I won’t touch the stuff now. It probably has dog lips in it, for all I know.
Modified quote from Fafblog!:”The world is pitted against us, linda, but we do not give up, because we are not just fighting for ourselves and our bizarre pet issues. We are fighting for lofty and obscure universal principles that mysteriously justify ourselves and our bizarre pet issues!”
Barb asks: “Do you really know anyone who likes Balance Bars?” and it puts me in mind of a funny story. Spending time with my dad is like being with a junkie always jonesing for his next fix. If you ask him ‘how was your day,’ the reply will include a list of every food item he has consumed and/or every virtuous act of refusing a ‘forbidden’ (i.e. yummy) food and having a “nutrition bar” instead. It’s not necessarily Balance Bars, but he always has some nearby, and his kitchen is full of every kind of low-carb, sugar-free, fat-free snack product and food substitute on the market.
A couple of years ago I stayed with dad & his wife. We got up in the morning to go to his mother’s funeral. As you can imagine, this was a difficult time for all of us. I was very close to my grandmother and was a little nervous about having to speak at the funeral.
I got up to find that he had very kindly made me coffee (which he dislikes) and I didn’t really expect that there’d be half & half. I declined the offer of skim milk and artificial sweetener. They did have some real maple syrup, and he glared furiously as I poured about 35 calories worth of it into my coffee.
I don’t generally eat breakfast right away when I get up. It’s not like I’m about to waste away, or I’ll get hypoglycemic or something.
No, I couldn’t skip breakfast, he said, and I needed to have one of these breakfast bars right now. He’s holding it out and giving the “do what I say or else” look to his 39-year-old daughter who is, if I do say so myself, looking quite silver-haired and formidable in a chic black dress and pearls.
But I didn’t want to start a fight so I said thanks, and put it in my purse. We get in the car, and he asks me how did I like the breakfast bar. I say it was fine, but I can’t look at him. He knows I hate those things. He says “you’re lying, you didn’t eat it did you?” and I could tell he was getting mad. I said I wasn’t hungry, and he gave me another one and said “eat it right now.” I said I was too nervous and I was afraid if I ate anything it would make me fart during the funeral. This made him laugh and kept him off my case for a little while.
He kept bringing it up, though, and my sister and I were nearly hysterical laughing at him. We finally called him on it, though, later in the day. We sent my brother-in-law to the corner store to buy a Snickers bar (which I happen to know dad loves and denies himself even the smallest bite). We then compared the nutritional content and taste of the snickers bar with that of the breakfast bar he’d tried to make me eat.
They were surprisingly similar: the Snickers was smaller, had fewer calories, less fat, more protein, fewer carbs, and a few funny-sounding chemicals. And it was chewy and yummy, in a sick kind of way. The Breakfast Bar was bigger, yes, so no surprise that it had more calories, but it also had more fat, more carbs, less protein, and a long list of chemicals. And it tasted gross. Absolutely dry and icky and hideous and boring and yucky.
Was dad’s mind opened? Did he toss out the breakfast bars and rejoice that he could have the occasional Snickers knowing it was no worse for him than the breakfast bars he buys at Costco by the case?
No.
I could easily imagine him, though, calling in to a radio show and sounding a hell of a lot like poor Miss Linda in that transcript. He would so get off on the idea that he could avoid certain taxes by being so virtuous.
and
That essentially gets you to the same place as taxing fat. It will probably also cause the prices of all food to rise (although would have the added advantage of allowing poorer, unsubsidized countries to reap some of the gains from the higher prices.)
In any event, healthy foods like soybeans get federal subsidies, too, so a subsidy cut would have to be across the board (unless you want the government debating what foods are “good”). It would get you, though, to exactly the same place as a fat tax — higher food prices.
by eating too many burgers grown with hormone excellerant more people are taking on board the hormones in the meat and the passing it through their system as waste. they get fatter and damage more of the environment.
people need to stop eating crap and take some responsability for themselves and the environment around them. if people want to screw themselves up, fine, but don’t screw things up for me!!!
the govt should give guidance and help, but to be honest, cheap food and energy is all that is important to them as it keeps the majority happy.
the majority are fat!!!!
We don’t need to discuss punitive taxes to adjust the price/incentive structure for some unhealthy foods. The high levels of cheapness of all sorts of empty calories related to high fructose corn syrup are the product or our wasteful, third-world agriculture harming corn subsidies, which keep our markets so flooded with corn that all the big food producers are incentivized to find something to do with it. And it’s not good for us. Furthermore, I’m not a big coke drinker, but they taste so much better in countries where they use actual sugar rather than HFCS. Keeping that stuff super-cheap ain’t good for our health or our tastebuds or impovershed farmers trying to survive in poor countries. And we should be able to agree with the libertarians about ending these subsidies, too!
We only do it so you can have someone to feel superior to, robo honey.
Getting back to the earlier points by Barbara, Elkins, et al. I very much fear that food has always been something of a fetish object and always will be. As a connoisseur of 1950’s and 1960’s recipe kitsch, I’m always creeped out by women’s magazines that have diet plans and opulent dessert recipes smack up against one another. Always a fun mixed signal there. Not to mention those creepy food planning charts where the all-sacrificing wife must fix these wonderful meals for the family full of heavy cream and gravy, etc. The family (Husband, Kids, Uncle visiting from Peoria) have their own collective column on the chart. But Mrs. Sacrifice has her own column where everything she can’t have from the meal if she wants to be a proper feminine woman with a faithful husband is appropriately listed, along with the repeated command that her portions must be smaller than everyone else’s, too. Blarrgh. Nothing ever changes. Or not enough does.
Hey alsis, that reminds me of a great quote from Susan Bordo’s book “Unbearable Weight” (which IMO is a must-read for feminists):
(She’s referring to cultural images and expectations for women and food, as exemplified by what you’ve described from women’s magazines.)
Actually, a magazine from 40 years ago doesn’t really represent a prior era., rather the avant garde of the one we are still in. The obsession with female weight began in the late 50s and early 60s, at least in the U.S., and for as long as I can remember, the same obsession has been at work, it’s just that now there are even more people who have to deal with being at something other than their usually unrealistic idea of ideal weight.
It’s true that (mostly) upper and middle class obsession with fashion and other aspects of female appearance began long before that, but it became weight centered, so to speak, much more recently.
Wow. So the Bush administration tells us that fat people are a national security risk. Not a leftie says we’re destroying the environment with our fat. Is there nothing fat people can’t do? Well, aside from enjoy respect for our bodies, of course. Am I okay because I’m a fat vegetarian? How about all the thin people eating burgers? Or, are they obviously okay because they are thin? So they get to ruin the environment, while fat people get chastized for, what exactly? Going to the bathroom?
And if the “majority” are fat and happy (I assume by majority you’re including the group shamed as “overweight” but who have frequently been shown to be the healthiest), I’d be pretty happy with that. The majority are not fat and happy, however. Are you just one of those types who think fat people go through life at ease without ever being attacked because of their weight? You really think fat people are allowed to be happy? A fat person who is happy is not someone who just hasn’t learned to hate themselves. They are a person who has battled against (and continues to battle against) the ever present influences of a viciously anti-fat culture. They are a person of great courage and woefully of great rarity, as well. We aren’t the majority.
Some of the most recent research has found that other factors besides food intake affect your weight. So equating fat with gluttony isn’t addressing the whole issue.
One study found that not getting enough sleep can lead to weight gain. They’re not exactly sure why – there was some talk about hormones and things – but one possibility is that when you’re sleepy, you don’t move around as much and you’re more likely to consume more food in an effort to feel more awake.
Another study found that in certain stressful situations, such as being stuck in traffic, some people have more of a certain chemical in their bloodstreams that encourages fat production (I think – I heard this one on the car radio while stuck in traffic).
And another study found that in some women, insufficient calcium can lead to weight gain, because their bodies were interpreting the calcium deficiency to mean a food shortage and were therefore tripping into famine-fighting mode.
I agree with what others on this thread have said about the diet culture. It’s part of the creeping zero-risk tolerance that is being pushed by the health care community. Not that long ago, the weight tables were revised downwards to change what insurance companies and doctors were supposed to consider as “healthy”. And also fairly recently, the blood pressure tables were revised. Now, unless you have 120/70 blood pressure or something, you are considered hypertensive! The whole picture has skewed to an unrealistic expectation that if you meet the new goals, you will live longer and healthier lives. Up to a point, this is true, but I hate the way they keep moving the goalposts so as to keep about 25% of the population in the danger zone.
*snort*
Unless you are doing hardcore sustainable agriculture yourself (which is nigh impossible) you are a hypocrite. Just ask the black footed ferret. Or do you think that vegetables just magically appear at the market without the use of extensive monoagriculture, forced irrigation, and the artificial application of fertilzers (even organic ones)?
Well, you can shop at farmers markets, and in general, try to buy locally produced in-season produce, etc. This isn’t cheap, but if you can do it, it is one thing that you could do to help. I do this just to support local farms, many of which are committed to organic production. It usually tastes better, and stays fresh longer too (basically, because it’s picked more recently than if it needs to be shipped for several days in high volume). My farmers market even sells milk, meat, bread, eggs and cheese by regional (within 2 hours) producers. I buy some of this too, though not as consistently.
Also, it’s true that removing supports could have tax like effects, as I said, but there’s a difference: you’re already being taxed to provide the support to begin with, and although I have no hope that removing agricultural subsidies will reduce a poor person’s taxes under the current poor-hostile administration, taxing the food that is derived from the already tax-subsidized products amounts to a double tax that will not be offset by the promise of lower cost food (as the agricultural subsidy is) and a consumption tax at that — the type of tax that already disproportionately hurts poor people, who must by necessity spend a greater proportion of their income on consumption. With the exception of restaurant taxes, I have problems with taxing food or drugs — probably because I grew up in a place that didn’t.
Okay, you’ve officially lost me, Barbara. Also, I specifically said at the end of my grumblings that the imagery I was speaking of is still around in modern fare meant for women’s consumption. On the bright side, recipe hawkers HAVE discovered in the last 60 years that there are spices out there besides salt and pepper.
Thanks for the tip, pseu.
No, your post just made it seem like this obsession with weight has always been with us and I don’t believe it has, even if you can point to an example from a magazine circa 1960-whatever. Even less than 200 years ago, it’s hard to believe, but the major issue with food for almost everyone in the population was getting enough of it. Now, except for certain countries on the continent of Africa, there is almost no country whose population is at risk of not getting enough calories on a wide scale. Obviously, even in the U.S. there are people who do not have enough to eat, but this is a poverty and distribution issue, not an issue of food availability.
Ah, right. I think what threw me was your use of the words “Avante Garde.” :/
Anyway, one hundred or so years is still too long. :p
for what it’s worth, Trish, Absynthe isn’t actually any more dangerous to you than any other potent liquor. it’s bad reputation is because it’s chronologically the first victim of the voodoo pharmacology panics that created the war on drugs.
so, in moderation, go nuts. but you’ll still ruin a few of your internal organs if you go too far.
Trish – I got this quote from an absinthe site:
“The presumed active ingredient in wormwood’s oils, alpha-thujone, has a similar molecular structure to menthol, a-pinene, eucalyptol, camphor and other monoterpenes. Formerly believed to have a THC (cannabinoid) structure-activity relationship and mechanism, a-thujone is now known to modulate only an entirely different receptor site, the GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) system. GABA moderates the firing of neural synapses; a-thujone mildly antagonizes such inhibition. ”
FWIW, a friend who likes making his own liquers (sp?) says that the last step in making absinthe is very tricky, so you should only drink the good stuff. His theory is that part of the bad reputation absinthe has is due to poor quality control, plus lead-crystal decanters.
a fat tax? why? fat is only a food, our bodies by the way run on fat, sugar is only a catelyste, second people who are obese or very overweight do not generally visit fast foods that often, not around here, the only people I see in great numbers are thin. when you are in oxygen which is most of the time, except when you are running top speed to catch a bus, you are burning 70 percent of fuel as fat 30 percent as sugar.
a few overweight, but that is like saying you see a fat person one day at a fast food place and they are fat than they must be fat because they eat at fast food places once a week or everyday, when in fact that fat person may have only visited fast foods once a month.
so the fat person is considered guilty by inurendo, did I spell that right? a thin person is in there and no one thinks twice or even once about it. fat tax would be unfair, how would you define a fatty food? 90 percent fat? 80 percent? what?
so most meats are pretty close to that, so we tax steaks? hamburger at the store? or tax cheeses and soups since most have some fat base, or tax regular dairy I mean where does it end, and what is going to stop them from adding a carbohydrate tax once they are convinced we eat to many carbs and that is why we are fat since we are eating less fat due to the tax and are still fat.
why target food anyway for taxes? it surly is not for health reasons, as most foods won’t hurt you unless you only eat one item all the time and thus don’t get enough nutrients or something. fat has been implicated in getting people fat, but that is not so, there are thin people who eat high fat diet and are still thin, and many obese, (I know all the weight conscious and overweight people who seldom eat fat because they are fat and are afraid they will get fatter if they do eat more than a little fat a day) but I eat a fairly high fat down now (and didn’t used to) and have lost 20 pounds already and 4 sizes.
and I wasn’t expecting that to happen. I eat more fat simply because that is what my body is craving not because I am forcing it, there are days I don’t crave it and eat only lower fat stuff, so I satisfy my body on a moment by moment basis.
and saying taxpayers are footing the bill for obeisty I beg to differ, many of hospital and doctor visits are for non obese related causes (but the media would have you believe that sinu infections bronchitis, birth defects, autoaccidents and such are caused by fat) and second most people pay their own way people without insurance but who have a job make payments,, of course except the poor who by the way visit doctors alot simply because they don’t get enough to eat, or don’t have education on improving their health or avoiding sexually transmitted diseases, or education on birth control, and have more stressors overall then those who are of better economic and educational means.
placing the blame for high medicaid costs on obesity is misleading, whenever you go to the doctor for anything they right on the chart your weight, if files are examined for studies or to find out staitistics of who visits doctors and why they will focus on the weight, if you die in a car wreck and you are fat don’t be surprised if your death is cited as death due to fat and not car wreck because there are people with a hidden agenda who will lie or manipulate data to fit what they want.
I personally pay my own bills government pays nothing. and besides we all pay for other people’s lifestyles chocies anyway since our taxes fund other things besides medical expenses for the poor. I mean I know people on disability who are quite cabable of working who are fairly young, and their only disability is that they can’t work because they are drunk or stoned all the time, and not because they are blind crippled or have multiple sclerosis or something.
why not protest about the abuses of disability by health individuals who just want a free ride. why not protest people who are funded by the government to receive antidepressants after all if they really wanted to they could snap out of it on their own. believe it or not not to long ago this is what was believed about depression, now we know better, now we want to pick on obesity, later on they will find they were wrong, adn pick on something else. the list is endless and the propaganda is too.
taxing food is like penalizing people for satisfying their biological needs, what’s next taxing sex because we think people are overindulging in it too much and costing taxpayers money because of all the illnesses it is causing? or let’s tax people who sleep too much after all over sleeping causes all kinds of health problems, or is that not getting enough sleep, let’s tax that since they are costing taxpayers all kinds of money in lost productivity car accidents and and it is making people fat.
here we can make fat people have double jeopardy tax their food and loss of sleep together. next is we don’t want fat people having fun so we will tax their sex lives we will put moniters in their bedrooms and charge according to how many time they have sex, or yea lets’ tax how many miles they put on their car going to the store and work, and if they go to a vacation spot let’s tax double since they are contributing to the smog problem.and driving for unecessary reasons.
I mean the list is endless, do we really want the government to start taxing everything? they will if you let them. all they need is junk science to justify it and a mass media push to get it.
RR
I’m seriously looking for overweight or obese people to become members/contributors to my blog. You can also be 10% above “ideal” adult bodyweight and still be welcome – independent of your actual BMI.
visit at http://obesiblogger.blogspot.com
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@Lee
That hormone is cortisol (I double-checked) and is produced under stressful situations. This link from the Mayo Clinic http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/stress/AN01128 says that it’s only prolonged exposure to cortisol that contributes to weight gain. In addition, the GABA receptors you’re talking about with absinthe are one of the targets for anti-anxiety/depression medications (limiting the reuptake of GABA as to increase the amount available to bind to the receptors in your brain making you feel more relaxed.) Biological psychology is an unbelievably interesting field – to me, at least. YMMV. :)
As far as a fat tax – I don’t agree with it. The people eating the foods aren’t necessarily doing it out of laziness and contempt for healthy eating. Going to the store is expensive, fresher foods are expensive, and if you’re like I was in college, sometimes you don’t go home all day. Without having a place to cook food, you still have to eat. There have been many days I’ve looked at the vending machines or restaurant menu (this was before the salad days) and wished for better choices. The only thing leveraging a fat tax would have done was to cause me to have to starve more on a limited budget. Sometimes even McDonald’s is an indulgence when you’re living off of a budget of $1.85 a meal. Maybe we’re not talking about people like me per se, but people in my situation would have still been affected by a fat tax.
I do have a mirror, but what I see in it is not remotely accurate. I compare my body to how I think it “should” look like (which has a lot to do with aethetics and very little to do with helath). I calculated my BMI recently. It’s 29 (“overweight”, and 1 BMI point off being obese), but I had expected it to be over 50 (in the “morbidly obese” category) because that’s how far away I am from how I think I should look.
Not that the way I’ve been mistreated for my weight would be ok if it really were 50, or 60, or a million.