Thought for Food is Food for Thought

This week will not be as thinky as the last two, I promise. People think I’m too thinky, I know. At least, I think they think I’m too thinky, but it’s possible they don’t and I only think they think that because I’m so thinky.

I like to analyse. I like to analyse things like electoral reform, the return on investment and opportunity cost of just about every activity I undertake, such as shoveling my own snow versus having the loader come, nutritional panels on every single food product I touch, and, when my brain has nothing better to chew on, sports statistics. And fyi, I don’t really watch sports.

Most of those things are compulsions that are fine in small quantities, but aren’t beneficial. The return on investment of calculating the return on investment of everything is pretty low.

I really stand by one of those compulsive analytical activities, though: reading nutritional panels. It doesn’t take much time once you get into the swing of it, and the return on investment is actually pretty big.

Nutrition is one of those things that may not seem that important if you only look at the short term. For that matter, if you look at the long term it is hard to see the payoff unless you know how to look at it. You pretty much have to step back and look at it across the population. You could eat poorly and not get diabetes. You can eat poorly and not get cardiovascular disease. You could eat poorly and not have it negatively affect your mood. You could eat poorly and not become dysfunctionally overweight. But if you eat poorly for long time and avoid all those things, you got awfully lucky. So far.

I’ve eaten whatever I want my whole live and I’m still alive, hahahaha!

The United States started falling behind other industrialized countries in life expectancy after the Second World War; at the very same time as they were becoming the world’s powerhouse economy. Since 2014 the life expectancy in the US has actually ticked downward ever so slightly. Whether or not this is a blip or the beginning of a trend only time will tell. This is shocking, though, since medicine continues to advance.

In short: Inactivity and poor diet. Smoking remains a major cause of death, but the US (and Canada) are no where near the top of the list for smoking rates. In Canada and other industrialized countries, life expectancy does continue to go up, but could be much higher if not for smoking, inactivity and poor diet.

Talking about life expectancy is unlikely to scare us into eating better. But it does not tell the full story. For every person whose diet is so bad it leads to mortality, how many have a diet that is negatively affecting their health and quality of life, but just not killing them? Nutrition affects quality, not just quantity, of life, and that includes mental as well as physical health. It also includes our ability to think and learn:

“The research shows that having a healthy, balanced diet improves brain capacity, maximizes cognitive capabilities, and improves academic performance in school-age children. Alternatively, the research also shows that having too much junk food and an unhealthy diet decreases academic performance by limiting the amount of information to the brain.”
Rita Rausch

There is also something to be said for the role meals play in family communication and bonding, which I assert has a significant direct and indirect impact on health and health habits. Some have looked at the US stats and concluded that not only is diet a cause of lower life expectancy, but so is a rise in ‘despair deaths’ and social isolation. Food in many other cultures continues to play a bonding role and a cultural role that is fragmented in North America.

Okay, We All Know We Should Eat Better, But We Don’t

It is hard to sell that truth to a distracted public living in societies that are focused on the short-term and on things other than eating.

The short term pay-off of society’s eating habits are convenience and possibly taste (though I would argue about taste. A soggy restaurant burger? A slice of store-bought pizza with three morcels of pineapple and two slices of ham? A re-warmed gelatinous blob of bland vegetables? (On those rare occasions where vegetables are included.)). They only get away with it with fake flavour secret weapons.

Also the fact that noticeable consequences (ie noticeable health effects) are shuffled on down the line. Effects on thinking and learning are hard to notice because, well, you’re having just a little bit more trouble thinking and learning. It is like a loan: get convenience now, but pay (mostly) later. Have you looked at the stats for personal debt in this country? The same attitude drives our dietary decisions, but diet loans don’t need any paperwork – you can rack up as much of a loan as you want.

Another reason is that our society values two-parent growing-the-economy work and consumerism. We get so busy working and buying stuff, including prepared food, that we don’t have time to cook healthy food, or even consider our options. Besides, it seems to be what everyone else does and what society wants us to do. It seems to be the way it is supposed to be, so we assume They are working to make food as nutritious as They can for us.

The Industry

Two problems. Technical problem: food loses flavour when it is packaged and made to sit on shelves without going bad. Tasty food either needs to be fresh or rely on salt, sugar and fat (the fake flavour secret weapons). Motivation problem: companies selling food have one job to do: sell food to make money for the people that have invested money in them and want more money back. Here’s how you sell food:

Step 1. Buy cheap ingredients that our bodies are trained to want to get (and so they taste good), because 40 000 years ago we had to worry more about starvation than obesity. The two main additives are salt and sugar.

Step 2. You add these cheap flavour enhancers to bland, cheap, stable and versatile ingredients. That’s flours and starches.

Step 3. You avoid things that are expensive, variable in supply or cost, and don’t keep well. That’s fruits and vegetables. You can, however, add artificial fruit and vegetable flavours or fruit juices and preservatives so that you can put a picture of fruits and vegetables on the box. Or on the bag. Or on the bag that is in the box that is wrapped in plastic. But that’s another article.

Step 4. If possible, add fat. Either by frying things crispy, or adding fat to render foods soft and gooey.

Step 5. Preserve it and package it to last until the next ice age, but put a best before date on it for next Tuesday.

Step 6. Wait six months, then lower either the fat, sugar or salt content and slap stars on your package stating that you have lowered that one thing. Oh, and raise either or both of the other two, so people still think the thing tastes good. For example, lower the fat and raise the salt. Oh, that’s a good one. Works every time.

Step 7. Create your own health thing you can talk about on the package. Or join one already out there. Call it Health Check or Heart Guide or Eat Well Verified or something like that. Just make sure it doesn’t really mean anything. Or just give money to a charity and say that. Or put a picture of a movie on it.

So What Are We To Do?

First, be aware of food marketing – they are not on your side, they are trying to trick you. Never read the front of the package, except to see what the product actually is (tubs of crispy chicken now seem to be available in what I call an ice cream container. I thought for awhile they had crispy chicken flavoured ice cream. It didn’t surprise me.). Take any health or nutritional claims with a grain of salt – but just one grain. The only thing you should believe is the good old nutritional panel. It is mandated by law.

Two, buy foods that look like real, natural food, if we can remember what that looked like. Especially foods that don’t really have packages: fruits and vegetables. These things have actual natural flavour and don’t need sugar, fat and salt added if you buy them fresh. Cool trick.

Three, look at the back of the package – the food label. At first it might not mean that much, but after a while you will know a big number when you see one. Look at saturated fat, sodium, and sugar, but also look at serving size. They can be tricky with that. My favourite is cooking spray that says ”low in fat!” or even “fat free!” Cooking spray is essentially all fat. It is oil that you spray. It is only because the serving size is very small that it falls below a legal threshold that allows them to make such ridiculous claims.

Four, be patient with your taste buds. Eventually they will grow back. If you have inundated your mouth with too much salt, for example, your body turns down the volume on that flavour sensor. After awhile with a lower salt intake, your body will turn up the volume again, and appreciate a much lower level of salt. FYI, you don’t have to actually ever use salt to get too much salt – way too much. If you have Cheerios and milk for breakfast, cheese and bread for lunch and a stir fry with a jar of sauce in it for supper, you may have had too much.

How are we supposed to remember all this? How are we supposed to stay strong in the face of the massive part of the grocery store (the parts we have to walk through in the middle) devoted to instant-gratification food? Wait for it…

The new Canada Food Guide

No, I mean you really are going to have to wait for it: the new Canada Food Guide. It isn’t out yet but it is coming soon. Pictured here is a consultation draft, and I like it a lot. It is not just about the food itself, it reminds us to be smart eaters and to think about how we eat.

Of course, it is a simple sheet of paper. How much difference will it make? Well, enough of a difference that industry is trying to get at Health Canada to lobby them to promote industry’s particular products. It sounds like Health Canada has managed to keep them out. Good-bye four food groups. Good-bye juice. Hello, eating habits and label reading and promotion of nutrition.

Of course, the Guide is not released yet. It may change, but my guess is at this point they are changing appearances, not approaches. Look for it when it comes, sometime this winter or spring. Before everyone complains that this is much more vague, be aware that according to Health Canada, there will be a second release in the fall that will get into recommended amounts for different types of foods. For now, I’m excited with the approach they are taking. It is a great start.

I’m going to keep thinking about nutrition, at the risk of being too thinky. How we eat has a major effect on the wake we make through the health system. We set an example for others and we set habits for ourselves that can contribute to positive moods and thinking at our best. Think how thinky we could all be! Hey, no wait – that was supposed to be a positive thing.

When the dust settles on all this work on the food guide, perhaps the government will send public servants out into the grocery stores to turn all the products around so the food labels are facing out and the eye candy on the front of the packages is out of sight – and out of mind.

Hmmm. That sounds like fun. I might be able to help them out with that…