WE ARE WHAT WE EAT:
FOOD CONSUMPTION AND IDENTITY IN THE UNITED STATES
by
Marlena Kay Dates
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of
The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, Florida
May 2009
Copyright by Marlena Kay Dates 2009
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Dr. Harris, words cannot express my gratitude for all these years of unwavering support.
Whether it was academic, professional, or even personal guidance, you have always been
willing to spend the time to help me to find my way. Your kind critiques have made me a
better researcher and a better person overall. Your contribution to my life has been
immense, and I will be forever thankful for having had the chance to work with you.
Dr. Brown, I have greatly enjoyed working with you and am thankful for the opportunity
to have been involved in your research projects during my time as a graduate student.
Thank you for your guidance and support.
Dr. Cameron, your thoughtful comments and critique of this thesis research have been
insightful and have made my work that much better. I greatly appreciate all that you
have done to help me through this process.
Alice, Bryan, Dan, Dawn, Deborrah, Doug, Julie, Kris, and Nick … I am eternally
grateful for the role that each of you has played in my life. You are the best teachers that
I could have had, and I am a better person for having known you. Thank you.
iv
ABSTRACT
Author:
Marlena Kay Dates
Title:
We Are What We Eat: Food Consumption and Identity in the United States
Institution: Florida Atlantic University
Advisor:
Dr. Michael S. Harris
Degree:
Master of Arts
Year:
2009
In the modern United States, capitalism is the predominant cultural value that structures
the food system. The current American relationship to food is strained, at best, as twothirds of Americans experience overweight and obesity and are at risk for a number of
serious health complications. An understanding of the historic and political-economic
aspects of the American food system is necessary to address the effects of our modern
food habits on our ideas of our selves. This thesis analyzes the types of foods Americans
eat, why they make the food choices that they do, how they feel about their eating habits
and their habits’ effects on their bodies, and how this all relates to our sense of identity as
Americans.
v
To my loving and patient husband,
Joshua,
for seeing me through
these many years of research and writing
without ever wavering in your support or your humor.
And to my sweet and supportive daughter,
Arianna,
for reminding me of what is
most important in life.
Without the two of you,
the loves of my life,
this accomplishment would not be nearly as sweet.
Thank you for all that you are.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables ................................................................................................................... viii
List of Figures .................................................................................................................... ix
CHAPTER ONE: Introduction ...........................................................................................1
CHAPTER TWO: Setting: The American Human Diet ....................................................7
The Human Diet.......................................................................................................... 8
The American Diet.................................................................................................... 10
Scientific Insights...................................................................................................... 14
CHAPTER THREE: Background and Ethnographic Methods ........................................24
Anthropological Literature Review .......................................................................... 24
Methods..................................................................................................................... 28
CHAPTER FOUR: Food Consumption in America.........................................................33
What We Eat ............................................................................................................. 34
A Brief History of the American Food System......................................................... 43
Why We Eat What We Eat ....................................................................................... 49
CHAPTER FIVE: Food Consumption and Identity .........................................................70
The Embodied Consumer.......................................................................................... 71
The Culture of Thin .................................................................................................. 90
We Are What We Eat................................................................................................ 96
CHAPTER SIX: Conclusion...........................................................................................110
vii
REFERENCES CITED....................................................................................................117
viii
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Daily Per Capita Food Consumption from USDA Data Tables 1970-2006..... 17
Table 2: Daily Per Capita Calorie Consumption from USDA Data Tables 1970-2006..18
Table 3: Trends in Percentage of Overweight and Obese Americans by Age................ 19
Table 4: Age of Participants by Sex ............................................................................... 30
Table 5: Ethnicity of Participants by Sex ....................................................................... 30
Table 6: Annual Household Income of Participants ....................................................... 30
Table 7: "Unhealthy" Foods with Highest Frequency of Mention ................................. 37
Table 8: Childhood Dietary Patterns............................................................................... 41
Table 9: Participants' Sources of Information for a "Healthy" Diet ............................... 52
Table 10: Participants' Nutrition-Focused Behaviors ....................................................... 54
Table 11: Participants' Thoughts on "Organic" or "All-Natural" Foods........................... 61
Table 12: Agricultural Land Devoted to Organic Production, Selected Countries .......... 67
Table 13: Participants' Perceived Happiness with Dietary Habits.................................... 71
Table 14: Participants' Desired Changes in Dietary Habits .............................................. 72
Table 15: Participants Stating a Desire to Lose Weight ................................................... 73
ix
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Organic Agriculture Worldwide........................................................................ 67
x
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
This purpose of this thesis is to address how one particular form of consumption,
food consumption, it a reflection of the culture of the United States (hereafter referred to
as American culture). In particular, this thesis will deal with issues surrounding the link
between food consumption and identity construction. Modern Americans are encouraged
by the capitalist culture to increase consumption in all areas of life; proper consumption
becomes an identity marker that individuals can use to situate themselves within their
social networks. In terms of food consumption, the culture encourages a focus on a small
body size as a prominent indicator of proper food consumption and therefore many
people work (mostly unsuccessfully) to overcome the dichotomous messages of the
culture which tell them to consume more food, but also to get the body to a small ideal
size. This thesis will analyze the types of foods Americans eat, why they make the food
choices that they do, how they feel about their eating habits and their habits’ effects on
their bodies, and how this all relates to our sense of identity as Americans.
Food is one of the most basic needs of life. No matter what type of organism is
taken for consideration, from bacteria to plants to animals, all need to take nutrients from
somewhere in order to survive. In the human realm, food procurement, preparation, and
consumption have evolved to an art form. We have transitioned from scavenging,
hunting, and gathering whatever we could find to creating complex cuisines that help
1
some people to reinforce their ethnic affiliations and may offer others a taste of foreign
cultures. In some parts of the world, we even have the luxury of walking through an airconditioned supermarket in order to make decisions about one brand of food product over
another. Most would view these cultural advances as a boon for the human species.
However, food and our relationship to it are increasingly problematic and even pose
immense health risks in some populations.
In many western societies, and in America specifically, overweight and obesity
(along with the myriad diseases that come along with them) have become epidemic in
their proportions. These societies are typically the best educated and have the highest
standards of living in the world. With advanced scientific knowledge and a populace
with so many resources, weight issues would appear to be rather easy to solve, with the
basic prescription being to eat less and move more. However, there are other factors
mixed into this ostensibly simple equation which prevent its easy execution. According
to Mary Douglas (1966, 1972, 1975, 1984), foods are classified and meals are structured
in ways that preserve the social order. Eating, therefore, is not simply a biological act for
humans; culture plays a major role in our choice of foods and in the way that we eat
them. Consequently, we must look beyond biological necessity to understand why eating
has become such a major problem in many western nations (and increasingly in other
areas of the world where western nations have expanded economically and, therefore,
culturally).
In addition to the problems surrounding overweight, it is also important to
recognize the intense focus in this country on being thin. This does not just refer to
meeting the basic standard of a healthy weight, but to going even further to a culturally2
defined ideal form of thinness. Just as the culture acts on our food choices, so too does it
act on our bodies (Csordas 2002; Turner 2008). In America today, the ideal body weight
has been so clearly defined by advertisements and other social forces that many
individuals, particularly females, have acquired eating disorders such as bulimia and
anorexia in their quest to match up with the social ideal of thinness. For those who do
not end up at this extreme, there are other methods to be used, ranging from diet pills,
diet foods and drinks, fad diets, liposuction, gastric bypass surgery, and a variety of other
products to assist people in their quest for thinness (the weight loss market was valued at
$55.4 billion for 2006 (VNU Business Media 2007)). It might seem that with such a
concentrated focus on thinness and the ever-present availability of a wide variety of
resources to aid in acquiring thinness, the American populace would be thin. However,
this is not the reality, and we are increasingly coming to find that we cannot buy our way
into health or thinness, even though this seems to be the pervading message of the
culture.
This message of product or service purchases as the way to thinness and health
comes to us as a result of the consumerist message of our capitalist culture. The
American worldview, like that of other cultures, has been shaped through the ongoing
interplay between the necessity of producing (or otherwise acquiring) goods for
consumption and the necessity of consumption in its various forms. While “proper”
consumption is a moral matter and therefore also a status marker in any society we might
consider, in the modern American perspective, rampant consumption has become the
standard for proper consumption. While in the past, and in more traditional
contemporary societies, information about production and consumption was passed on by
3
the community and was based on the needs of its members, Americans today are
educated about what and how to consume largely by the modern capitalist marketplace
(though transmitted through the traditional routes of family, school, and the media) which
overproduces goods and must create a feeling of necessity in consumers so that those
goods will be consumed. The bulk of our knowledge about the world (and even about
our own bodies) is therefore brought to us by a variety of often conflicting profitmotivated sources of information that seek to teach us about the proper way to view and
to consume the world of goods.
Modern Americans are confronted with an ever-increasing array of information
about what is “good” and “bad” to eat, and as a result, must make complex food choices
based on sometimes conflicting information coming from a variety of seemingly credible
sources. Some of these sources include nutritional scientists, the government, food
advertisements, diet specialists, knowledge passed down from family members, and so
on. Individuals are forced to sift through a great deal of information if they choose to
make informed choices about what to eat. According to Michael Pollan, knowledge of
food that used to come down through culture – another word for “mom” in his estimation
(2008:133) – now comes through a variety of sources that all claim supremacy, but that
are often inconsistent in their advice. Individuals instead are encouraged to take personal
responsibility for their nutritional health by learning to distinguish the “good” from the
“bad” foods and to eat accordingly (even as the scientific understanding of these
categories tends to vacillate over time).
This does not mean that there are no cultural norms to help guide eating in
America. Cultural values do influence our food choices. For example, the American
4
culture places a high value on scientific knowledge and progress, and as a result, one of
the most important components of food in the thinking of the majority of Americans is its
perceived nutritional value (Counihan 1992). Although scientific nutrition in not always
well understood, many people create their diets based on a nutritional perspective.
Another example is the value placed on thinness; many individuals, particularly women,
turn to one or another faddish diet program for knowledge of nutritional requirements.
According to Carole Counihan (1985, 1989, 1992, 1998), individuals who are successful
in meeting the ideal are rewarded in the form of higher social status, thus reinforcing the
ideal. By dealing with the effects of food choices on the body, and as a result, on selfimage and identity, I intend to explore the predominant cultural values that affect our
food consumption habits.
Humans have a natural need to feed their bodies, but Americans have constructed
a culture that modifies this basic physical requirement and has turned eating (or not
eating, as the case may be) into a pathological action for many. Because our dietary
habits and our views of ourselves as actors in the society are patterned by our cultural
values, the culture, by extension, acts on our bodies, as well (Csordas 2002; Turner
2008). This is apparent both in those who experience overweight and in those who meet
the extremely thin ideal set by the fashion and advertising industries. In Western society,
in particular, there is a strongly held belief that the physical body and the mind (the
perceived location of culture) are two separate entities and that the individual cultural
actor can exercise control over the body, therefore producing a visible product that
represents one’s personal self. Because the body is considered a subject and malleable
5
entity, body size and shape become associated with one’s overall success with the mindover-body mission (Lupton 1998).
This research project began with an intention to observe American foodways and
to comment on the effects of the American culture in this area. What I quickly came to
realize is that eating habits in America are intricately bound with a variety of discourses
surrounding scientific knowledge, individual choice, and physical and
emotional/psychological effects. Therefore, this thesis explores a variety of themes
directly related to food habits as a way to shed light on the culture’s effects on its
members. After providing a summary of the science surrounding the human diet (as
opposed to the modern American diet) in its varied forms, a review of pertinent literature
and description of the methods of research is offered. From there, my informants’ eating
habits are investigated. Next, I probe the reasons that certain food choices are made over
others before moving on to a discussion of the individual experiences of my informants
as participants in American foodways. Here, personal satisfaction with eating habits,
body image (and effects on food habits), and social status will be examined. I will end
with an analysis of the role of American foodways in structuring our views of ourselves
as individual actors within the society. It is in this way, it will be argued, that we truly
are what we eat.
6
CHAPTER TWO
Setting:
The American Human Diet
There are basic needs that must be met in any human diet, but it seems that
modern Americans have evolved a maladaptive diet which, while it provides an
abundance of calories, leaves the American population overweight and undernourished.
The modern Western (and increasingly global) diet, which has been shaped by the
emergent and evolving industrial culture of the past 150 or so years, has been leading the
world in rising rates of obesity and other diseases that are increasingly being connected to
dietary habits. While Americans are not uniquely causative of or affected by this
mismatch, I will focus on the American culture as being a representative of and a
prominent ideological force in Western culture. It should also be noted that I am not
referring to Native Americans when I speak of “Americans.” Native Americans will
factor instead into the discussion relating to traditional populations in transition.
The modern American diet, also known as the Standard American Diet, or SAD,
has become largely divorced from the diet on which humans evolved. The result is a
populace that experiences issues of overweight and chronic disease; diseases that are
more and more often being found to manifest as a result of this diet. The first issue to be
dealt with is exactly what the natural diet (i.e. the evolutionary diet) of humans is
supposed to be. A brief description of the Standard American Diet and its physical
7
effects follows. Then, the scientific insights that are leading to progress in understanding
the physiological causes of these problems and potential solutions are addressed.
The Human Diet
Certainly, any attempts to recreate the diet of early humans are fraught with
problems. Some of those problems include the fact that very few hunter-gatherer
populations still exist to study in modern times and those that are still around have often
begun to supplement or supplant their traditional diets with Western or other traded foods
(Nestle 2000). It is also true that no one group can be used as a marker for the one
human diet, as humans have successfully existed in myriad environmental niches
requiring subsistence on a wide range of diets (Milton 2000a). However, based on wideranging anthropological evidence extending from the present back through time, it can be
argued that there are basic universal criteria for the original human diet and that this
original diet may be relevant for modern Americans (and others throughout the world),
considering the conservative nature of hominoid nutrient needs and digestion (Milton
2000b).
When our earliest human ancestors would embark on a typical day of hunting and
gathering, it would have been rather easy for them to decide what to eat – anything that
was available which would not kill them, and preferably, foods that tasted good. Among
these foods were wild plants, animals, insects, and sea foods, varying in type and amount
according to geographic location and seasonal availability. Historical hunter-gatherer
populations have been found to subsist on a wide assortment of diets, ranging from
largely plant-based diets including some scavenged or hunted animals, insects, or sea
8
foods to diets consisting mostly of hunted sea and land mammals and fish (Cordain et. al
2000; Eaton and Konner 1985; Eaton et al. 1996; Milton 2000a; Nestle 2000). The
macronutrient makeup of these diets therefore diverged widely, but what they all had in
common was a focus on freshly acquired (or unsophisticatedly preserved), locally and
seasonally available foods. What these groups also shared was an uncertain food supply.
They could never be sure that each new season would bring as much food as the last.
Some seasons or years (or even longer) might be very lean, with abundance at other times
(Eaton and Konner 1985; Neel 1962).
Considering that hominids lived this way throughout the evolution to modern
Homo sapiens and until rather recently in human history (Milton 2000b), it can be said
that this is the natural human diet. Research in this area is only controversial in the
attribution of particular proportions of macronutrients in the diet; researchers as a whole
agree that this picture of the general human diet is a reliable one (Cordain et. al 2000;
Eaton and Konner 1985; Eaton et al. 1996; Gowlett 2003; Milton 2000a, 200b; Nestle
2000). On a related note, this diet required its fair share of physical exertion, from the
low-level aerobic activity involved in walking for gathering or hunting purposes, to the
short bursts of high-intensity effort required in a situation requiring a “fight or flight”
response, to the muscle-building activities involving carrying small children while
gathering or lifting and carrying animal carcasses back from a hunt (Eaton and Eaton
2003). Save for modern advances in sanitation and medical technology, humans seem to
have evolved in a lifestyle that provided everything that advancing science has begun to
indicate that we need for optimal health – plenty of fresh, nutritious food and adequate
physical exercise (not to mention plenty of time for play, leisure and relaxation, and
9
community-building activities). Indeed, numerous studies show that historical and
modern hunter-gatherer populations tend toward positive health and absence of chronic
disease until they begin to acculturate to Western diets and lifestyles (Burkitt 1973;
Drewnowski and Popkin 1997; Du Shufa et al. 2002; Eaton et al. 2002; Galanis et al.
1999; Lindenberg et al. 1994; Milton 1999, 2000a, 2000b, 2002; Popkin 1993; Truswell
1977; Whiting and Mackenzie 1998; Wirsing 1985).
The American Diet
Contrast this ancestral diet to the modern American diet in which the bulk of
space in our air-conditioned grocery stores is filled with packaged, processed agricultural
foods that need labels to help us know what it is that we might be choosing to ingest. The
majority of food available for sale in the modern economy is food that is modified in a
laboratory using a variety of materials that may have, at one time, come from plants or
animals, but which even a rather discerning hunter-gatherer from the past might pass up
in favor of any number of “weeds” from the landscape (assuming there were no cultural
guides readily available to point out that these sterilized, packaged items are also “food”).
Of course, there are plenty of “whole” food items available in a typical grocery store –
meats, sea foods, grains, beans, and produce – but the variety present in this cross-section
pales in comparison to the rich variety of edible plant and animal foods available to
ancient hunter-gatherers (Milton 2000a). In fact, the vast majority of the foods that are
available to purchase in America today are grain-based products (including grain-fed
animal products), which hunter-gatherers would have eaten only seasonally (or not at all
10
in the case of grain-fed animals), in only certain areas of the world, and only after a
laborious process of harvesting, processing, and cooking (Cordain 1999).
It is clear from the archaeological record that there were many deleterious
changes in health related to the onset of agricultural production – decrease in stature,
nutrition-deficiency markers in bones and teeth, increased number of dental caries, tooth
crowding, anemia, bone thinning, and so on (Brenton and Paine 2000; Larsen 1995).
These issues were likely the result of a number of changes including a decrease in dietary
animal protein and vegetative variety as a consequence of sedentary life, coupled with
increased consumption of a small number of grain cultivars. Thus, dietary variety and
protein intake decreased while starchy carbohydrate intake increased, supplanting a major
portion of the long-standing nutrient- and fiber-rich diet of our hunter-gatherer
predecessors (Cordain 1999).
Over time, intensive farming societies began to physically adapt to their new
subsistence strategy and many negative health markers lessened in their impact over time
as particular adaptations were selected for (Allen and Cheer 1996; Jenkins et al. 2003;
Neel 1962). For example, populations which have the longest history of intensive grain
cultivation developed sensitivity to insulin (a hormone involved in regulating blood
sugar) which is not seen in the majority of the world’s people. James Neel (1962)
hypothesized a “thrifty” genotype to explain the relative lack of diabetes mellitus (a
disease characterized by insulin insensitivity/resistance) among European populations
compared to the exponential rise in diabetes seen among many of the world’s traditional
societies as they transitioned to Western diets. In this hypothesis, as Paleolithic huntergatherers experienced periods of over- and under-eating, those individuals best able to
11
store energy (a facet of insulin resistance) during times of overeating would survive
better in times of future famine. As a result, insulin resistance was selected for in huntergatherer populations as a way of ensuring efficient fat storage in times of plenty.
Unfortunately, when modern individuals with this thrifty genotype live a lifestyle of
consistent plenty, they very quickly acquire the “diseases of civilization,” including
obesity, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension among others (Burkitt 1973).
Extrapolating from this theory, populations with the longest periods of ancestral
grain consumption should have a “non-thrifty” genotype (Allen and Cheer 1996) that
causes insulin sensitivity and would therefore be protective against the modern Western
diet. However, while many of these individuals may not experience the somewhat
immediate health effects experienced by those with the thrifty genotype, those with the
non-thrifty genotype do begin to succumb to the same health effects once they get to
older age (Allen and Cheer 1996; Brand Miller and Colagiuri 1994) or even when quite
young if dietary intake is high in calories, fats, and carbohydrates and low in fiber
(Burkitt 1973; Cordain et al. 2003, 2005; Doherty and Barry 1981; Popkin 1993). It
seems that we are all susceptible to these “diseases of affluence,” but that we differ in
how quickly we manifest them.
One prominent factor that has been suggested for the exponential rise in chronic
degenerative diseases within the past half a century is the increased reliance on grainbased products and grain-fed animal foods. While some authors have argued that it is the
reliance on refined, rather than whole grains and the resulting lack of dietary fiber
(Burkitt et al. 1974; Burkitt and Trowell 1977), others have argued that it may be the
grains themselves, refined or not (Cordain 1999; Jönsson et al. 2005). It is not hard to
12
imagine the amount of grains that Americans ingest when viewing the long aisles of
products available in a modern grocery store; from the oats, wheat, rice, barley, corn, and
other “whole” grains, to crackers, cookies, chips, pastas, breads, and beers (a small
sample of processed grain products), to the grain-raised eggs, dairy, and other animal
products (including farmed sea foods), to the ubiquitous sweetener that is “high-fructose
corn syrup,” it is clear that Americans consume a lot of grains. In fact, the U.S.
government’s official nutritional guidelines, illustrated in its “food pyramid” until 2005,
have recommended 6-11 servings of grain-based foods daily (USDA 1992, 2003).
Consider also that the intense focus on grain-based foods has led us away from
many of the more nutritive fruit and vegetable foods that we evolved to eat (Cordain et al.
2005; Milton 2000a, 2000b). Americans are increasingly urged by the government and
other health authorities to eat more fruits and vegetables in order to get many of the
necessary nutrients that a grain-based diet is lacking. However, in today’s market
economy, where capitalism reigns, individuals are far more likely to choose an industryinnovated, packaged and marketed grain-based food product than they are to forage in the
produce section of their local store. And don’t forget that modern food foraging behavior
(in the grocery store) requires only a minimum of physical exertion; modern Americans
are then left to choose between a rather sedentary lifestyle which may lead to ill health
and a lifestyle of purposive exercise in order to work at maintaining their physical health.
As a result of this transition from the ancestral human lifestyle to the modern
Western lifestyle, many people throughout the world (especially those first encountering
modern farmed foods) are beginning to show signs of severe physical distress and disease
(Burkitt 1973; Drewnowski and Popkin 1997; Du Shufa et al. 2002; Galanis et al. 1999;
13
Popkin 1993; Whiting and Mackenzie 1998; Wirsing 1985). The general trend is one
toward increased consumption of refined or processed starches, sugars, and fats and away
from traditional diets rich in plant foods and wild or pastured animal foods. The effects
of this transition on health are consistent with the theory put forth by Eaton et al. (1985,
1996, 2002, 2003) and Lindenberg et al. (2003) that dietary practices that are inconsistent
with our evolutionary history can contribute to a variety of health problems, such as early
menarche, certain cancers, acne, polycystic ovary syndrome (Cordain et al. 2003),
coronary heart disease, gall stones, appendicitis, diverticular disease, varicose veins,
hemorrhoids, obesity, diabetes (Burkitt 1973), and potentially even conditions such as
Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s (Martin et al. 2006). On a more positive note, as nutritional
science has progressed since the middle of the twentieth century, we have learned, both in
laboratories and through observation of transitioning populations, that there is much that
can be done to halt and even to reverse many of these diseases (Carpenter 2003).
Scientific Insights
By the 1970s, researchers were starting to see that the “progress” of the modern
industrial world had come with a steep price and began to seek out healthy traditional
societies for examples of how to eat to protect and maintain health. Work by A. Stuart
Truswell (1977) showed that foragers tend to exist in relative good health, especially
when considering the modern diseases that plague affluent and transitioning societies.
He discovered that hunter-gatherers are not particularly deficient in any dietary nutrients
and experience very little if any obesity, dental caries, or other modern diseases.
14
Launching off from this insight, a number of researchers have carried out studies with
traditional populations in order to test the effects of specific dietary changes.
Kerin O’Dea (1984) is well known for her experiment with urban diabetic
Australian Aborigines. She enlisted ten diabetic, overweight, middle-aged individuals to
return to their traditional bush territory and live as hunter-gatherers for seven weeks. At
the end of that period, all participants had lost weight and displayed improvements in
glucose and insulin markers. They also showed improvements in triglyceride levels even
though the diet was heavy in animal protein, which has long been thought to be a
causative factor in many modern affluent diseases (the proposed explanation here is that
wild game is much lower in saturated fat than are modern grain-raised meats).
Unfortunately, once the study participants returned to their modern lifestyles, their health
also returned to the baseline status.
While Denis Burkitt and his colleagues were putting the role of fiber on the
nutritional map when considering the modern diseases (Burkitt et al. 1974; Burkitt and
Trowell 1977), other researchers, such as Ancel Keys, began to lead investigations into
the impact of various dietary fats on cholesterol, which had been implicated in ischemic
heart disease (Carpenter 2003; Keys 1980). Hunter-gatherers were observed to eat far
less saturated fat along with much higher levels of fiber in contrast to the American diet,
which was full of red meat and other highly fat-saturated animal products and low in
fiber-rich plant foods. Based on these lines of inquiry into the hunter-gatherer diet,
scientists working with nutrition since the 1970s and 1980s have maintained a focus on
the role of fat and fiber in the modern diseases (Carpenter 2003). As a result, after years
of discussion with scientists and meat and dairy industry leaders, in 1977 the Senate
15
Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs offered its new nutritional guidelines
suggesting an increase in carbohydrate consumption and a decrease in fat consumption
from saturated animal fats (replacing these fats with vegetable-based fats) for the
American people (Senate Select Committee 1977).
As a result of the official position on animal fat and carbohydrates, in the period
from 1970 through 2006 (based on my analysis from the USDA’s Food Consumption Per
Capita tables), Americans have decreased the amount of red meat they eat by 17 percent,
the amount of eggs they eat by 18 percent, and the amount of whole milk they drink by
74 percent. At the same time, Americans have increased the amount of corn products
they consume by 181 percent, the amount of rice ingested by 170 percent, and the amount
of wheat eaten by 21 percent (this may seem a small increase, but overall wheat
consumption in 1970 was seven times the amount for corn consumption and eighteen
times the amount for rice consumption, as this was our primary grain at the time). See
Table 1 for a summary of this data. (USDA 2009)
16
Table 1: Daily Per Capita Food Consumption from USDA Data Tables, 1970-2006
Daily Servings
of Selected Foods
Total
Change
1970
2006
3.51 meat equivalent
ounces
.65 meat equivalent
ounces
2.91 meat equivalent
ounces
.53 meat equivalent
ounces
Whole Milk
.77 cups
.20 cups
-74%
Corn Products
(flour, meal, grits,
cornstarch)
.58 ounces
1.63 ounces
181%
Rice
.236 ounces
.638 ounces
170%
Wheat Flour
4.259 ounces
5.135 ounces
21%
Red Meat
Eggs
-17%
-18%
Source: Data from U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. Food
Availability (Per Capita) Data System.
While it is easy to see the positive public response to the government’s food
guidelines, the result for American health has not been as positive. In the same period
(again, based on my calculations from the USDA data tables), Americans increased their
total calorie consumption by 24 percent. While consumption of calories from animal
proteins remained relatively steady (as did calories from vegetables), calories from fruits
rose 28 percent (with a 155 percent increase in non-citrus juice, which typically includes
high-fructose corn syrup as a sweetener), calories from flours and cereal products rose 42
percent, and calories from added fats rose 55 percent (see Table 2 for a summary of this
data). So, while the American public apparently listened to the government and other
health officials and followed their general recommendations, the resulting picture may be
even worse than it was before. In that same period, while overall mortality from the
leading affluent diseases – heart disease, stroke, and cancer – has declined (presumably
17
due to improved medical technologies), the prevalence of these and other diseases of
civilization has increased. While this increased prevalence is often attributed to an
increase in life expectancy, it remains that the leading causes of death in middle and older
age are cancer and heart disease, respectively, with heart disease as the leading cause of
age-adjusted mortality. (HHS 2008).
Table 2: Daily Per Capita Calorie Consumption from USDA Data Tables, 1970-2006
Daily Calories from Selected Foods
1970
2006
Total Change
Total Calories, All Food Groups
2160 calories
2679 calories
24%
Animal Proteins
677.7 calories 681.5 calories
.56%
Vegetables
122.3 calories 126.7 calories
4%
Fruits (including juices)
66.7 calories
85.9 calories
28%
Non-Citrus Fruit Juices
5.8 calories
14.8 calories
155%
Flours and Cereal Products
432.1 calories 613.3 calories
42%
Added Fats
411.3 calories 637.9 calories
55%
Source: Data from U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. Food
Availability (Per Capita) Data System.
Consider also that the rate of overweight and obesity has continued to grow. We
have seen a 93 percent increase in overweight preschool-aged children (two to five years
old), up to 13.9 percent of the population, between the periods of 1988-1994 and 20032004. In the time between the periods of 1963-1965 and 2003-2004, school-aged
children (6 to 11 years old) have seen a 348 percent increase to 18.8 percent of the
population, and adolescents (12 to 19 years old), too, have increased 278 percent from
1966-1970 to 2003-2004, up to 17.4 percent of the population experiencing overweight.
18
As for overweight (non-obese) adults, the numbers have increased only slightly (five
percent) since the early 1960s, but the prevalence of obesity in adults aged 20 to 74 has
increased 155 percent to 33.9 percent of the population. That leaves a total of 67.1
percent of the adult population either overweight or obese, with slightly more than a third
experiencing obesity and all of the health consequences that come along with it (e.g.,
hypertension, type-2 diabetes, and sleep apnea, among others (NIH 1998:xi)). See Table
3 for a summary of this data. (HHS 2008)
Table 3: Trends in Percentage of Overweight and Obese Americans by Age
Preschoolage children
2-5 years
Year
School-age
children
6-11 years
Adults
20-74
years
Adolescents
12-19 years
Overweight
Overweight
including
obese
Overweigh
t but not
obese
Obese
1960-1962
---
---
---
44.8
31.5
13.3
1963-1965
---
4.2
---
---
---
---
1966-1970
---
---
4.6
---
---
---
1971-1974
---
4.0
6.1
47.7
33.1
14.6
1976-1980
---
6.5
5.0
47.4
32.3
15.1
1988-1994
7.2
11.3
10.5
56.0
32.7
23.3
1999-2000
10.3
15.1
14.8
64.1
33.1
31.0
2001-2002
10.6
16.3
16.7
65.7
33.6
32.1
2003-2004
13.9
18.8
17.4
67.1
33.2
33.9
Source: Data from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Health, United States,
2007.
So, here we are: Americans took the advice of science and the government and by
all indications, things have gotten worse. Where did we go wrong? I believe that we can
continue to look to hunter-gatherer populations for insights into this issue. Julia Aneth
19
Mbalilaki and her colleagues (2008) recently completed a study among 985 Tanzanian
men and women comprised of Masai pastoralists (130 individuals), rural Bantu (371
individuals), and urban Bantu (484 individuals). The majority of the Masai cited a highprotein/low-carbohydrate diet (primarily meat, milk, and blood) which, while being very
high in saturated animal fats, did not exert negative pressures on their weight, blood
pressure, or lipid profiles (although they also had the highest rates of smoking and
alcohol consumption in the study). The rural Bantu, who cited a high-carbohydrate/lowprotein diet, fared somewhat worse in health measurements than did the Masai, but the
urban Bantu, who reported high-carbohydrate/high-protein diets exhibited health markers
akin to those in western societies. The authors cite the immense levels of energy
expenditure of the Masai (and to a lesser degree, of the rural Bantu) as the most likely
protective force in their lifestyle, and while this must surely play a role in their health, I
argue that there is more to the story.
Based on the suggestion (discussed above) that grain foods and excess starchy
carbohydrates have led us to many negative health effects, a number of low-carbohydrate
weight loss and health improvement diets, (e.g., the Adkins Diet, the South Beach Diet,
the Zone Diet, and even the “Paleolithic Diet,” which focuses on foods available in the
diets of pre-agricultural humans) have sprung up in recent years. Nutritional scientists
were quick to dismiss these types of diets in their early days due to their reliance on
saturated fat-rich protein over fiber-rich carbohydrates, but a growing number of studies
is proving that these diets can improve health markers related to chronic disease and can
cause steady and prolonged weight loss, even in individuals who do not physically exert
themselves toward this end (Westman et al. 2007; Lindenberg 2003; Shai et al. 2008).
20
So, while the Masai may expend huge amounts of energy, these studies suggest that they
might still exhibit positive health even without so much exercise when compared with
neighboring Bantus with their high-carbohydrate diets.
Mbalilaki et al. also note that the Masai “have an irregular meal pattern of
overeating followed by fasting” (2008:7). Recently, there have been a number of studies
dealing with irregular feeding patterns in animals and also in humans. While only a small
number of human trials have been completed, there are two feeding strategies that may
hold great promise for increasing health and longevity in humans – caloric restriction
(CR) and intermittent fasting (IF) (Cuervo 2008; Everitt et al. 2006; Halberg et al. 2005;
Heilbronn et al. 2006; Johnson et al. 2006; Martin et al. 2006; Redman et al. 2008;
Shariatpanahi et al. 2008). Caloric restriction has been the one most reliably-researched
strategy (among many different animal species, including primates) for delaying the onset
of aging and preventing age-related illness (Everitt et al. 2006). One theory is that it
works by causing the metabolic system to use up degraded intracellular proteins that
would otherwise accumulate and cause aging and other diseases (Cuervo 2008).
Unfortunately, studies also show that caloric restriction is psychologically difficult for
humans (Redman et al. 2008), so alternate strategies such as intermittent fasting have
been studied with the aim of achieving the same results.
Happily, intermittent fasting, in any of its potential manifestations, has also
proven to be a very good tool against disease, overweight, and even aging. Just as
ancestral humans experienced periods of feasting and periods of famine (or at least short
periods of fasting), so too do the Masai (whether by necessity or cultural practice).
Research shows that intermittent fasting is effective against insulin resistance disorders,
21
asthma, autoimmune disorder, cardiac arrhythmias, menopause-related hot flashes, and
many other conditions (Johnson et al. 2006) whether it occurs as a decrease in the number
of meals in a day, such as among Muslims during Ramadan (Shariatpanahi et al. 2008),
as an alternate day over-feeding/under-feeding pattern (Johnson et al. 2006), or as
alternate day fasting for 20 hours at a time (Halberg et al. 2005), and it would stand to
reason that other, more random patterns of feeding would hold just as much promise.
These two dietary strategies, caloric restriction and intermittent fasting, have both been
found to be health protective and to protect against aging, with intermittent fasting
showing even more positive results than caloric restriction in some markers. What is also
interesting about intermittent fasting is that it has been shown to be as effective as caloric
restriction, even when it does not also involve caloric restriction (Martin et al. 2006).
So, here we stand, at a crisis point in the health trajectory of the American people.
We see the problem and we have a decent understanding about what is causing it
(although many of the finer points are not well understood by most), but we continue to
live this way and to export our way of life and its effects to acculturating people
throughout the world. The scientific recommendations seem to point to changes in eating
patterns, which are largely cultural in their structure (Douglas 1972, 1975), and to a
decrease in the amount of grains and starchy carbohydrates that we consume (which in
my view is also a cultural matter). Such a change would require a new focus on
vegetables and fruits, which are often prohibitively expensive for many people, and/or
dietary animal proteins which, beyond being often prohibitively expensive in a personal
sense, are increasingly difficult for the planet to sustainably support.
22
Certainly, this does not mean there is no hope for the human species. What it
does mean is that we have paid and will continue to pay a huge price for civilization.
Many will be able to afford the financial cost, but others will pay with their health. Too
often this equation comes down to class struggle, not only within a society, but
increasingly within the world, as both developed and developing nations struggle to
improve their standards of living by attempting to command larger quantities of everdecreasing resources (Jenkins and Scanlan 2001). This is a sad image and many
throughout the world are already losing this battle and experiencing famine and starvation
(along with the civil strife that often manifests in these situations). Americans, happily or
not, are not in a position to have to experience famine and starvation (at least for most);
instead, we overfeed ourselves and feel the pain of undernourished but overweight and
diseased bodies. We find ourselves in a paradoxical position of having an abundant food
supply and the means to innovate and afford the best preventive medicine in the world,
but we suffer from degenerative disease as a result of our abundance. This thesis will
address the cultural ramifications of our capitalist historical trajectory as well as its
effects on the American foodways and on the bodies and identities of individuals in
America.
23
CHAPTER THREE
Background and Ethnographic Methods
Anthropological Literature Review
Anthropology has a long history of using food as a window into culture. There
exists an impressive quantity of literature dealing with this topic in anthropology,
beginning in the discipline’s earliest days (Mallery 1888) and growing through the
vogues of anthropology’s various theoretical positions [for extensive reviews of the
history of food studies in anthropology, see Messer (1984) and Mintz and Du Bois
(2002)]. Food, after all, is one of the most basic human needs and the specific foods that
are eaten and the ways they are produced and consumed say much about the culture of a
group. Due to the often visible effects of culturally patterned dietary habits on human
bodies, the culture also affects the embodied experience of actors in the society. As a
result, I was especially drawn toward literature that would allow me to use food
consumption as a lens to help magnify the effects of the American culture on the
subjective creation and experience of both self and identity.
According to Mallery, in his “Manners and Meals:” “Brutes feed. The best
barbarian only eats. Only the cultured man can dine” (1888:195). While we may be
loath to refer to humans in such evolutionarily-charged terms these days, Mallery’s
statement shows the importance of culture in our food habits – without culture, eating is
simply an animal act of survival; with culture, we have the potential to become
24
connoisseurs of food, creating meaning and purpose through this basic animal act. Franz
Boas (1921) later set his efforts at detailing the salmon recipes of the Kwakiutl, but his
purpose was more to document this cultural practice in its minutiae as part of an
extensive collection of data on the overall lifestyle of that group than to use food in itself
to remark on the culture. It was not until Audrey Richards’ “pioneering achievement”
(Malinowski 1939:x) in using food as the vehicle for studying the social structure of the
Bantu that anthropologists began to see food as a topic of importance for studying culture
and society.
As structuralism was coming into its own, anthropologists such as Claude LeviStrauss and Mary Douglas followed in Richards’ footsteps in bringing food to the
forefront of anthropological inquiry. Levi-Strauss (1966, 1969) argued that food could be
used to examine the culture of a people by viewing dietary patterns as a cultural system in
themselves. Through analysis of a people’s food habits, Levi-Strauss believed that one
could arrive at universal human thought structures that allow for the creation of culture.
His primary focus in the examination of foods relied on a distinction between the raw
(natural) and the cooked (cultural), which he argued made it clear that food was “good to
think with.” Mary Douglas (1966, 1972, 1975, 1984) sought to expand this perspective
and argued that structural studies of food should also reference the relationship of various
foods within a meal, the relationship of meals throughout the day, week, and year, and
the relationship of these to the social structure. In Douglas’ view, food habits were a
“code” to be deciphered in search of the larger patterns of culture.
While these works provided valuable insights into the role of food in culture and
society, some authors (such as Goody (1982)) have criticized their idealist view of culture
25
and have argued for a more materialist, historical approach. After all, change takes place
in food systems over time (due to both internal and external events), and even in a present
moment, individuals in a society make food choices that sometimes run counter to the
cultural norms. Therefore, argues Goody, any cultural analysis of food must take into
account the historical, political-economic perspective if they are to be of any worth in
anthropological research. In Goody’s (1982) work, for example, changes in English food
habits through history are treated as the outcome of changes in social stratification and
modes of production. He gives special focus to the industrialization of the food system
and the effects it has on the types of foods consumed and the means by which they are
produced and distributed. Such changes in modern food systems will serve as a
prominent theme in this thesis.
Continuing in this vein there were produced a number of works that used food to
shed light on wider social processes. Sidney Mintz (1985), for example, chose to
consider sucrose and traced it over hundreds of years and through continents and social
classes, illuminating its symbolic as well as its tangible effects on our cultural heritage.
At the same time that Mintz was tracking sugar’s movements around the world, Marvin
Harris and Eric Ross (1987) were putting forth the argument that humans tend to choose
healthy, nutritious foods based on evolutionary adaptations. However, Mintz’s work with
sugar suggests that the converse is equally likely (if not more so in modern America);
while humans may select healthy foods in their indigenous environments, they are
certainly open to entertaining new, tasty, non-nutritious foods, sometimes to the
exclusion of the natural, nutritious foods they are evolutionarily predisposed to consume.
Some of Mintz’ later work discusses how the introduction into the human diet of
26
extracted fat and sugar has led to a remaking of the human relationship with nature and
has changed food habits worldwide (1992, 1994, 1996).
In Mintz’s “Eating American” (2002), he discusses the dearth of evidence of an
actual American cuisine. While we may have a variety of regional cuisines (that he
asserts are being continuously diluted as they are commercialized and brought to the
national table) and certainly plenty of foods that we all tend to cite as typical American
foods (pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, apple pie, and so
on), and while we have long been open to entertaining the varied ethnic cuisines that
enter our borders, he argues that this disparate collection can not properly be called an
American cuisine. In his view, a cuisine only exists where there is “a community of
people who eat it, cook it, have opinions about it, and engage in dialogue involving these
opinions” (2002:29). If, as anthropologists have long believed, a people’s eating habits
are indicators of their culture, then what does this say about the American culture?
Of particular interest for the purposes of this thesis is work dealing with the
Western preoccupation with the effects of food on the physical body and, by extension,
on the self and individual identity. Work by Carole Counihan (1985, 1989, 1992, 1998)
has begun to link together the Western focus on food’s actions on the physical form with
issues of power, control, and individuality. We have come to realize that it is not merely
individuals with clinical eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa,
who should be examined in this light, but rather all individuals who share Western
cultural ideas of what the physical body should and should not be.
In addition, as postmodernism created an increasing interest in the self and how
both the society and the individual act in order to create it, researcher Deborah Lupton
27
has taken up the task of relating food habits to self and identity construction. According
to Lupton, as the self has increasingly been viewed as a malleable entity, individuals have
increasingly sought out ways to express their subjectivities (1996:15) in whatever forms
they choose. One of the most obvious ways to do this has been to assert control over the
body, as this is the most prominently displayed feature that most people relate to the self.
Therefore, Lupton argues, control over one’s eating habits (and their effects on the body)
becomes one of the most visible cues of either success or failure with the self/body
project.
Clearly, eating is not simply an act of survival, but is also a social act that is
imbued with layers of meaning and symbolism – all of which are important to an
anthropological understanding of what it means to be human. With the evolution to
industrialized societies, we see that food habits have in large part been divorced from
their traditional attachment to local, seasonal availability and are no longer simply related
to our evolutionary predispositions to consume nutritious foods. Rather, food has
become a commodity for those who are able to participate in market practices. This has
had an amazing effect on the meaning of food in our lives and, by extension, what it
means to be human.
Methods
This project was undertaken to elicit the effects of the American culture on the
human subjects who comprise the American society and as such, this research is
approved by the Institutional Review Board at Florida Atlantic University. Research
approval is represented by protocol #H03-80.
28
The general topic under consideration, food and our relationship with it, is one
that comes up regularly in daily life and is widely discussed between family and friends.
As such, I had the opportunity to assess the predominant values which people in my
community associate with food and eating through normal, everyday conversations. This
informal research led me to the path of inquiry for this project and should be mentioned
for that reason.
Research participants were located through a combination of convenience and
snowball sampling (Bernard 2002). I began by enlisting friends, coworkers, neighbors,
and other acquaintances and then asked that they help me to get in touch with others from
their social groups. The total number of participants was 63. A balance was sought in
the number of male and female participants. I also attempted to draw a sample that was
representative of various age groups and ethnicities. As a result, of the 63 participants,
24 were men and 39 were women. The majority of participants were Caucasian.
Individuals worked in a variety of professions with the majority having household
incomes between $30,000-60,000 (30 percent) and $60,000-$90,000 (35 percent). The
overall demographics, which largely paralleled the demographics of the community
where most of the interviews were done, can be seen in Tables 4-6.
29
Table 4: Age of Participants by Sex
Age
18-30
Male
4 (17%)
Female
10 (26%)
Total
14 (22%)
31-45
7 (29%)
10 (26%)
17 (27%)
46-60
9 (37%)
13 (33%)
22 (35%)
61+
4 (17%)
6 (15%)
10 (16%)
Total
24 (38%)
39 (62%)
63 (100%)
Table 5: Ethnicity of Participants by Sex
Ethnicity
Caucasian
Male
Female
18 (75%) 29 (74%)
Total
47 (75%)
African American
2 (8.3%)
3 (8%)
5 (8%)
Asian American
2 (8.3%)
3 (8%)
5 (8%)
Jewish
2 (8.3%)
2 (5%)
4 (6%)
Hispanic
0 (0%)
2 (5%)
2 (3%)
Total
24 (38%) 39 (62%) 63 (100%)
Table 6: Annual Household Income of Participants
Annual Household Income Percent of Participants
Under $30,000
21%
$30,000-$60,000
30%
$60,000-$90,000
35%
$90,000+
14%
30
This research took place in central Florida during two time periods. The initial
research phase began in June 2003 and lasted through June 2007. After reviewing the
initial data, I chose to continue data collection in the period of September 2008 through
May 2008. All data collection was arranged around the informants’ schedules. All
participants were either interviewed or asked to complete a survey. The majority of
interviews took place in private settings with only the participant and me present.
However, as mentioned below, there were a few instances where data collection occurred
in a more public setting. Interviews were audio-recorded if participants gave consent,
which all did. The recordings were later uploaded to a computer and I hand-coded both
the interview and survey data in order to elicit themes relating to my analytical
categories.
The interviews were semi-structured and lasted roughly 30 minutes (or as long as
the informant wished to talk about the issues of the study). Two of the interviews took
place during grocery shopping outings. One of the grocery store interviews was with an
individual female and the other was undertaken with a husband and wife couple as a sort
of focus group. Another husband and wife couple was interviewed in a focus group
setting in their home. One participant was graciously willing to be observed for a portion
of the day so that I might interview her in a more extensive manner and observe her food
choices and preparation for herself and her daughter during that time. Individual
participants are referred to in the analysis using pseudonyms and basic demographic
characteristics (i.e., “Amanda (CF52)” will represent Amanda, a Caucasian female who is
52 years old). The surveys were comprised of questions that followed the same line of
31
questioning as used in the interviews. All survey participants provided contact
information so that I might probe further into individual issues as necessary.
The survey and interview questions asked were designed to approach issues not
only of what and how people eat, but more specifically, how they make sense of the
information available to them in the society and how they use it to guide their food
choices. Some questions addressed include: What types of foods and types of food
preparation do people feel are best? Are some foods considered to be more healthy or
better than others? How do people feel about particular foods or the act of eating them
(e.g., is there a sense of pleasure, guilt, tradition, love, well-being, etc)? Have food
consumption patterns changed as a result of some type of “information” and if so, what
was the information? Armed with information from one or more sources, is the
information then used in a way specifically designed to promote a change in one’s
physical form (e.g., weight loss) or health (e.g., to lower cholesterol)? Once these issues
were dealt with sufficiently, the questions turned to issues of the body, including topics of
physical health and body image as well as the level of personal satisfaction with each.
The aim was to elicit the degree to which the modern American culture, driven by
capitalism, and evidenced in the food system, affects individuals’ ideas of themselves as
actors within the society. While this thesis is geared toward a discussion of the effects of
the American foodways on identity construction, I did not seek a depth of information
regarding ethnic identity from my informants. I did inquire as to whether my informants
felt they had an ethnic background that had influenced their eating habits (whether from
their personal cultural history or just from an interest in ethnic foods), but it was not my
intent to focus the data collection on particular forms of regional or ethnic cuisines.
32
CHAPTER FOUR
Food Consumption in America
Considering the social nature of food consumption habits, I have long had the
opportunity to assess the predominant cultural values associated with these habits in
America through typical conversations with individuals in my social circles. As a result,
I launched my ethnographic research with a firm hypothesis regarding the outcome of the
data. What I presumed to find out from my informants was that they relied to varying
degrees on knowledge from nutritional science (filtered through a variety of often
competing media sources and diet authorities) in thinking about their food habits. This
hypothesis turned out to be supported by the interview and survey data that I acquired.
Additionally, I expected to find a general reliance on the weight-affecting nature of foods
in the thinking of Americans, considering the steep rise in the incidence of overweight
and obesity in this country over the past 50 or so years coupled with the intense focus on
thinness throughout the American media. This assumption also was correct, although I
found that my sample population did not accurately reflect the prevalence of overweight
and obese persons who are found in the total population (this was not a variable that I
sought data for, but I felt that visual appearance was a reliable indicator of whether a
person was overweight or obese; the majority of my respondents appeared to be of a
normal weight).
33
Starting with these general assumptions, I sought to code my data in a way that
allowed me to elicit themes dealing with (1) what people eat, (2) how people make sense
of the information available in the culture regarding what they should or should not eat,
(3) the embodied experiences of my informants as actors within the American foodways,
and (4) how the sense of self and identity are affected by the culture’s actions on the
American foodways. In addition, I anticipated that the predominant cultural values that
acted on the foodways included the social ideal of individualism and the economic ideal
of capitalism; these values emerged as themes throughout the research as hypothesized,
and therefore the data were analyzed with these values in mind. The types of foods that
people eat and why they make those food choices will be dealt with in this chapter. The
issues of embodiment and identity will be discussed in chapter five, “Food Consumption
and Identity.”
What We Eat
While my informants professed eating all kinds of foods, there were a number of
general themes that stood out. First, most participants agreed on the general types of
foods that were considered “healthy.” There was a bit more difference when it came to
discussing the “unhealthy” foods, but there were still some general agreements for certain
classes of foods. While there was not much consistency in the types of foods various
individuals consume in their lives today (individuals eat a variety of foods for a variety of
reasons), there was a great deal of consistency in my participants’ recollections of their
diets while growing up in their family homes. Most participants had changed their diets
34
at some point since their childhood, and all but two individuals said that they attempt to
include healthy foods in their daily diets (with varying degrees of perceived success).
I first asked participants to list five “healthy” foods or dishes, then five
“unhealthy” foods or dishes. I intended to use these lists to get a feel for what sorts of
foods people think of when they think of these categories. I found that many participants
listed general categories for healthy foods, such as “fruits,” “vegetables,” “lean meats,”
and “salads,” while some chose to break those categories down, listing “carrots,” “baked
fish/chicken,” “cruciform vegetables,” “fresh fruit,” and so on. There were only a few
outliers to this list data, such as “ham and eggs, steak, and roast beef” and “hot wings,
pork chops, and steak.” The focus of a few on “dark chocolate,” “coffee,” and “red
wine” shows that some individuals are keeping up with recent scientific studies showing
that these items, which have long been believed to be unhealthy, actually are quite high in
antioxidants and might increase health if consumed in moderation. Overall, most
participants seemed to agree upon what constitutes a “healthy” diet, with only three
participants going so far as to qualify their responses with words like “organic,” “freerange,” or “not made in the U.S.” (referring to yogurt) or to say they would consider
healthy “anything without partially hydrogenated stuff in it.”
When it came to the topic of “unhealthy” foods, I found that there was a vast
assortment of foods that people thought should be listed in this category. The most
mentioned foods for this category include, in descending order of frequency of mention,
sweets, such as cakes, cookies, candies, brownies, and donuts, ice cream, fried foods,
potato chips, pizza, frozen or packaged processed foods, “white” foods – white bread,
white flour, white rice, white potatoes, pasta, and so on, processed meats or cheeses
35
(including pepperoni and sausage), soda drinks, chocolate or fudge, fast food, and pork
dishes (including pork chops and bacon). A number of other food items were mentioned,
including burritos, canned foods, ground beef, French fries, butter or lard, creams or
creamy sauces, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, grits, bread (in general), starchy foods
(including vegetables), red meat, eggs, saturated fats, organ meats, coffee/cappuccino,
pie, cheesecake, or custard, chicken wings, full-fat dairy, milkshakes, alcohol, salt,
mayonnaise, “99 percent of anything in most restaurants,” wheat products, peanuts,
coffee creamer, lasagna, and crustaceans. Refer to Table 7 for a summary of this data.
Certainly, not everyone would agree on this list, and indeed, many of these items were
listed by informants in their “healthy” lists. Depending on the individual, these foods
may or may not warrant inclusion in their version of a “healthy” diet.
36
Table 7: "Unhealthy" Foods with Highest Frequency of Mention
“Unhealthy” Foods with Highest
Frequency of Mention
Number of Times
Mentioned
Percentage of
Respondents Who
Mentioned That Food
Sweets (cakes, candies,
Cookies, donuts, brownies)
37
59%
Ice cream
23
37%
Fried foods
20
32%
Potato chips
18
29%
“White” foods (breads, flours,
rice, potatoes, pastas)
18
29%
Pizza
17
27%
Frozen or Packaged
Processed Foods
16
25%
Processed meats and cheeses
12
19%
Soda drinks
12
19%
Chocolate or fudge
11
17%
Fast foods
10
16%
Pork dishes
10
16%
Once through the listing portion of the interview or survey, the questions turned to
asking about the participants’ personal food habits. I asked questions relating to what
sorts of foods they tend to eat, how often, and in what amounts. The answers to the
questions did not reveal a clear pattern because the answers were as diverse as the
individuals. (The issue of those who have very specific dietary rules will be addressed in
the next section.) Next, I asked about the informants’ childhood dietary environment and
what, if any, changes they had made to their diet during their lives. I also inquired as to
whether participants attempted to include “nutritious” foods in their daily diets.
37
In responding to the question regarding eating in their family home as a child, 33
percent of respondents cited growing up on “Southern foods,” which variously included
fried meats, biscuits, gravy, sweet tea, and generally lots of “heavy,” “fatty,” and
“greasy” foods.
Ember (CF30): When I was little, my mom was not very health conscious,
so there was a lot of heavy southern food. When I was in middle school
my mom started making healthier meals based on what she read because
my dad was experiencing some health issues. She always made sure we
had a vegetable. We always had to eat everything on our plates whether
we were full or not.
James (CM26): There was lots of so-called Southern foods – fried
chicken, gravy and biscuits, and so on. There definitely wasn’t any
reliance on scientific information – we just ate what my parents had been
raised on and that’s what they cooked for the family.
Richard (CM74): We ate what we wanted, for the most part. I’m from the
South and so we ate mostly Southern-style foods; fried foods, lots of sweet
tea …
Maria (CF68): We ate Southern-type meals with a lot of veggies and
beans. After the economy improved after the results of the Depression,
there was more meat in our diets.
Another 29 percent of the participants recounted eating regular, sit-down, family dinners
(if not always other meals) with specific components, such as “meat and potatoes” or “a
meat, a vegetable, and a starch”.
Amanda (CF52): There were always three planned meals per day, and
always home-cooked. Snacks were limited. Meals were often fried meat
with gravy, a starch, and a vegetable, or inexpensive casseroles. We
always had bread and butter with dinner and simple deserts, like jello or
pudding.
38
Julia (CF52): We ate dinner as a family at 5:30 with my mom, dad, two
brothers, me, and an elderly tenant named John (with a dog begging for
scraps under the table). We had a starch, a protein, and vegetables on
every plate, unless it was spaghetti – then it was bread and butter, salad,
and the pasta … Lunches were typical kid junk like hot dogs, hamburgers,
fish sticks …
Carmen (CF60): We had meat and potatoes … lots of fried foods …
always some kind of bread and very few casseroles. We ate all meals as a
family and my mom cooked.
Sarah (CF57): We ate mostly easy to fix, economic meals … pretty basic
… meat and potato meals and breakfast cereals.
Seventeen percent of my informants grew up on farms and experienced fresh, homeprepared meals as a standard diet, with one citing community trade between farming
families (meat and vegetables in exchange for dairy with neighbors).
Hunter (CM52): I grew up on a farm, so work always came first and food
was about fueling the work and it was always excellent. Most of it was
grown on the farm or butchered by us, but we also swapped with
neighbors who had their own dairy.
Shirley (CF77): As a child, we lived on a farm. Our food was really
healthy and my mom was a very good planner.
Kelley (CF25): We had home-cooked, down-on-the-farm cooking. We
always had a desert, almost always with fresh or frozen fruits [her parents
are blueberry farmers].
Eleven percent of respondents mentioned growing up with some form of (non-Southern)
ethnic cuisine as a regular practice in their homes; a few were Asian-focused, a few were
Italian-based, a few ate traditional Jewish foods, one grew up in a Puerto Rican- and
Spanish-influenced home, another grew up eating Cuban cuisine, and two grew up in
39
families that made a practice of cultivating tastes for ethnic foods through restaurant
experiences.
Christine (CF24): My mom allowed a lot of junk food. We ate most
dinners at home or in nice restaurants. We rarely ate fast food, but always
had snacks and sweets in the house. We were also exposed to a wide
variety of ethnic foods, like Cuban, Japanese, like sushi, Mexican, Italian
…
Marc (AM30): We ate a traditional Asian diet [he recently immigrated to
the U.S.].
Rosa (HF43): Growing up, we ate Cuban dishes, as that’s our background.
Camryn (CF27): My mom was a very good cook. We pretty much always
ate together at home. She’s Italian, so we had a lot of Italian foods.
Maia (HF39): Food was a mix of Spanish and Puerto Rican. My mom
cooked most of the food; my father made the other. Everything was fresh;
even our baby food was not from jars. Most of the food didn’t require
much preparation and serving sizes were fair for our ages. My mom also
made cakes and deserts from scratch. We never had chips, sodas, or junk
food at home. We did sometimes buy ice cream, though.
Barbara (JF60): For us, breakfast was almost exclusively cereal or cooked
cereal in the winter. My mother gave us very yucky cod liver oil which
we washed down with O.J. Since we were kosher, we didn’t eat out very
much. Lunch was a sandwich brought to school and dinners were either
chicken, fish, or tough meat because my mother overcooked everything.
We had lots of Jewish ethnic foods, especially during the holidays. Eating
pizza out was a real treat … cheese topping only.
Molly (AF23): I grew up in an Asian-American household. The only
foods allowed were home-made … absolutely no prepared foods.
The remaining ten percent of participants recalled sporadic dietary habits, often reliant on
fast foods, TV dinners, or other types of low-cost, convenience foods. See Table 8 for a
summary of this data.
40
Cathy (CF71): We ate a lot of TV dinners, canned vegetables, and fried
foods. It wasn’t very healthy, that’s for sure.
Joshua (CM59): We had breakfast, lunch, and dinner with a lot of high-fat,
processed foods. My mother was not a healthy cook.
Maya (CF30): My mother was always doing some sort of diet, usually
Atkins, so we had a freezer full of meat at all times. I would only eat
canned vegetables, and only if they were certain brands, but it didn’t really
matter since she never really tried to feed them to us … though she always
had soda in the fridge for us, so I developed a very unhealthy habit with it.
At my dad’s, it was always something cheap and quick to throw together.
We ate a lot of $1 pizzas and mac-n-cheese and spaghetti and stuff. We
could only have one soda a day there, which my brother and I thought was
really draconian.
Daniel (CM27): I grew up in two different homes: my mom’s and my
dad’s. My dad didn’t cook often. We usually had cereal for breakfast, a
sandwich for lunch, and fast food or pizza for dinner. In my mom’s
house, she cooked a lot of traditional Italian meals, like spaghetti, linguini,
lasagna, and a lot of pastas … Depending on whose house I was living in,
my diet shifted pretty regularly.
Table 8: Childhood Dietary Patterns
Dietary Patterns
“Southern”
Percentage of Participants
33%
“Meat, a vegetable, and a starch” or “Meat and potatoes”
29%
Ethnic
17%
Farm-fresh
11%
Convenience foods
10%
Next, I turned the questions to what, if any, changes people had made in their
diets since childhood and what were the goals of or reasons for those changes. I only
spoke with five people who had claimed no changes in their dietary habits since their
childhood. These individuals all fell into the “meat, a vegetable, and a starch” category
and did not see any reason to change this pattern. The overwhelming majority of
41
respondents (93 percent), however, had made changes to their diets since their childhood,
with many suggesting that their parents did not plan what they consider today to be the
healthiest diets.
Richard (CM74): When I got older and moved away from home, I tried
not to consume as much fried foods, sugar, salt … more fish, and grilling
most of my meats.
Sherry (BF54): I have changed my eating habits since [childhood] because
of medical dictates to eat healthier.
Christine (CF24): Now I still eat a wide variety of ethnic foods, but my
snack choices have become healthier with lower fat and sugar. I don’t eat
pork or red meat anymore … I try to make all foods I eat healthy. For
example, if I want a PBJ sandwich, I’ll use whole grain bread, sugar-free
jelly, and all-natural peanut butter.
Cathy (CF71): I’ve made a lot of changes as I’ve gotten older and begun
to see the effects on my health. I’ve been diagnosed with osteoporosis,
diverticulosis, and high cholesterol and I’m realizing how much my diet
has had to do with all that. Now I try to eat lower fat, but I still find that
I’m eating too much food and too much sugar.
Jarrett (CM51): I went a long time eating this way … I’ve recently
changed my eating habits to lose a total of 94 pounds in the last year.
Now, I try to make sure that I’m eating a healthy balance of carbs, fats,
fiber, healthy protein, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.
Joshua (CM59): I have changed the way I eat. I try to eat healthy, nonprocessed foods … more natural and organic …
Only three individuals felt that their childhood diet was healthier than their current diet
and 97 percent said they attempted to include healthy foods in their daily diets.
Since the most prominent theme in the data was that the vast majority of people
had changed their diet at some point in their lives in order to achieve what they perceived
to be a healthier diet, I tried to discern if there were any patterns in the types of foods that
42
my participants claim to eat in order to reach toward this healthier diet. What I found
was that people eat a variety of foods, including both the “good/healthy” foods and the
“bad/unhealthy” foods, depending on a variety of factors that typically do not include the
factor of how their parents taught them to eat (except at family gatherings at holidays).
While there were some basic themes regarding “healthy” vs. “unhealthy” foods in the
minds of my informants, it was clear that they did not have a shared perspective on how
they should eat toward this end. Comparing this to cultures with historically salient
cuisines, such as Chinese, Indian, French, Italian, and so on, it doesn’t seem that the
American culture has provided its members with a basic formula for how to eat.
A Brief History of the American Food System
People in modern America clearly have a variety of options in constructing their
eating habits; options that were not always available to them in the days before
industrialization and scientific nutrition, but which have taken hold as the foundation of
the modern food system. Most individuals no longer eat the way their parents and
grandparents taught them to eat – instead, they believe they are eating in a generally more
healthful manner. This belief seems to be based around schema relating to information
from nutritional science over the past 30 to 40 years, which has admonished Americans
to eat less animal fat and more carbohydrates (especially whole grains). This is quite
different than what one would find in a more traditional culture, wherein its members
would eat according to established culturally-determined cuisines, and as Mintz (2002)
argued, they would all recognize that they eat generally the same stuff.
43
Modern Americans, though, are in a unique position among the world’s people
because their food system has developed historically as a product of their capitalist
economy. The earliest (European) Americans created a nation that was focused primarily
on farming, with 95 percent living “on the land” in 1790 (USDA 2007:113). The early
colonists made due with seasonally fluctuating food supplies before eventually settling
into agricultural production and developing regional cuisines (McIntosh 1995:211;
Pillsbury 1998:23-51), much like historical populations have throughout the world. But
by the late 1800s, the efficiency of the newly industrialized food system was encouraging
a greater portion of the population off of farms and into the cities (McIntosh 1995:87)
and over time, regional cuisines were increasingly co-opted by the emerging food
processing and transportation industries. This allowed both rural farmers and their urban
compatriots to begin eating a shared diet of canned and otherwise preserved fruits,
vegetables, and meats alongside their more traditional dietary staples (Pillsbury 1998:5380), and while this did result in an overall increase in the health of urban dwellers,
detractors had long warned of the ill health effects that would surely result from these
changes (Levenstein 2003:19).
Over time, many more have turned away from farming as small family farms have
been consolidated into larger farms; ten percent of all farms today account for roughly 75
percent of total production (USDA 2007) and the percentage of the population that claims
agriculture as its primary economic activity is now less than two percent (Labao and
Meyer 2001). In modern America, most of us have become wholly removed from the
actual task of food production (and for many of us, from food preparation, as well). It is
not uncommon today to ask a young child where food comes from and hear a reply such
44
as, “the store.” Even as children grow older and begin to garner an abstract
understanding of the origin of their foods, they are still unable to fully appreciate the
process of raising and harvesting the plants and animals that they consume, let alone to
understand the processing these raw items go through to become some of their favorite
“food.” While it might seem that this understanding would be more salient at the adult
level, realistically, adults are far less likely to understand the actual workings of today’s
farms or processing techniques than they are to enjoy an idyllic image of a family farm
and home-canning or freezing practices from the past. What they have instead is an
opportunity to indulge in consistent novelty as the industrialized, capitalist food system
does its job.
For the companies that do business by selling us the food we eat on a daily basis,
producing novel foods cheaply and then getting us to consume ever-increasing amounts
of those foods is a basic task of their operations. Increasingly persuasive advertisements
are created specifically to draw us to the foods from which the food industry will make
the highest profits (Kane 2002, Nestle 2002, Schlosser 2002, Shapiro 2004). These are
often the least healthy foods for us to eat, but large advertising budgets have been
devoted to them in order to position them properly and enduringly in the popular,
industrialized “cuisine” (with a special focus on marketing to young children in order to
create life-long “branded” consumers (Nestle 2002; Robinson et al. 2007; Weber et al.
2006)). According to Mintz, “modern advertising is built upon the belief that increasing
demand can be created” (1996:63). For most of us, succumbing to the suggestions of the
advertisements and buying the products they promote has become a second-nature
45
activity. We must eat, of course, so why not buy the products we’ve been persuaded to
buy?
Certainly, market economies are very good at meeting consumer needs and wants
(whether arising from the consumers, or due to skillful design by industry), and as a
result, as many consumers educate themselves about the health effects of modern
industrial practices (a consciousness that has been growing since these practices were in
their infancy in the 1880s (Levenstein 2003:9-23)), the food industry is learning to
respond to consumer demands with a growing array of alternative food products. Some
of the more recognizable product alternatives include categories such as “low-fat” or “fatfree,” “low-carb,” “whole grain,” and others which are now standard products available
alongside their more high-fat, high-carbohydrate, refined grain counterparts.
For those who have cultivated a deeper knowledge of the effects of the
industrialized food system, there is also a growing availability of products ranging from
“natural” foods (which often have no discernable or mandated differences when
compared to the standard foods), to “organic” foods (which are regulated by the USDA
and other agencies, but which have recently been found to be poorly regulated in some
cases (The Cornucopia Institute 2006, 2007, 2008)), to “free-range” animal and dairy
foods (including both “grass-fed” and “grass-finished” categories), and a variety of other
niche product categories. The one thing they all have in common is that they command a
premium price, even though they all purport to be more natural forms of foods, without
added pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, and grains. Additionally, the “organic” food
category also includes the new variety of innovated, processed foods that are able to
become certified as “organic.” Clearly, the capitalist food system has not been harmed
46
by scientific revelations about the health effects of its standard practices; the organic food
sector, for example, grew an astounding 20.9 percent in 2006 (Organic Trade Association
2007) thanks to the market for these “new” food products.
It is useful at this point to discuss Sidney Mintz’s (2002) argument against the
existence of an American “cuisine.” In my estimation, the lack of a cuisine in the
traditional sense displays the historical values of our capitalist consumer culture.
America has come to be what it is today as the result of the entrepreneurial spirit of the
immigrants that have come to its shores (Whybrow 2005). While migrants brought their
unique cultures with them, the resulting melting pot has not given us a firm base of
cultural knowledge from which to operate as a fully unified society, at least in terms of
our foodways. Sure, many of us eat “Italian” or “Mexican” foods, “New England clam
chowder,” and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (just a couple of popular examples), but this
does not equal an American cuisine that informs our eating habits in a consistent manner
(Mintz 2002).
Instead, I argue, Americans have a hodge-podge of cultural knowledge to choose
from that contains often contradictory information within it. Instead of doing as our
cultural teachers (parents, grandparents, and so forth) did, we take the American value of
individualism to its extreme and make as many changes as we deem appropriate in our
modern lives (often considering our predecessors to be the last source for seeking
appropriate knowledge of how to live). This is an important basis for the success of the
capitalist economy and I would argue that the values that have arisen as the truly
“American” cultural values, therefore, are those that are wrapped up with the economic
system. The modern food industry is organized by the capitalist system, which prospers
47
and maintains its hegemony by creating an ever-increasing array of novel choices for
consumers. While this may allow us a great deal of personal freedom in our eating
habits, it also offers us a very shaky foundation for learning how to eat properly.
According to Arnold Gehlen’s (Turner 2008) theory of institutions, humans are in
need of social institutions (here, a cuisine) that bridge them with nature so they are able
to relegate basic instinctual desires (such as for food) to the background of their
consciousness in order to free the foreground for “reflexive, practical and conscious
activities” (2008:10). Bryan Turner argues that in modern societies, many of these
background assumptions are brought into the foreground (“de-institutionalized”), causing
them to
become less reliable, more open to negotiation, increasingly precarious
and routinely an object of reflection … With a process of detraditionalization, objective and sacred institutions suffer erosion, and
modern life becomes subjective, contingent and uncertain … we occupy a
world of secondary or quasi-institutions, which are fragile and subject to
constant change. Institutions, which are exposed to persistent reflection,
cannot provide humans with necessary psychological relief. (2008:10)
Applying this theory to the American foodways, we might begin to see why so many
Americans experience problems with eating. They no longer share a sense of an
institutionalized cuisine that they trust to guide them in the right direction. Rather, the
history of the American food system has been one of increasing industrialization,
modernization, and innovation of novel foods with the end result being that the American
foodways have come to be filled with simulacra (Baudrillard 1994) of more traditional
food practices and products – entities that have been created to satisfy the needs of
capitalism, rather than the needs of human bodies and psyches. This, as Turner’s
48
argument would suggest, has brought the background institutional knowledge of how to
eat the “right” way into the foreground to be restructured by the ever-changing tastes and
recommendations available through the capitalist culture.
Why We Eat What We Eat
When I asked my informants about why they choose to eat the way they do, the
following themes stood out. First, as mentioned above, I asked whether individuals
attempt to include healthy foods in their daily diets; the answer to this question was
overwhelmingly in the affirmative for all but two of those queried. However, upon
further probing for specific factors in food choices, it became clear that nutritional value
was not the top factor in food choices, even though it was the stated reason for the dietary
shifts that had occurred since childhood for most individuals. I continued by inquiring
into the origin of information about a “healthy” diet, to which I found that most people
looked to a variety of media sources for knowledge of how to eat. I found that many
individuals are concerned about the weight-affecting nature of their food choices and
often cue into diet information available in their social network and through the media. I
asked about label- and advertising-reading habits and whether my informants use any of
the government’s recommendations for a healthy diet (e.g., Food Pyramid,
Recommended Daily Allowances). There was also an interesting discussion regarding
participants’ thoughts on “organic” or “all-natural” foods, with most feeling that organics
are good (if they truly are organic), but that they are far too expensive.
It was difficult to quantify the major factors in daily food choices, as people often
listed a number of factors in no particular order; only after further probing was it obvious
49
which factors were dominant. At this point, the primary factor cited in food choices for
the vast majority was taste. Most people were open to eating just about anything,
whether healthy or not in their view, as long as it tasted good. However, of those who
confessed to indulging in those foods they considered “bad for you,” the majority said
they felt a bit of remorse or guilt afterword, as this behavior was not seen as being
consistent with their overall focus on healthy eating. The second factor for most was
convenience. Many individuals cited hectic work or other schedules that made quickand-easy food preparation attractive. Third, and often tied up with the first two factors,
was price. If food items were very expensive, most individuals were more likely to pass
them up in favor of cheaper products, even if those cheaper items were not as tasty or
convenient.
The price factor did not always hold strong under further probing, as many
professed eating a large number of frozen processed meals or meals out at restaurants,
which shows they are willing to pay a premium for convenience or the desired taste of a
product; additionally, many are willing to pay extra for “organic” foods or “health foods”
due to a belief in their superiority. Only a very small minority mentioned health as a
factor in their daily food choices. Health and nutrition formed a prominent theme
throughout the data, but were not major priorities for most in answering the question
regarding factors in daily choices. The one factor that was conspicuously absent from the
data, but which I find to be of utmost pertinence to this discussion, was a reliance on
family tradition for daily food choices. These findings mesh well with a survey study
undertaken by Glanz et al. (1998).
50
When I asked about where people acquired their information regarding a healthy
diet, I found that most individuals cited a reliance on some sort of scientific nutritional
knowledge, whether coming from “friends who know [about nutrition]” (23 percent),
personal research or visits to nutritionists (22 percent), diet books or media sources
reporting on health and diet issues (17 percent), or “alternative” nutrition sources (ten
percent). Three participants (five percent) said they don’t care about nutrition
information. Two (three percent) said that they don’t know where to take nutrition
information from due to the ever-present availability of conflicting information in
society. Three individuals (five percent) said they try to keep things simple and just eat
in a way that feels right to them. Only two individuals (three percent) mentioned
adhering to the way they grew up eating (Stephanie, a 55-year-old woman from an Asian
family, where eating habits were strictly traditional) or to “common sense that I learned
from my mother” (Richard, a 74-year-old Caucasian man).
With those two individuals as the exceptions, I did not see much reliance on
traditional knowledge passed down from parents or grandparents. Seven individuals (12
percent) did cite “common sense,” but on further probing, this seemed to be indicative of
a general cultural knowledge surrounding scientific nutrition (focus on eating a low-fat
diet, mostly). I also found that the majority of individuals citing non-media sources for
information admitted later to paying attention to media coverage of diet and health issues,
with 77 percent saying that they do cue in to media information (although 40 percent of
individuals cited comparing the media information to their existing knowledge or using it
as a basis for further research before making any dietary changes). Refer to Table 9 for a
summary of this data.
51
Table 9: Participants' Sources of Information for a "Healthy" Diet
Source of Information for “Healthy” Diet
Percentage of Participants
“Friends who know [about nutrition]”
23%
Personal research or visit to nutritionist
22%
Diet books or media reports on health and diet
17%
“Alternative” nutrition sources
10%
Do not care about nutrition information
5%
Listen to body
5%
Not sure where to get information
3%
Family tradition
3%
“Common sense” (on further probing, based on cultural
knowledge about scientific nutrition)
12%
When asked if they read nutrition labels, 86 percent said that they do. Eighty-six
percent also said that they do not read label advertisements (although 22 percent
mentioned that they will sometimes use them as an indication of cost-effectiveness
compared to other produces, such as with “30% more free”). This shows that the
majority of my respondents feel a need for specific attention to the nutrient components
of their foods (although, of course, things like fresh produce and fresh meats do not
typically carry these nutrient labels) and that they avoid paying attention to
advertisements that are designed to draw them in to products. However, when I went on
two separate grocery shopping outings with three of the participants (all of whom had
mentioned reading nutrition labels and ignoring label advertisements), I found that there
were numerous occasions when a new product was encountered and chosen based on a
52
label claim, such as “heart healthy” or “high in omega-3s.” It seems that, at least in these
two examples, my informants believed they focused their attention in one direction
(nutrition labels), but sometimes purchased products based mostly on advertising
information.
When asked if they looked to government recommendations for a healthy diet, I
found that 80 percent had some knowledge of the Food Pyramid or other government
guidelines, but of those, only two people said that they do actually follow those
recommendations in their daily eating habits. I was surprised to see that 23 percent of
respondents cited distrust for the government when asked whether they followed any
government recommendations. Refer to Table 10 for a summary of this data.
Michelle (CF40): I rarely trust the government’s information … the food
pyramid is a bunch of baloney.
Kevin (JM66): I feel that the FDA’s pronouncements reflect the food
industry’s profit motive and directed research … I would like to see an
analysis of how much food habits are molded by the food industry to
maximize its profits at the expense of the consumers’ health.
Laurie (CF58): I would never use our government as a knowledge base.
They’re responsible for our terrible food chain now. The guidelines the
U.S. allows are terrible. Some countries would never allow chlorine or
fluoride in their water, yet we do. We are the lab rats … I try to do my
own research instead of looking to the government or media … media
coverage and pharmaceutical reps go hand in hand … yikes!
The overall consensus was that people know that the government offers guidelines for a
healthy diet, but that they are either not widely enough available for most, they are too
difficult to apply to daily dietary habits, or they cannot be trusted to offer unbiased
information regarding public health, considering the political nature of many of their
53
guidelines. Generally, I found that while most of my informants reported knowledge of
and resulting behaviors associated with nutritional science, I was led to wonder how
accurate these self-reported behaviors actually were. There may be a common popular
understanding of nutritional science, and a general wish among most people to use this
knowledge to help them eat in a way that would seem more healthful, but I found myself
doubting that people actually know the government’s recommendations or use food
labels to the degree that was claimed by my participants when making their food choices.
Table 10: Participants' Nutrition-Focused Behaviors
Nutrition-Focused Behaviors
Percentage of Participants Responding:
“No”
“Yes”
Follow media reports about
diet and health
23%
77%
Read nutrition labels on food products
14%
86%
Read advertisements on food products
86%
14%
Knowledge of government
food guidelines
20%
80%
Follow government food guidelines
97%
3%
Considering that 86 percent of my informants claim to consistently read nutrition
labels, it is easy to see that many Americans have become accustomed to taking into
account scientific information regarding nutrition when making their personal dietary
choices. Michael Pollan cites Gyorgy Scrinis’ coining of the term nutritionism in
explaining this phenomenon (Pollan 2008:27). Gone are the days when you ate what was
available in the environment and it conveniently happened to be the healthy diet that your
body evolved to eat. Gone are the days when dietary knowledge was passed down
through generations of predecessors who had the opportunity to develop a healthy cuisine
54
through experimentation and long-term observations of the diet’s effects. Instead, the
modern human animal living in America must first stay current with the nutrition
information that is coming out of science, then must learn how to read labels to see if
individual food products fit with that science, and then must hope to find something that
is also tasty, convenient, and relatively inexpensive among those “good” options if they
are to eat a “healthy” diet.
Unfortunately, most Americans do not have the time or the interest to cultivate
and practice this intellectual exercise when it comes to their daily eating habits. For those
who are willing to look for such information, it seems there are some very consistent
effects. First, depending on the degree to which this scientific knowledge is learned and
internalized, individuals often become very specific in their dietary habits (e.g., foods
must have fewer than five grams of sugar per serving, or must have more than ten grams
of protein per serving, must not go over 150 grams of carbohydrates per day, or must
meet some pre-set caloric quantity per day, and so on). There is an ongoing search for
“good” versus “bad” foods, based on their macronutrient makeup. Often, as we will
inspect later, this can lead to disordered eating due to the reliance on numbers and labels
for macronutrient quantities rather than on the body’s reaction to foods.
Second, food habits begin to shift somewhat regularly as new scientific
information regarding nutrition comes to light. Scientific studies tend to break complex
phenomena down into their constituent parts in order to study particular variables. This
is what has happened with the country’s increased avoidance of fatty animal foods over
the past 30 to 40 years; dietary fat and cholesterol were thought to be the major factors
involved in cardiovascular disease and many people began to avoid them in favor of
55
“low-fat” food products and dietary habits. However, more recent scientific studies have
shown that we actually need fats, especially omega-3 fats, and that without them in
sufficient quantities, we can experience a host of problems, including ADHD, depression,
and other psychiatric disorders, as just a few examples (Peet and Stokes 2005;
Richardson 2003; Su et al. 2003; Young et al. 2004). So, for those who work at
cultivating a deep and up-to-date knowledge of scientific nutrition, the effect can be one
of causing somewhat regular dietary shifts as new components are added or ruled out of a
healthy diet. The focus, again, moves away from eating foods and toward eating
nutrients (Pollan 2008).
For those who do not stay updated with scientific nutritional knowledge, they are
likely to have outdated understandings of what constitutes a healthy diet. Consider again
the issue of fat avoidance. Many of my informants cited a decrease in overall fat
consumption (especially saturated fat from animal products) since their childhoods.
While knowledge of the negative health effects of fat are prominent in the popular culture
surrounding food, this is certainly not considered to be reflective of the best possible diet
by modern standards. Individuals with “old” knowledge may be setting themselves up
for future health problems related to diet if they do not learn the “new” information.
Ironically, this old information is being passed down through tradition much of the time
and individuals feel that they can trust friends and family members who speak in the
jargon of nutritional science.
The food system capitalizes on nutritionism by introducing new products, albeit
alongside their traditional counterparts, to satisfy the new needs of consumers as new
information comes to light. There have long been a number of “low-fat” and “fat-free”
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foods available, but today, you can see labels directing you to foods with “no trans fats,”
foods “high in Omega-3s,” “whole grain” foods, foods with “added fiber,” and even
foods enriched with “nutraceuticals” (i.e., nutrients added to foods for pharmaceutical
benefits). My dinner recently included a new type of pasta that my husband brought
home. The package claims it is a “delicious white pasta plus 3x the fiber*, and calcium
equal to an 8 oz. glass of milk.” My husband told me he bought it because, first, it is a
“white” pasta (which he equates to good taste), second, because it has added fiber (his
homage to my preference, as fiber is something that I’m always trying to help our family
get more of), and third, but a mediating factor for the first two factors, it was “buy-oneget-one-free.” I asked him if he would have bought it had it not been on sale and his
response was that he would have looked for a cheaper alternative that would have still
been satisfactory to both of us, considering this particular product was much more
expensive than the surrounding pasta products.
The logical question might be, why not sell all pasta with added calcium and
fiber, if indeed this constitutes “Smart Taste” (the product name); why not always
provide products that are “smart” in being both tasty and healthy for consumers? The
obvious answer is that it can be sold for a premium price to those who believe there is a
difference and care enough to invest their hard-earned money toward a “healthier”
option. On the other hand, conventional (and ostensibly less healthy) products are still
sold alongside the “new and improved” products for individuals who don’t know or care
about the differences and are simply looking for a more cost-effective option. This is
product differentiation at its best in a culture of nutritionism; it’s just unfortunate if you
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believe the “healthy” product to be superior, yet are unable to afford it and must rely on
the “unhealthy” products for subsistence.
Whether they have up-to-date knowledge of scientific nutrition or not, Americans
as a whole tend to buy a large quantity of processed foods. This is easily visible when
one walks into a modern grocery store and views the layout of the store; the majority of
the floor space is devoted to long aisles of packaged food products, with the unprocessed
foods typically occupying the refrigerated periphery of the store. Americans have a
relatively long history of buying branded processed food products, many of which are
made with “natural” and “artificial” flavorings that have been scientifically created for
our tasting pleasure. Without these flavor additives, processed foods, which account for
roughly 90 percent of food expenditures by Americans (Schlosser 2002), would likely not
have the high level of sales they currently experience. As Eric Schlosser reports in Fast
Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, “the canning, freezing, and
dehydrating techniques used to process food destroy most of its flavor” (2002:121).
While a skillful advertiser or attractive packaging may draw you to a processed food for
an initial taste, you might not purchase the product again unless its flavors, colors, and
aromas were designed to keep you coming back for more.
The processed food category has the biggest profit margin of all food categories,
as the ingredients used (depending on the product, usually flour, oil, a cheap sweetener
like high-fructose corn syrup, and chemical additives) are so inexpensive. With a bit of
marketing and successful flavoring, these products draw consumers by the millions. The
chemical makeup of food additives, though, is kept highly secret by the companies that
produce them and, surprisingly, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not
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require disclosure of additive ingredients, “so long as all of the chemicals are considered
by the agency to be GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe)” (Schlosser 2002:125).
While processed foods may occupy much of our attention when thinking about
the role of capitalism in our food system, the truth is that capitalism extends beyond
company branding and product differentiation in processed foods throughout areas of the
food system that one might think are unable to be innovated and manipulated in the same
way as novelty food products. I’ve found (both through personal discussions and through
my formal research) that most Americans are truly unaware of the modern farming
practices that produce their meat, dairy, and seafood products. Americans hold idealized
images of family farms where animals are cared for in large pastures as they are raised
for the market (an image no doubt created by their experience of seeing small farms in
their communities). In contrast, the majority of modern farm output comes from a
relatively small number of large farms which seek to emulate factories, increasing
production and economic efficiency even in the face of controversies over the ethical and
safety ramifications of their practices.
Take, for example, the recent “mad cow,” or bovine spongiform encephalopathy
(BSE) scares in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada (CDFA 2007). They
were the result of a practice employed by some farm managers that was designed to keep
production prices down by supplementing cattle feed with rendered dead sheep and
cattle. The problem was that some of the animals used in the feed were diseased (never
mind the curious practice of turning herbivorous ruminants into cannibals); the disease
was passed on to the animals eating the feed, and then was available for ingestion by
humans who might also be affected by the disease. Recent regulatory activity (due to
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issues with an original 1997 ban on ruminant-to-ruminant feeding (USDA 2006)) has
closed some of the loopholes associated with these practices (Gilcrest 2004), but the fact
remains that lawmakers are hard-pressed to keep pace with the number of new feed
ingredients that come into use regularly (Satchell and Hedges 1997) and new cases have
continued to arise (CDFA 2007).
When I casually inquired about my informants’ perspectives of modern farming
and processing strategies, I found that only a few individuals felt that there was anything
to be said about them. Those who did have something to say invariably had cited
alternative sources for nutritional and health knowledge when asked where they found
their information. It seems that the majority of Americans do not know that their foods
are created in this way and from personal experience with driving down the road and
seeing cows grazing contentedly in green and pleasant pastures, I can understand why
there is a misperception. Most Americans do not see the factory farms or the migrant
shantytowns or know about the practices of large meat-processing facilities (Pollan 2006;
Schlosser 2002, 2003). Certainly things are much better today than they were in the early
1900s, considering legislation that was passed as a result of muckraking journalism such
as The Jungle (Sinclair 1906), but it seems that capitalist industries are quite savvy about
finding new ways to increase efficiency and profits, often neglecting issues of human and
environmental health until new regulations come along to constrain their operations.
Considering the magnitude and effects of capitalism in our foodways, I wanted to
explore how people felt about the growing market for “organic” and “all-natural” foods.
While I did not find anyone who thought organic foods were a bad idea in and of
themselves, the majority of responses (55 percent) indicated that organic foods are simply
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too expensive to be a viable option for most people. Still, 38 percent of respondents said
they thought that organic foods were the best option, even if they couldn’t afford them.
Many (around 14 percent, judged through further probing) expressed skepticism about
whether organic foods truly are organic. Nineteen percent of the participants did not
know anything about organics, were not sure what they thought about them, or just did
not see any reason to purchase them. Five percent of respondents said they thought the
term, “organic,” was not a good term to use, either because they believed it had no
defensible meaning in the industry, or because it simply refers to food raised in its natural
state. As this question linked together the inquiry into “organic” and “all-natural,” not all
responses included information relating to “all-natural.” For those who did respond
specifically to this part about “all-natural” foods, there was a consensus that this term is
meaningless in relation to food products, as there is no regulation to ensure its meaning or
to enforce its use. Refer to Table 11 for a summary of this data.
Table 11: Participants' Thoughts on "Organic" or "All-Natural" Foods
Thoughts on “Organic” or “All-Natural” Foods Percentage of Participants
Organics are too expensive
55%
Organics are best
38%
No knowledge of organics
19%
Skepticism of organic claims
14%
“Organic” not the best term
5%
These results show a large number of people who feel that “organic” products
convey some form of advantage over non-organically produced food products.
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Ember (CF29): I try to buy them whenever I can. I know that keeping
even some of the chemicals out of my system is better than nothing.
Laurie (CF58): I try to eat nothing but organic foods, but sometimes I
can’t, like when we go out to dinner. Everything in moderation!
Janet (AF54): I believe that it is good to use organic products, especially
with certain fruit, veggies, and milk.
Michelle (CF40): Organic is very, very important. We need to remember
our roots and stay close to eating foods in the form that they’re naturally
grown in.
Some individuals displayed an in-depth knowledge of the background for this belief and
argue that an organic method of production, meaning (according to standards for USDA
certification) that they are produced without added chemicals (pesticides, herbicides,
chemical fertilizers, hormones, antibiotics, and so on), the use of human waste or sewage
sludge, or genetically modified organisms (GMO), is best both for environmental
sustainability and for human health.
Angela (CF47): I think organic farming is vital for maintaining our topsoil
and quantity of food production. It’s also vital for preserving our viable
seed stock. I think pesticides and chemical fertilizers are, down the road,
soil-depleting and bad for human bodies. Farms that use them don’t let
the fields lie fallow as much as they should and the balance of the soil gets
all out of whack. I also think organic foods taste much better. When I
was a kid, we’d eat tomatoes like we eat apples … they were soft and red
and flavorful and sweet from my grandmother’s garden. Not these grainy,
colorless, tasteless things that we get in the grocery or in restaurants. I
think organic animal products are a must. Antibiotics and hormones given
to livestock are absolutely detrimental to human health, and what goes in
the animals ends up in the humans who eat them.
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Erin (CF35): I buy them as often as possible. Not only are they good for
me, but pesticides bioaccumulate at a higher rate in children than in adults.
Also, my older daughter is a big milk drinker and I don’t want her to
ingest rGBH [recombinant bovine growth hormone, given to cows to
increase milk production] that will affect her development. It’s also better
for the land and water in our environment.
Maya (CF30): I think it’s really important to farm our foods in the most
natural way possible, using shifting agricultural techniques rather than
intensive techniques. Organically farmed fruits and vegetables actually
have higher levels of nutrients and antioxidants and free-range organic
animals have less saturated fat and more of the good fats that we need. I
think it’s also got to be more humane to the animals to let them live like
they’re meant to live instead of sticking them in crowded pens and treating
them like we do. That said, I’m not a financially wealthy person and I
have to pick my battles. I only buy organic milk for my daughter, and if
it’s available, I’ll buy organic cheese, too. I always buy organic lettuce
and apples, as I eat a lot of those and there isn’t any thick skin to protect
them from the pesticides. I buy organic eggs and try to buy the most
naturally grown meats that I can find, but I’m constantly looking for a
good local source for free-range animal products … there aren’t any
around here. I n general, I don’t eat non-organic beef because of the risk
of mad-cow, although I’m sure our farming practices are probably pushing
those types of problems into the rest of the food chain by now… I also
recently heard that they’re going to start cloning animals for human
consumption and that scientists have come up with a way to make some
sort of ground beef type of stuff out of stem cells in a dish. Ewww …
Many were very skeptical of organics (or “all-natural” foods), whether due to a question
over improper regulation of industry claims or due to a feeling that the claimed benefits
are simply part of a marketing ploy.
Maia (HF39): I’m all for it. I just wonder if organic is really organic.
Kevin (JM66): I think these terms are mostly bullshit. The alternative to
natural food is supernatural food. They are such poorly defined terms that
they add more noise than light to the discussion of diet.
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Sherry (BF54): If the company is authentic and doesn’t add the ‘organic’
or ‘all-natural’ label as a gimmick, I can accept the food. If this is the best
type of food to eat, as many people say, I feel the FDA should assure this
method is universal and make sure that the prices are low enough for
everyone to afford.
Hunter (CM52): I think it all comes down to marketing. Very few of the
organic products are truly organic. They just meet a self-imposed standard
of saying they’re organic. All-natural foods are rare, since there are
always herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers around. One of the biggest
organic tomato farms in the state is off the Tamiami Trail outside of
Miami. They are in the direct flight path of Miami International Airport.
Planes routinely dump fuel prior to landing to meet max gross landing
weights … And if they’re using the water from the aquifer in lower
Florida, we all know how bad that water is, anyway …
Carmen (CF60): ‘All-natural’ is a misnomer. ‘No chemicals or
preservatives’ would be better. The organic foods are okay, but so many
of the fresh ones in the store move more slowly because they’re more
pricey, so they’re on the shelf longer and end up losing their nutritional
value. The canned or frozen organic products and meat are better in that
regard, but have pretty much priced themselves out of the market for the
majority of people.
Regardless of their beliefs about the quality of organics, the majority felt that organic
foods are far too expensive for most people to be able to include them as a regular part of
their diets.
Paul (CM59): I think they’re great, but pricey.
Dawn (CF29): If I could afford organic, I would prefer to buy organic.
Karen (JF39): Organic is great. I wish I could afford it with everything.
Suzanne (BF48): Typically, I look for a more cost-effective alternative
with healthy ingredients.
Ron (CM63): They’re more expensive and I just never really think about
buying them.
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Kelley (CF25): Organic means more expensive. I don’t feel I have to eat
organic to be healthy.
Christine (CF24): I think they’re a terrific idea and should be used when
possible. Unfortunately, some are too expensive.
Julia (CF52): I guess I don’t really think much about the use of pesticides
and stuff. I do prefer to buy and eat all-natural or organic, but it’s usually
too much money, especially with vegetables.
Maria (CF68): I like the idea of no pesticides, insecticides, and hormones,
but the cost is out of sight!
Cathy (CF71): They’re good, but they’re pricey, so we don’t buy them.
Instead, we just take extra care to wash things really well.
Rosa (HF43): My thoughts are that they shouldn’t be so much more
expensive. If they would price these products the same as all the other
products, they would sell more.
David (CM29): They cost too much money and it’s not always true.
Camryn (CF27): I feel better about myself when I buy from a local fruit
stand or farmer’s market, but I have a hard time paying so much for
something with an ‘organic’ label on it.
One participant even went so far as to question why consumers must pay a premium for
these more naturally produced foods.
Adam (CM33): I try to buy organic whenever possible. I’m glad that
there’s a growing trend in popularity with them since that means more
competition for business and ultimately lower prices for consumers. I
think that’s important since I still think it’s ridiculous to have to pay more
for products just because they weren’t sprayed with poison. You can buy
‘organic’ fruits and vegetables in most parts of the under-developed world,
not because it’s the new fad, but because the local farmers can’t afford
pesticides and herbicides or don’t have access to those products … and
their products are usually reasonably priced, so why shouldn’t ours be?
.
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The standard response regarding the exorbitant price of these foods has been a
claim that organic methods of production are unable to achieve the same yield as more
chemically-dependent methods and therefore organic products cost more because they are
more expensive to produce (Trewavas 2001). A recent report says otherwise; that in fact,
organic methods are capable of producing the same yields as chemically-dependent
methods (Badgley and Perfecto 2007; Pimental et al. 2005) and that in developing
countries, they could potentially achieve tripled yields over non-organic methods
(Badgley and Perfecto 2007), without many of the potentially negative health and
environmental effects of conventional farming methods. So why are they so expensive?
Part of the reason can be attributed to supply and demand; there are simply far fewer
organic farms today than non-organic farms (throughout the world, organic farmland
amounts to .65 percent of total farmland, with only .5 percent in the United States and a
high of 29.1 percent in Liechtenstein (Willer et al. 2008)), so until demand rises and
supply increases in accordance, organics will simply cost more due to low availability.
Table 12 lists agricultural land devoted to organic production among selected countries
and was adapted from Willer et al. (2008). Figure 1 maps organic agriculture worldwide
and was reproduced from Willer and Yussefi (2007).
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Table 12: Agricultural Land Devoted to Organic Production, Selected Countries
Share of Total
Organic Agricultural
Land (Hectares)
Agricultural Land
1,027
29.1%
Liechtenstein
Country
Austria
361,487
13%
Switzerland
125,596
11.8%
Italy
1,148,162
9%
Greece
302,256
7.6%
Portugal
269,374
7.3%
Sweden
255,385
7%
Australia
12,294,290
2.8%
Argentina
2,220,489
1.7%
USA
1,620,351
.5%
China
2,300,000
.4%
Source: Data from Willer et al. (2008)
Figure 1: Organic Agriculture Worldwide
Source: Reproduced from Willer and Yussefi (2007)
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One reason (besides cost) that demand remains low is that there is a question
regarding whether organics are actually more nutritious or otherwise safer for health than
conventional foods. As discussed above, a few of my informants voiced the belief that
organics are not truly better than non-organics in any recognizable way. In response to
this suspicion, a number of recent studies have come out in favor of organics due to
higher levels of some nutrients (Amodio et al. 2007; Mitchell et al. 2007) and lower
concentrations of pesticides (Curl et al. 2003; Lu et al. 2006). In spite of these findings,
the general scientific consensus is that there is too little existing knowledge about the
dose-dependent health effects of these differences to say if they are statistically
significant (Brandt and Mølgaard 2001; Kirstensen et al. 2008), although a recent fouryear study comparing low-input organic farming with low-input non-organic and highinput conventional farming has shown some promising results indicating that low-input
methods lead to significantly higher nutrient values in plants and animals along with
long-term protection of soil quality and biodiversity (Butler et al. 2008; Niggli et al.
2007).
Another reason that demand remains low is that many conventionally farmed
products (mostly grains, and by extension, the animals raised on them) are subsidized
through a variety of price supports which aid a relatively small number of very large
farms in keeping down the prices of many of our foods (Fields 2004; Pollan 2006:50-55,
2007). When considering the large amount of financial support for conventionally
farmed grains, it is not hard to understand why these agricultural products have become
the mainstay of our diets (Fields 2004) and pervade every aspect of our lives (e.g., from
corn syrup in our foods to corn ethanol in our vehicles) (Pollan 2006). The United States
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government, which refuses to offer subsidies to aid the fledgling organic food industry in
its development (something the European Union has been doing for some time with great
success) (Dimitri and Oberholtzer 2006), applies protectionist policies to the food
industry in a manner that makes it very cheap to eat poorly (typically refined grains and
processed foods), more expensive to eat well (fresh fruits and vegetables), and almost
prohibitively expensive to eat in the most natural, “organic” way possible (Alston et al.
2006). It is simply a more attractive option for most consumers to pay an artificially low
price than to pay what seems to be an overly inflated price for something that appears to
be exactly the same.
The end result is that capitalism structures the food system in such a way that
even those looking for alternatives to traditional industrialized food production are urged
to increase their expenditures for consumption in those alternate directions. Often,
though, “organic” products originate from farming practices that are not much different
from conventional agriculture, which is another reason that many consumers are skeptical
as they continue to read about these issues in the media (Warner 2006a, 2006b). As a
result, a small but growing number of consumers have begun to turn (back) to farmer’s
markets and other local sources for their foods; they hope to get valuable information
about the quality and safety of their foods directly from the farmers who produce them.
However, even these local-, organic-, and all-natural-minded individuals are subject to
the effects of the capitalist culture on their food habits, as it is the culture that informs
them about how they should feel as consumers.
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CHAPTER FIVE
Food Consumption and Identity
Once I was able to assemble a picture of an individual’s overall dietary patterns, I
began to inquire about my participants’ physical and emotional experiences related to
their food habits. Overall, I found that less than half of the individuals interviewed felt
happy with their eating habits, and on further probing, it seemed that even in these
“happy” people, there was a trend toward desire for weight loss. My informants
expressed a strong inclination to view excess weight as undesirable and for many, even as
a sign of character weakness or illness. This outcome was expected, considering the
prominent focus in this country on body size and composition and the fact that the
majority of the population is either overweight or obese. The information coming out of
medical and nutritional science teaches that weight loss is a simple matter that can be
achieved rather easily with a bit of knowledge and will power. Unfortunately, for the
majority of the American people, it does not seem to be this simple and the ongoing
struggle to lose weight brings with it a number of potential physical, psychological, and
emotional effects. This chapter will examine my participants’ experiences as actors in
the American foodways.
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The Embodied Consumer
When I asked my participants if they were happy with their eating habits, 48
percent said that they are happy with the way they eat, with 23 percent saying they are
unhappy with the way they eat, and 29 percent saying they are somewhat happy, but
could make some changes to be happier. When asked if they would make any changes to
their eating habits, and if so, what would be the desired effects of those changes, 38
percent mentioned that they would like to eat a diet that would lead to weight loss.
Twenty percent said that they would like to eat a healthier diet or would like to learn how
to better prepare tasty, healthy foods. Nine percent wished that there was a way to eat
healthier foods that were more convenient. The rest cited increased enjoyment in eating,
eating less in order to save money, learning more of the nutritional jargon, or switching to
eating “mammals not raised in feed lots and exposed to hormones and antibiotics… [in
order to experience] less morbidity in my decrepitude” (Kevin, a 66-year-old Jewish
man). What stuck out from the data in this instance is that even many of those
individuals who cited happiness with their eating habits mentioned desiring specific
changes. Only a few individuals were completely happy with their eating habits, their
health, and their weight. Tables 13 and 14 summarize my participants’ current perceived
happiness with their dietary habits and any potential changes they would like to make.
Table 13: Participants' Perceived Happiness with Dietary Habits
Perceived Happiness with Dietary Habits Percentage of Participants
Happy
48%
Unhappy
23%
Somewhat Happy
29%
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Table 14: Participants' Desired Changes in Dietary Habits
Desired Changes in Dietary Behaviors
Percentage of Participants
Diet for weight loss
38%
Become healthier
20%
More convenient healthy eating
9%
Increased enjoyment, saving money,
learning nutritional jargon, and so forth
7%
So, even though there is a feeling among most that their dietary changes since
childhood have been in the positive for health, 67 percent still consider their current diets
to be less than ideal, either for weight status, health, or a number of other factors. While
slightly over a third of individuals cited a reduction in weight as the primary result of any
desired potential changes in their diets, when probed later to inquire whether they were
happy with their current weight and health, a total of 73 percent said that they would
prefer to lose a few pounds. Considering the relatively normal weight of most
individuals I spoke with, I assume that this desire was a result of wanting to more closely
approximate the social ideal of the thin body. I had expected to find this issue mostly
among women, but the data were rather evenly distributed among both sexes, with 71
percent of men wanting to lose weight and 74 percent of women wanting to lose weight.
See Table 15 for a summary of this data.
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Table 15: Participants Stating a Desire to Lose Weight
Stated Desire to Lose Weight Percentage of Participants
Males
71%
Females
74%
All Participants
73%
According to Deborah Lupton, “food and eating are central to our subjectivity, or
sense of self, and our experience of embodiment, or the ways that we live in and through
our bodies, which itself is inextricably linked with subjectivity” (1996:1). While this is
certainly true for all humans in all cultures, I find that my informants indicated that the
American culture of today acts on our bodies in such a way that our experience of
embodiment is complicated at best and dysfunctional at worst. The Western perception
of the duality of body and mind was very prevalent in the interview responses, with only
two individuals saying that they “listen” to their bodies when making food choices.
Many cited “lack of willpower” when it came to discussion of why past and current
dietary goals go unmet.
Karen (JF39): I try to commit to a healthy diet, but it is very hard to keep
this commitment when my boyfriend brings home pizza. He seems to
always have the smell of bacon wafting when I’m trying to eat my
morning salad … I’ve tried a lot of diets; originally, it was for better
overall health, but now that I’ve gained a lot of weight, it’s about that … I
know all the right foods and the right portions to eat, and I love to cook
and eat healthy foods, but my dieting efforts haven’t been successful
because of not enough will power.
In my view, this attention to using the mind’s power over the body (mostly in order to
lose weight) is a great source of psychological discomfort among Americans and is a
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result of the culture’s actions on the physical body, both through the food system and
through the presentation of a thin ideal to which people are expected and encouraged to
measure up.
As I mentioned earlier, the majority of my informants were of a normal weight.
For the purposes of this paper, “normal” has a wide range, considering I did not request
specific information regarding weight or other body measurements. Only a few
individuals were obviously overweight or obese, but the majority of participants noted
wanting to lose weight, even those who seemed to match up with the social ideals of
body size. Christina, a 24-year-old Caucasian woman, cited having recently lost 15
pounds (through a low-fat diet) and said that she was happy with her weight. I found it
interesting, though, that this woman was the thinnest person I spoke with and was so thin
that it was not surprising when her boyfriend mentioned that he was always trying to
make her eat because he thought she was unhealthily thin. When asked about her views
regarding the focus on body size in this country, this is what she had to say:
I look at body size as someone’s outward claim that they are unhealthy in
some way and I think that we have become too accepting of ‘curves’ and
claiming that the ‘average’ woman is a size 12-14 according to the
statistics. If this is true, the average woman in our country is very
unhealthy and I believe that we should look to healthier [i.e., thinner]
people as role models.
From this statement and from other comments she made during the course of the
interview, I could see that her main focus was on “health” with a low weight being
indicative of positive health in her mind. In my opinion, this young woman was likely at
the low range of a healthy weight before she lost the 15 pounds she cited; my perception
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of her during the time of the interview was that she was underweight and looked rather
frail.
This focus on weight loss was a prominent theme among most of the women I
spoke with and I was surprised that a few of the women actually used the word “disorder”
to refer to their previous dietary patterns, even though no one had been clinically
diagnosed in this way. Sherry, African-American woman, aged 54, told me that when
she was younger, largely during her college years, she had become very obsessive about
her eating habits in a way that she considered somewhat disordered. She said that she felt
a lot of pressure to get and stay thin because it was the fashion of the time and she wanted
to be able to “wear all the cute clothes” and be stylish. Due to her rather large chest area,
she said that she had to be extra thin to be able to fit into some of the styles of clothing
she wanted to wear during that period of her life. Now, she feels she has matured to a
point where she is learning to respond to her body’s unique needs and feels that she is
beginning to come into line with a weight that is more appropriate for her height and
build, while focusing more on eating well rather than on becoming thinner. From what I
could tell from the rest of the interview, she still wished to lose weight and be thin, but
had resigned herself to being overweight, hoping to eat more healthfully nonetheless.
Kimberly, another young Caucasian woman, aged 26, recounted having an
“eating disorder” leading up to her wedding. This apparently is a common phenomenon
among women as they try to look their “best” for their wedding day (Neighbors and
Sobal 2007). She described how she would eat nothing but a can of tuna and some
mustard every day and would spend the day exercising vigorously in order to lose weight.
She said that she knows she got very thin, but that there always seemed to be new areas
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of excess fat to focus on losing. It wasn’t until her soon-to-be husband told her how
worried he was about her that she feels she took an honest look at her habits and decided
to stop trying to lose weight. By the time I spoke with her, she had birthed a child and
was currently trying to learn more about healthy eating and exercising in an effort to lose
the residual pregnancy weight without going to the extremes that she had experienced a
few years earlier. She admitted that she did not really know how to eat or cook
healthfully, though, and that she and her husband ate a lot of convenience foods as a
result.
The general focus on weight loss was a pervasive theme throughout the data, with
87 percent of participants mentioning having dieted for weight loss at some point during
their lives. Individuals had tried a number of methods to lose weight, from Weight
Watchers meetings to the Atkins Diet to decreasing fatty foods to doing a “quicker push
away [from the table].” A few participants mentioned that they are “always” dieting,
trying to lose weight. Maya, a 30-year-old Caucasian woman, had this to say:
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I have always been on the thin side … maybe not model-thin, but always
on the low end of the normal range for my height. But I never feel like
I’m in a good place with my weight. I try to remind myself that I eat well
and I’m healthy … definitely more healthy than most people out there, but
I can’t stop feeling like I need to lose weight to look better and feel better
about myself. It’s so weird that I care so much about what I think other
people must think when they look at me, when logically, they’re probably
thinking that I look pretty darn good… I think I’ve given just about every
“diet” out there a try. I try to focus on the ones that seem to be consistent
with what I know about good nutrition, but they all require changes that
I’m not able to maintain for very long. Either they end up costing too
much, or I have to eat foods that I’m not good at cooking, or I have to
count calories or carbs or something, or it’s just too inconvenient in
general for me to keep it up. I might lose a pound or two, but my weight
doesn’t ever change significantly. And it’s embarrassing, too, because
people will look at me like I’m crazy when they see me eating some weird
meal and ask me why and I say that it’s part of my diet. I try to exercise,
too, thinking that might help, but I can’t ever find the time …
As this woman noted, what she sees when she looks at her body is likely not what other
people see. Alexandra Brewis (1999) completed a study on “The Accuracy of AttractiveBody-Size Judgment” and found that women, in particular, often judge their own body
size to be much larger than it is. What I found to be a prevalent theme throughout the
data was the intention to lose weight, even among those who are not technically
“overweight” by medical standards. The women seemed to be more concerned about
weight loss in order to look better, with the majority of the men citing increased health as
the goal in losing weight. Angela, a 47-year-old Caucasian female participant had this to
say:
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After my son was born, I was having trouble getting the weight off and
found a thing called ‘Diet Pep.’ Good news was that the weight came
right off. Bad news … the chief ingredient was Ma Huang or pure
ephedra and I hope I didn’t mess up my heart from a couple of years of
use of that. As soon as I found out about it, I stopped. Later, I started
seeing an acupuncturist for a shoulder injury and now only take things she
prescribes if I need something. I’ve not dieted since. Oh, wait … I did the
Scarsdale diet once, ages ago. I was doing it with a friend… my college
roomie, for moral support. I remember being unbelievably hungry on that
one and would cheat. It only lasted for two weeks… Overall, I’m not
happy with my health or weight at the moment. One year ago when I was
in Italy, I was feeling great. I’m too stressed now and have been for the
last year. I’m tired. It’s not just my diet, though I know I’m overeating
for my activity level … it’s also stress. Physically, I have nothing clinical
and according to the doctor, I’m not overweight, but I am very overweight
for me and, well, no, I’m not happy about it. It feels horrible …
While it’s obvious that many women are concerned with their body weight, they
are not the only ones who work at constructing a diet that will, whether for reasons of
health or vanity, create a desired physical form. Men diet, too, and although it is much
rarer among men than women, there is a growing body of research focused on eating
disorders such as anorexia in men (Bordo 1993:53). It seems that men are beginning to
feel increased social pressures to match up to ideals of body size and composition that are
focused on chiseled, muscular bodies (Leit et al. 2002). Just as women, especially in
their teens and twenties, will sometimes exhibit disordered eating patterns in their quest
toward thinness (Counihan 1992; Hesse-Biber et al. 1999), Mangweth et al. (2001) found
that body building young men exhibit sometimes disordered eating patterns akin to those
with a clinical diagnosis of disordered eating.
Ryan, a 33-year-old Caucasian male who has a history as a body builder and as a
personal trainer, described his dietary habits in this way:
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I’ve gotten to the point where food is just about eating nutrients. I don’t
eat junk and I don’t really care if something tastes good or not. Nutrition
is the most important factor in my food choices and price is second. I
never get cravings, except for knowing that my body is hungry, so I’ll eat
when that happens. I have a pretty standard list of things that I eat, like
protein powder with oatmeal and dried fruit, lean meats … I always
balance my meals with a bit of protein and a bit of fat with carbohydrates.
I eat 5-6 meals a day, sometimes up to 11 if I’m trying to gain weight [for
muscle-building], every 3 hours. I started body building when I was
twelve and I read a book about how to diet properly as a body builder and
I’ve eaten that way ever since. I’ve always been pretty happy about my
weight because I know how to control it through my diet, but as I’ve
gotten older, I notice that I’m gaining more through my middle section, so
I’m having to increase my activity and decrease my meals to maintain my
weight where I want it.
He also told me that the role of food in his life was like energy to keep a machine
running, rather than a source of comfort, happiness, guilt, or any other emotion that
people ascribe to their eating experiences. While I’m sure that he thinks of his dietary
habits as being very healthy, and certainly not disordered in any way, his very specific
and emotionless dietary habits sound very similar to the attribution of eating-disorder-like
behaviors among body builders (Mangweth et al. 2001).
Michael Pollan describes a condition that is emerging in the medical literature
(although not yet officially classified as an eating disorder) called orthorexia, “from the
Greek ‘ortho-’ (right and correct) + ‘exia’ (appetite) = right appetite” (2008:9). As the
participant’s statement about food equaling nutrients (rather than an experience of
emotional or physical satisfaction) would indicate, his focus is on the broken-down
constituent parts of his foods and their particular arrangement for a specific goal, not on
enjoying the actual foods that he eats (certainly, the human body has evolved to enjoy the
taste of foods, and this seems to go against such a natural human inclination). This is
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rather similar to the eating disorder anorexia, wherein individuals deny themselves of any
desires or satisfactions in their eating habits as a way of achieving a state that allows
them to feel that they are in control of their body, rather than allowing their body to
control them. (Mathieu 2005)
Certainly I do not mean to minimize the extreme forms of clinical eating disorders
or ascribe them to “normal” individuals, but I agree with Susan Bordo’s (1993) analysis
of eating disorders as situated in and resulting from the particular cultural values of the
time. Affluent Victorian women, the first to be diagnosed with anorexia in any real
numbers, were in Bordo’s view the product of their culture’s expectations regarding what
it meant to be female. In modern America, many women begin dieting from a young age
and maintain a focus on their body’s size and often on dieting for weight loss (however
successfully) throughout their lifetimes. Bordo would place these “normal” women on
the continuum that ends in the extremes of anorexia and binge eating (1993:61). (It is
important to note here that young men are becoming increasingly susceptible to social
ideals for body size and composition, and while there is far less literature dealing with
this issue in males, I would say that they also can be properly placed along this
continuum.) The result of this constant focus on weight loss and maintenance is often a
devaluation of personal appearance and a lowered satisfaction with one’s body (Gingras
2004).
So, we’ve seen a few women who have gone quite far in order to lose weight,
even so far as creating “disordered” eating habits. We’ve also seen a body and health
conscious man who we might consider as experiencing somewhat disordered eating
habits. But what about the majority of Americans, who exist in overweight or obese
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bodies, do not seem to be dieting (at least not to any great success), and don’t seem to be
overly obsessed with the nutritional content of their foods (with some exceptions, to be
sure); are they experiencing a form of disorder, too? While there is a specific type of
eating disorder known as binge eating (Heatherton and Baumeister 1991), I would argue
that the pattern of overeating to extreme overweight and morbid obesity in general is a
dysfunctional one, considering that as individuals continue to grow in size, they also
increase their risk of a number of diseases, joint issues, lethargy, and many more ill
effects. While anorexics may wish to lose weight and orthorexics may be intent on a
perfected form of a healthy diet, I don’t believe that it is the case that overeaters wish to
create an excessively large, at-risk body that is stigmatized and which leads to a decrease
in psychological well-being (Carr and Friedman 2005; Hayes and Ross 1986; Klaczynski
et al. 2004; Puhl and Brownell 2006). I believe there must be something in the culture
that causes these disordered eating habits and leads to the negative effects associated with
them.
I spoke with Allison, another Caucasian woman (30 years old) who works at a
local weight-loss center. I interviewed her both to hear about her personal food habits
and views and to ask about her work with weight-loss clients. Her personal experience
had been one of gaining some extra weight during adolescence before becoming
interested in exercise. When that happened, she lost quite a bit of weight (she also
admitted that she was eating only a bit of rice and a plain salad without dressing each
day) and liked her new body so much that she refused to listen to recommendations for
weight-gain from friends and family who were wondering if she might be anorexic or
bulimic. She shared that she filled her senior year of high school with physical
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education, weight-training, and a library work-study period during which she would read
about diet and exercise. After school each day, she would strap ankle weights on and
take long walks or runs. She admits that this might be considered somewhat of a
disorder, although she never saw it that way and didn’t see anything wrong with her thin
new body.
After adolescence, she gained a healthy amount of weight, settled into married
and career life, and had two children. It was then that she again became unhappy about
her weight (although she was always in a healthy weight range for her body type and
height). That was when she happened upon the weight-loss center. She had been
conducting a job search and this seemed like a good option considering her previous and
ongoing interest in diet and exercise. Since working with the weight-loss center, she has
lost a bit of weight, but she is still in a healthy weight range. When asked if she was
happy with her current weight, she said that she is, but that she wouldn’t mind losing
more weight. This personal experience has given her a strong motivational basis for the
sales and counseling work that she does at the weight-loss center. Just listening to her
convey the program’s details, I could see that she was passionate about what she was
selling.
I asked her about what sorts of things she notices with her clients, such as how
many of them are successful in meeting their goals through the center, how many of them
return to the center after relapsing, and any other things that stick out in her experience.
She told me that the program is very structured, but very simple, and is easy to follow in
order to see results. However, her experience has been that most people who come to the
weight loss center go through an initial period when they do not feel that they are
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experiencing the results they are hoping for. She said that this is what makes the job
difficult for her, as the reason people have trouble meeting their goals has nothing to do
with her or the program, but with their own personal behaviors while on the program. I
asked what she meant by this, and here is what she said:
Most people self-sabotage while they’re on the program … either that, or
its family or friends sabotaging them; like someone will say, ‘Its only one
cookie …’, or ‘It’s only one day off the plan …” They end up dropping
their goals and reverting to their old behaviors. Or they’re so busy taking
care of others in their lives that they put themselves on the back-burner
and by the time they get around to eating, they eat to comfort themselves
in the moment instead of eating on the plan. I’m not a psychologist, but it
seems to me that as people get closer and closer to their goal weight, they
start to sabotage themselves more often, which keeps them from ever
getting there, and if you don’t make it to your goal weight, you’re more
likely to regain everything you lost.
I asked how many people she sees meeting their goals and she guessed it was
about 50 percent, but she said that a large portion of these end up regaining the weight
and returning to start over on the program. She found this behavior to be even more of a
self-sabotage, considering that the program offers free maintenance support for a full year
if people regain up to six pounds after meeting their goal weight; she said that people will
often wait until they’ve regained 20 pounds before they come back to the center, and then
they have to pay to start the very strict program all over again.
While I would have to note that six pounds doesn’t seem like much and might be
difficult to notice for someone who isn’t paying close attention to their weight on a daily
basis with a scale, it does seem interesting that people will continue to return and pay
money to be watched and weighed and counseled, even after already going through so
much education and support in learning to eat healthier and lose weight. This seems to
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be tied up in the nature of the capitalist culture; while many will pay money to have
“experts” teach them how to lose weight, the overall nature of the culture (which informs
our lifestyle patterns) does not change from encouraging increased consumption to
encouraging moderation or self-denial.
Therefore, unless one is willing and able to go against the cultural encouragement
to increase consumption (and often against family and friends who encourage continued
“normal” consumption), they seem destined to return “to their old behaviors,” as my
informant noted about her clients. In addition, for individuals who exist in a social
network of overweight individuals, it seems even less likely that they will be able to
break out of previous patters and meet their goals in a lasting way (Christakis and Fowler
2007). For those who are willing and sufficiently able to go against the norms of
increased consumption, the result may be a slide into dysfunctional eating on the other
end of the scale because there seems to be no real orienting basis for how to eat well and
healthfully in the American culture. “Bigger, better, more” is our capitalist cultural
mantra and as good Americans, the majority fall in line with this ideology and experience
their own form of dysfunctional overeating.
In addition, the majority of Americans, who already experience greater risk of
health issues surrounding overweight and obesity, also experience a degree of social
stigmatization as a result of their body size (Carr and Friedman 2005). One theory for the
cause of this stigmatization, especially in obese individuals, is that humans recognize this
condition as abnormal and indicative of disease, and so avoid and stigmatize these
individuals due to innate “pathogen-avoidance mechanisms” (Park et al. 2007). I asked
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my informants what they thought about the issue of body size in this country. This is
what a few of them had to say:
Allison (CF30): I think body size says a lot about people. Your
appearance can make or break you in a job interview, for instance. A
manager is more likely to pick the person who is thinner and looks like
they take care of themselves than to hire the fat slob. It’s also got to affect
their self-esteem … even those that say they’re ‘comfortable’ with being
overweight … that’s not true. You can’t be comfortable that way. You
might think you’re confident when you’re overweight, but that’s because
that’s all you’ve got; when you lose the weight, you get real confidence
rather than the façade … I think Americans should be thin. We deserve to
be a thin nation and I think it’s realistic to expect that for us. I think that
people who are constantly going off about the ‘unrealistic’ images in the
media are just using that as a cop out to say that the average is the right
way to be. It’s healthier for the girl on the magazine to be too thin than for
you to be 20 pounds overweight and taking medications to save your life
because of how unhealthy you are.
David (CM29): Everyone is fat! It’s so hard to look out in society and
find healthy people anymore because the majority are overweight. I guess
it’s just because it’s so easy to be … it’s hard to deny yourself that
gratification because food is so good, so why would you want to stop
eating it? I think that your mind can trick you into thinking you’re not as
heavy as you are, though … like an extra 10 pounds; you might not notice
that you’re exchanging that weight gain for the emotional gratification that
you get from eating those foods. I still think that really overweight people
are unhealthy and lazy people. Being thinner makes you feel like you
have something up on them. Maybe it’s selfish or wrong, but it makes you
feel like you have something more than them … like a wealthy person
probably feels like they’re better in some way than a poor person, or an
educated person might feel like they have something more than an
uneducated person.
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Barbara (JF60): Even the ads for ‘large’ women seem to minimize their
girth. I’m sure morbidly obese people earn less than more ‘acceptably
proportioned’ individuals … I find myself stealing looks at very
overweight people and wondering how they got that large and how do they
see themselves. With all our awareness of how to maintain our good
health, it amazes me that so many people are ‘living large.’ I sometimes
find myself resenting grossly overweight people because I know that down
the line they’ll be putting a strain on our health care system. I’m
especially concerned about obesity in children. I’d like to see the effects
of taking vending machines that sell empty calorie foods out of businesses
and schools.
As can be seen in these comments, there is a generally negative perspective of
overweight in the minds of many Americans. The theme of discrimination towards
overweight people in the job market popped up on numerous occasions. Hunter, a 52year-old Caucasian male participant explained it this way: “as a business owner, if the
workforce was overweight, [insurance] premium increases would occur.” The most
prevalent theme regarding overweight throughout the interview data was a focus on the
ill health effects that often come along with excess weight, with many suggesting that
carrying excess weight necessarily makes someone unhealthy. Less often, my informants
shared their views that overweight people are somehow “lazy” or “slob[s].”
I then turned the questions to asking about whether my informants tend to notice
other people’s body size or shape when they encounter others. Only a couple of people
mentioned that they did not pay attention to body size in others, but even they revealed
otherwise when I probed further. I found that most people directly admitted (with
varying degrees of seeming discomfort) to focusing on body size or shape. When asked
about perceived reasons for this focus, my informants offered some very interesting,
insightful, and even scientific explanations for this behavior.
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Adam (CM33): I notice people’s body size, but I wonder about people
when they try to judge people over their body size. Does that mean that
the skinny idiots think they’re better than the fat idiots? Do the fat idiots
agree?
Kevin (JM66): Tall people do better than short people. Thin people are
more attractive than fat people. I think we all look to people’s body size.
It’s a result of the primal anticipation to fight, flight, or copulate. Tall and
thin are usually positive attributes without consideration of what might be
optimum.
Marc (AM30): I think body size is important, at least before you get
married. I tend to look at people’s body size because it does matter. A
slim and nice guy attracts a lot of attention and generates interest.
Debbie (CF37): I pay a lot of attention to body size and I’m always
comparing them to myself. I truly know that size does not matter when it
comes to a person’s identity, but I believe the media puts it out there that
you have to be thin to be beautiful.
Many participants honed in directly on their perceptions of overweight people in society,
mostly professing a concern for the person’s health or self-esteem.
Sherry (BF54): If someone is super overweight, I wish I could help them
by offering a kind word of advice concerning fitness, food intake, or
becoming exercise partners … I know they’re miserable and could be in
trouble.
Rosa (HF43): I worry about people that I see who are obese, but more
because of their health. I know that the heart, pancreas, joints, and arteries
have to work so much harder and I worry that they will have a major
health issue such as a heart attack or develop diabetes …
Next, I turned the questions to how people feel about their own body size and
shape. With this line of questioning, I found that while many individuals candidly
answered the questions directly as they were posed, many others seemed to prefer
offering a critical commentary regarding the focus on body size in America.
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Julia (CF52): I’m told I worry too much about my size and weight. I
know I judge myself and others by their size and weight even though
intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally, I know it’s wrong. I’m always
envious of how fit or trim people are … I’m worried that my concern over
weight has been a double-edged sword with my two daughters. On one
hand, they eat great, but on the other hand, they need to remind themselves
that their value as females is not about their size. They’re very spiritual,
Godly girls and try to do what is moral and pleasing to God in all ways.
Gluttony is not a trait they think is God-pleasing, so they struggle with too
much emphasis on food. I worry about that.
Karen (JF39): Body size affects every aspect of how people treat you.
I’ve only been an overweight person for about three years and I’ve noticed
that the cute clothes don’t come in my size. So, take that a step further
and society doesn’t expect or believe overweight people to be cute or need
to be. There are some very respected overweight people in society, but as
a rule, I think society passes judgment, especially toward women. ‘Why is
she so fat?’ ‘Isn’t she embarrassed or ashamed?’ ‘She must be lazy.’
When I look at others, I do a lot of comparing. I try to use the fact that
I’m almost forty as an excuse for being overweight so when I find out the
person is about my age, if they’re chubby, then I’m justified, but if they
look trim, then I’m in trouble psychologically and get mad at myself. In
this country, women are expected to be thin and in some cases, too thin.
Men can get away with a lot more.
Maya (CF30): I’m always comparing myself to other people in terms of
body size. I’m around young people a lot and many of them are still really
thin and I envy them. I have to work hard to stay in a normal range for my
weight. I’ve never been overweight, but I always feel like I am because
everything I see out there indicates that I am. It’s weird, because I’m
thinner than the majority of people that I know, but I always feel fat. I
don’t try to diet for weight loss, but it’s always in the back of my mind,
like if I lose weight, that’s icing on the cake for trying to eat a healthy diet
and exercise. I don’t really pay too much attention to the size of really
large or really thin people. I mean, I do see it, but I don’t focus on it as
much as I focus on people who are closer in size than me, almost like I’m
comparing myself to see who’s better and how I should feel about my
body.
As evidenced by these responses, many individuals, especially women, put a lot of
energy into thinking about their personal body size and shape in comparison to what they
see in the rest of society. It should be noted that the first excerpt was from a woman who
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was definitely very thin. Taken together with the third excerpt, we see that even people
of a “normal” or thin weight spend a great deal of time worrying about body size. This
societal pressure was remarked on critically by a number of participants.
Rosa (HF43): I think the people in this country make too much of a big
deal about body size … and there are people who are already emotionally
unstable that take it too hard. This creates the bulimia and anorexia …
Not all body types are made to be 100 pounds at 5’7”, so when we push
these images down their throats via the media and magazines, we’re
actually keeping them from becoming the people God created them to be.
If we could just stop worrying so much about it and focus less on being
skinny, this could help us see food for what it’s supposed to be – a
nutrition – and it could help us acknowledge that we need to push to be
healthy, for no one other than ourselves.
Elena (CF24): I think this country focuses too much on the issue of body
size. Everyone seems to have their own way of losing weight or what is
the right size versus the wrong size. It’s overwhelming. Some say that
America is back on the path to the ‘healthy, curvy woman’ being ideal,
while others are still stuck on the ideal body size being that resembling a
runway model. I think as long as you’re happy, it shouldn’t matter what
the rest of American thinks.
Cathy (CF71): There are so many young people who are anorexic these
days because body size has become way too important. Instead of
stressing proper nutrition, the society models weight loss and cosmetics
body care to these girls.
It is clear from these comments that many people felt that the American culture makes
too much over body size and should focus more on creating healthier bodies, rather than
advertising very thin bodies. From the earlier comments, we also see that many of them
“buy in” to the cultural messages regarding a thin body being a desirable one.
Overall, the general perception of overweight people as drawn from the
responses, especially from those who more closely approximated the social ideal for
weight, was that overweight individuals should lose weight and that they have the power
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to make that happen for themselves if only they choose to make more healthful choices
and stop being “fat,” “excessive,” “lazy,” “unhealthy” “slob[s].” Here, there is an
emphasis on the choice that overweight individuals are seemingly failing to exercise in
order to more closely approximate the ideal body weight. While at least one person
clarified this with by saying that she disliked overweight in people, “unless it’s
glandular” (Maria, (CF68)), there is a general feeling that overweight people have the
choice not to be that way, but that they don’t have the self-control with which to make
that “right” choice.
In America, conspicuous consumption has long been seen as a marker of success
in the consumer economy – if one is able to consume large quantities of goods then one
must be able to compete productively in the economy. It might seem, then, that the
majority of Americans should feel good about carrying all that extra weight and should
derive higher social status as a result of their girth. Indeed, in many societies, and in
America in the past, a large body was seen as a marker of success. This is certainly not
the case in the America of today and I believe we need to look again to the history of the
food and diet industries in order to explain the paradoxical development of the culture of
thin existing within the culture of increased consumption.
The Culture of Thin
We find that, as urban diets were improving during the second half of the
nineteenth century (although working families were still typically ill-nourished), upperand middle-class urbanites were beginning to experience overweight, which they flaunted
as a mark of their prosperity (McIntosh 1995:215). This was the time when many began
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criticizing the industrializing food system and warning of ill health effects to come. It
was also the time when Sylvester Graham (creator of Graham Crackers) began to spread
his message of vegetarianism and a moderate diet and when the modern science of
nutrition began to take hold (Levenstein 2003:9). As a result of this new focus on health
and constraint in food choices and quantity, the sin of gluttony began to be applied to
those who were overweight (Cassell 1995:425), ushering in a new era when thinness was
considered morally correct rather than a sign of low buying power.
Harvey Levenstein tells us, in his Paradox of Plenty, that during this period,
ideals of feminine beauty changed markedly, as the heavily corseted
matronly ideal of the late nineteenth century gave way to the more lithe
and athletic prewar Gibson Girl and then, in the early 1920s, to the
positively skinny ‘flapper.’ It was not just females who were affected.
Excess male girth came to denote sloth, immobility, and ill health rather
than substantive achievement. (2003:9)
Levenstein explains that this change brought with it a number of consequences. Even in
the years immediately following the Great Depression, a rash of diet plans came out
directed toward middle-class women, as being thin was now not only the fashion, but
increasingly an indication of “health” according to the dictates of the new nutritional
science (2003:10).
During World War I, when rationing was employed, posters across America
portrayed a thin ideal that dictated that in those times of conservation, “it was patriotic to
be thin … Public opinion at the time said people were fat because they were selfindulgent and uncaring about the troops suffering great hardships overseas. Excess
weight showed that a person was selfish, wasteful, and un-American!” (Cassell
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1995:425). During the 1950s, people began to buy low-calorie and other diet food
products to a degree never seen before. While most people didn’t think of themselves as
trying to lose weight, they were still buying a lot of diet foods to the extent that Cassell
argues, “weight control had become a normal way of life” (1995:426).
As the twentieth century pushed on, this fashion of thinness fluctuated over time,
but never so far as to stretch to an appreciation of what today are “average” bodies (size
14 for women today). In the 1980s, according to Cassell, there was an obsession with
physical fitness that symbolized taking control of one’s body and health (1995:426). In
line with this obsession, the body size of fashion magazine cover models decreased
significantly during the 1980s and 1990s, signaling a new, thinner bodily ideal for
American women (Sypeck et al. 2004). Adding this to all that came before it, along with
the increasing consumerism in American society, there resulted the explosion in diet
products that this country has seen in the past 20 years. The diet industry has become a
multi-billion dollar industry that sells the ideal through diet food products, diet pills, diet
books, exercise videos and equipment, personal trainers and nutritionists, and even in
extreme situations, surgeries to aid in weight loss. Never before in history has America
become so obsessed with weight loss, and at the same time watched more than two-thirds
of its population rise to overweight and obesity.
What the weight loss industry provides is yet another opportunity for increased
consumption; the capitalist culture sees no economic purpose in reordering the culture to
encourage decreased consumption. As a result, the capitalist food system is designed to
encourage Americans to eat ever-increasing amounts of new food products while at the
same time the equally profit-oriented diet industry encourages us to spend even more of
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our hard-earned money in the hopes of undoing some of the negative effects of food
overconsumption. However, because Americans as a whole seldom change their
personal habits toward less consumption (excepting times of major economic downturn),
the results of any dieting efforts are often fleeting or end up amounting to a new,
recurrent financial expense in their lives; another reason to work longer hours in order to
consume a new class of products in the desire to reach toward the social ideal of thinness
while operating within a culture of food overconsumption. Those who do successfully
diet (or otherwise maintain a low weight) are viewed as somehow being happier,
healthier, and more intelligent (Barker et al. 1999).
In some other societies, such as Jamaica (Sobo 1997), people consider excess
weight to be a sign of a happy individual with strong social and family ties. A person
who does not carry excess fat on their body is looked at as being a loner or someone who
is dysfunctional in some way socially; fat is considered essential to good health, both
physically and socially. The Jamaican cultural perception trains Jamaicans, just as the
American perception trains us, to pay attention to a person’s size; however, they organize
that sensory data around different conceptual focal points than do Americans and their
interpretations are consequently much different than ours.
In American, though, it seems that most people are unable to find a balanced way
to eat by looking to their social group. Those who do maintain a “normal” weight often
settle into very controlled dietary habits in spite of their inclination to enjoyment or in
spite of their body’s need for variety and substantial caloric value. The rest often go so
overboard in pleasure-seeking food consumption behavior that they end up seeking out
medical or other “expert” solutions to help them deal with the consequences. Most
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people that I interviewed noticed this as a problem in our society – the majority of
Americans experience overweight and potentially ill psychological and physical health
effects, yet a growing portion of the minority of “normal” weight individuals also
experience ill psychological effects due to their reliance on shifting ideas of nutrition and
on a thin body ideal. Even those individuals who seem rather balanced in their eating
habits and body esteem and satisfaction are still bombarded by these dichotomous
messages of the culture: consume more (food) to be happy and normal and lose weight
(with diet aids if necessary) to be happy and normal.
However, these two messages are not easy to reconcile, and those who are
perceived as being successful with doing so are seen as being somehow more special than
the majority of people who are unable to reconcile them in their lives. What this amounts
to in America is that there is a focus on the control of one’s (baser) urges as a way to
support the social values and meet the social ideals. If a person follows the rules of
“good” eating, then they can control their urges and choose the life they want to live (like
a good American). Because such action supports the individualist ideal (which has been
prominent in America since its founding), it will warrant a return in the form of greater
social prestige. Those who exercise their self-control and meet the social ideals “choose”
to epitomize the society’s values and gain greater status for their moral superiority.
According to Counihan, “class status varies directly with thinness for both men and
women, though more strongly for women. The higher one’s class, the thinner one is
likely to be” (1992:60).
Being overweight is considered to be an obvious sign of a lack of control
(appropriate choice) in eating. Because being overweight is antithesis to the ideal of the
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thin, healthy individual, overweight individuals are seen as social outcasts who choose to
deviate from the group’s standards. On the other side of the scale, those who “choose” to
be beautiful/ideal by being thin are given higher social status and power. Counihan
asserts that “by clinging to standards of thinness and control over eating, [individuals] are
supporting a hierarchical social structure and their place higher up within it” (1992).
Even those individuals who approximate the ideals of body size often feel that they are
too large compared to what they see in the popular culture (through magazines, movies,
television, and so on) and focus on dieting for weight loss as a way to conceive of
themselves as normal. This, of course, does not make them “normal,” as the average size
of Americans is much larger than what is seen in the popular culture.
This evolution of ideas about what it means to be overweight has culminated in
the belief by most Americans that (a) an individual can be whatever they choose to be,
(b) the choice to be thin and ideal is the right choice, and (c) limiting food intake in order
to be thin is an exercise in self-control and moral rectitude (Counihan 1992).
Unfortunately, when people diet to seek the ideal, they too often cut entire food types out
of their diets as a quick fix, then put the weight back on because they never changed the
fundamental flaws of their eating habits (overeating, eating lots of sweets and processed
foods instead of balancing their diets with whole foods, and so on) in the first place.
What many people are left with is a body that is constantly fluctuating between
overnourished and undernourished states.
Whether people use low-fat/low-calorie food products, diet pills, diet books, diet
counseling sessions, and so forth, the result is usually the same – quick fixes don’t tend to
work out in the long run and can lead to yo-yo dieting, which can be hard, not only on the
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physical system, but also on the psychological system, as individuals are so tied up in
meeting the ideal that they miss what the obsession is doing to their self-esteem (Gingras
et al. 2004; Klaczynski et al. 2004). In fact, the embodied experience of many of the
individuals I spoke with (especially women) seemed to be one of relative alienation, with
many resigning themselves to an inability to realize their (mind’s) intentions for a thin,
healthy body. Their experience of their body thus becomes one that is defined for them
by external cultural ideals rather than by their own unique physical experience of living
in their body and “listening” to its cues.
The question remains, why do people do this to themselves? The answer I argue
for is that the capitalist culture broadcasts the image of the thin, beautiful, successful
ideal while at the same time broadcasting the message of abundance, indulgence, and
guiltlessness which causes people to succumb to the temptation of “bad” eating.
Unfortunately, this causes many people to tend to indulge their cravings as an everyday
habit, and then later to enact sometimes drastic measures in order to try to get (back) to or
to remain in the ideal state. While it may not be surprising to see that nutrition and
weight persist as centers of attention for Americans when thinking about food, it is
important to address possible reasons for the seemingly divergent nature of the thin and
healthy ideal versus the reality. I think it is clear that while capitalism prospers based on
the cultural values that it encourages, the American people, in a number of ways, do not.
We Are What We Eat
In pre-modern societies, consumption was a function of true need for most and the
consumers themselves were in charge of producing the goods they needed. As a result,
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the goods produced correlated to their desires because those were the goods that were
needed to allow them to reproduce their families. Any excess production would have
come about as a result of leisure time, with most individuals able to produce and consume
these products equally. As societies became more complex, control of production was
removed from the consumers and a new world of excess goods available (to the wealthy)
for luxury consumption emerged. In modern society, goods are produced well beyond
basic needs and beyond the capacity of even the wealthy to consume them all. The goal
has become one of continuously increasing production in order for the owners of the
capitalist modes of production to increase their wealth and power in the system. This has
required the creation of more consumers and more needs (through clever advertising);
otherwise overproduction leads to unconsumed goods sitting around rotting, gathering
dust, and generally throwing a wrench into the capitalist enterprise. (Friedman 1994:2-3)
Let us apply this capitalist ethic to the food system. The food system has become
a playing field for capitalists to create new needs in order to ensure a steady stream of
consumers who will return again and again to buy their cheaply produced, often
processed “foods,” ensuring their ability to increase their profits and keep the system
growing. While this is all done with a public focus on the increase in choices for
consumers, what I think is clear is that these “choices” are not ones that are increasing the
health or happiness (in short, the embodied experience) of the American people. Rather,
they are hooking American individuals on an unhealthy lifestyle (not to mention the
unrealistic bodily ideals) from quite early on in their lives and bring long-term
consequences to bear on the social and ecological systems that must deal with the
products of food overconsumption and modern farming practices. I doubt that most
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Americans would see this as freedom of choice if they were to fully understand the
ramifications of such “choices.”
Of course, Americans take their perceived freedom of choice very seriously (and
have since the founding days of the country), but I would argue that capitalism has
changed the nature of this freedom and constrains it in a way that most do not realize.
According to Benjamin Barber in Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize
Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole (2007), capitalism today exists in a late phase.
Barber cites the original goals of capitalism as being based on the creation of necessary
products to suit real consumer needs and contrasts these with the goals of modern
capitalism, based instead on creating new markets and new “needs” in a world in which
goods are produced beyond the capacity of true needs. In Barber’s view, capitalism
developed as a result of the “Protestant ethic” (Weber [1905] 2003) of delayed
gratification, hard work, and moral responsibility; a system which offered real benefits
for both producers and consumers in the capitalist equation. Today, he argues, capitalism
disproportionately benefits those who have no real needs left to satisfy, which is evident
upon consideration of the inability of our affluent, overabundant, and wasteful food
system to do anything to help those who are starving throughout the world (or even those
who are starving within our own borders). Capitalism’s modern goals are rather to create
new consumers to buy the innovated products that sit on store shelves, rather than to
create products that speak to the natural needs of their consumers. We seem to have
exchanged the Protestant ethic for the ethic of consumption, based instead on instant
gratification, convenience, and lack of responsibility. (Barber 2007; Turner 2008:22-24)
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Barber focuses his lens in particular on the marketing of new needs to the young.
He offers as evidence his discussions with marketing industry insiders who share that
they are continuously creating new methods by which to influence the young (even as
young as 6 months of age, as their research shows that these pre-speech and pre-literate
children can recognize brand logos). A prime example of this is the marketing of food
products to young children using clowns, cartoon characters, and other child-friendly
devices (Robinson et al. 2007; Weber et al. 2006). Robinson et al. (2007) have shown
that preschool-aged children claim to prefer the taste of foods that have been packaged in
McDonald’s packaging, even when other foods tasted from generic packaging were
identical to those in the branded packaging. (Barber 2007)
Barber argues that the only way for capitalism to meet its modern and future
needs is by creating a more youthful and less savvy world population that will be more
susceptible to its insidious marketing practices. Marketers, he shows, are constantly
working to separate children from the parental and social “gate-keepers” that have
traditionally protected them from such predatory practices. Children, thus, are urged to
become autonomous decision-makers, even from the time they are able to begin
speaking. However, when young children start out in life with the notion that they are
able to make major decisions for themselves, he argues that they miss out on the adult
guidance that has historically ushered them through each life stage. Applying this to the
modern food system we can see that capitalism has played a major role in diluting any
semblance of an American cuisine that would have been passed down through the ages
by our cultural guides (family). Instead, we are told that we can make any choice we
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want in our food system (as long as we can afford it, of course), and that doing so means
that we are good Americans. (Barber 2007)
In modern America, choices have become about self-gratification rather than
responsibility and delayed gratification (I believe this is rather obvious throughout our
society, from overeating, to overconsumption of other goods, to credit overextension, and
a lack of personal savings). We just don’t seem to understand (or wish to listen to) the
lessons of previous generations, likely because we feel that we have so many more
options than they ever did and we see no reason to deny ourselves what we feel is
rightfully ours to choose. According to Barber, most people have never truly made an
autonomous decision; they’ve instead made manipulated and limited choices posed to
them by their new “parents,” the marketers. (Barber 2007)
While such a statement may seem rather hyperbolic, anthropology has long lent
the insight that childhood, as well as any other experience in the human life span, is
socially constructed (Robbins 2005). In fact, there is a long history of research having
been undertaken with the aim to market directly to young children and adolescents (John
1999) with the basic premise being that modern children have more personal power in
their parent-child relationship than they have in the past. According to Valkenburg and
Cantor,
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[A major] factor that explains the increase in children’s influence on
family decisions is the liberalization of parent-child relationships in
western societies. A few decades ago, child-rearing patterns were
characterized by authority, obedience, and respect … In today’s families,
however, understanding, equality, and compromise are considered to be of
paramount importance. The parent-child relationship is no longer
regulated by authority and command but rather by negotiation … In
modern western families, children’s opinions and participation in
decision-making processes are encouraged and taken very seriously. As a
result, children have never been as emancipated, articulate, and marketmature as they currently are … (2001:62)
However, in Barber’s view, these emancipated individuals have grown up branded by the
system, rather than as fully functioning, intellectually discerning, free individuals. From
an early age, children are presented with a wide variety of new products along with
carefully constructed messages that convey associations of pleasure and happiness for
those who choose to consume those products. What children don’t get through the
market is an opportunity to be educated about the real effects of consumption of those
products in their lives. Barber argues that this reality is not one of empowerment, but of
the opposite – the creation of choices without any seeming consequences is actually
disempowerment in his view, as it takes away the opportunity for the practice of rational
decision-making. (Barber 2007)
I argue that this has had a tangible effect on how we view ourselves as actors in
the society and on how we identify ourselves within the society. Jonathan Friedman
(1989) considers that in more traditional, pre-modern-consumer societies, individual
identity was defined by a person’s embeddedness in their social network. “All relations,
from those within family networks to the class structure were defined in terms of
established forms of interaction and etiquette. Who one was and how one was to act
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were related as essence to appearance” (Friedman 1989:125). By contrast, under
capitalism, the social network begins to fall apart (as it is no longer considered a
necessity to guide us in our choices) and identity becomes a function of one’s personal
choices (in particular, through consumption) and views. Sidney W. Mintz suggests that
at this stage, the “use of consumption as a means to define oneself becomes commoner;
the market emerges as a mirror of what one is, and what one can become … This new
sort of individual is truly different; the market has created her, by allowing her to buy her
new self” (1996:82).
Pasi Falk (1994) agrees that the modern self is produced in the realm of
consumption. Not only does consumption offer an individual a means of distinguishing
himself from others, but it also allows him to choose the ways in which he will be like
certain others. According to Mintz,
exercise of choice heightens the illusion of individuality … But this
individuality is conditioned by the postulation of a “group,” membership
in which is attainable among other things by certain consumptions of
sacrifice, based on inner will – on difficult choices, freely made, to
validate one’s fitness for belonging. Such a ‘group’ consists not only of
one’s family or health club or alumni association, but of an abstraction
from the pages of certain magazines and from television, generated by the
best salespersons in world history … Using products (or … not using
them) is how the imagined group is joined. By such urgings to ‘moral’
performance, individuals learn to consume with more discipline; morality,
detached from society itself, thus becomes a new consumable. (1996:8283)
Mintz suggests that “good” consumers exacerbate the movement away from the strong
social networks that Friedman speaks of. As the social networks as loci of self and
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identity construction are left behind, it is increasingly the realm of consumption, largely
created by the forces of capitalism, which offers the person a view of himself or herself.
Returning to Gehlen’s theory of institutions (Turner 2008), we might reflect on
the de-institutionalization brought on by modern consumer culture. As we have traded in
our cultural forebears in exchange for the illusion of autonomy in the growing capitalist
marketplace, we have made life ever more precarious and psychologically distressing
because we have little left to orient us besides the fact of our own consumption compared
to the consumption of others (and information concerning the worthiness of such
consumption through the media). Therefore, we are constantly in a mode of reflection
regarding many of our habits (and how our habits of consumption might define us), rather
than allowing such basic elements of our lifestyles to become taken-for-granted actions.
As a result of this de-institutionalization, the majority of the American people do not
seem to have a strong institutional awareness of how to eat well. Instead, they have a
fragmented and fluctuating awareness of “good” versus “bad” eating, defined by the
research coming out of nutritional science and filtered through media, friends, and
family.
As an alternative to an American cuisine that informs personal eating habits
through a long cultural memory (which is seen in other foodways around the world),
Americans are left to fend for themselves in determining what is good to eat. Many look
to taste, which would not have been so problematic for a hunter-gatherer, but which today
can be created and manipulated in laboratories and sold through the capitalist food
system. It could be argued that these innovated, tasty food products have become a
newly instituted cuisine among a portion of the population, especially among those who
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can not financially afford to exercise their “options,” but certainly this type of “cuisine”
does not offer the same assistance in helping a person learn to eat well as would happen
with a more traditionally instituted cuisine.
Others spend time and money to become better educated about the dictates of
nutritional science and then work to apply those teachings in their eating habits. Often,
though, people “cheat” in favor of tastier or more convenient foods, fail to properly apply
updated nutritional information to their diets, or become so strict in their attention to the
nutrient breakdown of their foods that eating becomes a highly controlled (and potentially
even dysfunctional) act, often in the pursuit of a specific bodily ideal. However, those
individuals who are not actively pursuing the social ideal of body size (or even “normal”
weight) are still subject to the same marketing and other social pressures that play out
throughout the society. In other words, just because a heavy individual “chooses” not to
lose weight does not mean that they are unaffected by the overall perception of the
society that excess fat is “unhealthy” and “unintelligent” (Barker et al. 1999). On the
contrary, due to stigmatization and discrimination, these individuals may feel the pressure
to conform even more strongly than those who are already at a low weight.
I find it very interesting that even those in the “normal” and “underweight”
categories are often continuously trying to keep their weight down. They may not be
dieting, per se, but they certainly feel strongly that they should not gain any weight, even
if that means employing very strict controls on their eating habits. However, these are
often also the individuals who seem the most disgusted with the way that the society
projects the image of thin bodies as being better than more average-sized bodies (at least
from the point of view of many of my normal-weight informants). It is as if they want to
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stand against the cultural values, but are unwilling to put themselves in a position of
decreased status as a result. Terence Turner addressed this issue in describing the
society’s actions on the body in “The Social Skin”:
The uneasy ambivalence of the man of sense, whose ‘sense’ consists in
conforming to a practice he laughs at, is the consciousness of a truth that
seems as scandalous today as it did in the eighteenth century. This is that
culture, which we neither understand nor control, is not only the necessary
medium through which we communicate our social status, attitudes,
desires, beliefs and ideas (in short, our identities) to others, but also to a
large extent constitutes these identities, in ways with which we are
compelled to conform regardless of our self-consciousness or even our
contempt. (2007:84)
Here, Turner tells us that culture is what creates who we are and that we do not
really have any say in the matter. Culture first arose in humans as a way to live well and
survive more successfully based on accumulated knowledge and group practice. It
seems, though, as Turner appears to suggest, that over time, cultures have the potential to
become arbitrary forces in our lives, causing us to do or feel things that our rational
thoughts might tell us are unnecessary and silly (or even dangerous), but that we still are
compelled to go along with because it is the only way we know how to be. I would argue
that this is what modern consumer capitalism has done in America (and is continuing to
do in capitalist and developing areas throughout the world).
Consumer capitalism has become the dominant force in the American culture by
capitalizing on the American values of individual freedom and choice and on the human
need to identify oneself within a society. Certainly, there are individuals who strive to
break away from the social norms (such as purchasing organic foods), but even they do
so within the system that has made those options available. In this case, those with
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additional buying power do have additional choices, but overall, the culture as currently
constituted is offering its members a fair measure of disease, rather than enhanced
survival and a better life. The question remains, why do individuals allow this to
happen? The answer is that individuals don’t exist in a vacuum in which they create their
identities and beliefs of self based on their own arbitrary thoughts; rather, people have the
need to belong within their social groups and are often blind to negative effects of the
culture that acts on that need and mediates their agency.
Identity and sense of self in America have become very much a function of our
outward displays of consumption and of body size. Those who consume the “right”
goods (and display them properly to be sure everyone knows they have consumed them),
gain higher status within the groups they wish to identify with. On the other hand, the
body has also become a visual signifier of “right” consumption in the American culture
and has a strong effect on how one feels they have been able to meet the American values
of hard work and individual choice (in this case, denial of desires for food) as well as the
social ideals of beauty (to be thin). Those who match up to the socially defined ideals for
consumption and body size are those who derive the highest status.
In their review of literature regarding “The Body Beautiful,” Erica Reischer and
Kathryn Koo tell us that the body is the primary measure of one’s agency within society.
Societies throughout the world use bodily modification for a variety of ends, from
registering “participation in a social group, to [claiming] an identity in opposition to a
social group, to [signaling] a significant change in social status – but the overarching
theme and primary end of most body work is the pursuit and attainment of beauty,
however it may be defined” (2004:297). Here, it is suggested that the body becomes a
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canvas on which the social values are painted and also the medium through which the
individual self expresses its unique identity by either reifying the social values that press
upon it or by denying those values and becoming a visual indication of “immoral” action.
We all know what it means in our culture to see someone who stands in stark contrast to
the social ideals for the body, as we have all been trained by the culture to be experts in
recognizing such symbolic meaning. On the other hand, those who display an ideal body
indicate that they choose to enact some form of control over the body in order to signal
their cooperation with the dominant ideology. (Reischer and Koo 2004)
Such values have a mediating effect on our views of our individual selves as we
look out into the society for indications that we are “normal” (in the sense of being able
to locate ourselves as part of our larger social groups). If we see something that is
entirely different from what we are, then we experience a dissonant state that may
pressure us to seek more conformity. For heavy individuals who look out and see the
thin ideal projected everywhere, the cognitive dissonance that results often has a negative
psychological effect that could lead potentially to a focus on weight loss or a loss of
control and a movement toward compulsive eating (Heatherton and Baumeister 1991).
On the other end, as purposefully thin individuals look out and see a society filled with
abundance and pleasure that they are denying themselves, there may also be cognitive
dissonance as they wish that they, too, could partake in such enjoyment in their lives. Of
course, these two possibilities are not the only ones, but they serve to illustrate the
paradoxical values encouraged by our culture and their potential for creating a conflicted
population.
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Certainly, food consumption is not the only factor that shapes our bodies
(exercise, diet aids, and even surgery can also be used in exchange for moderation of
food habits), but because it is the most primal form of consumption, I find it to be a
useful tool for reflecting on the modern capitalist consumer culture. Whether we eat to
excess and display the value of increased consumption (and learn to accept the fact of
decreased social status) or we discipline our eating to display the cultural ideal of the
beautiful body (and learn to accept the potential decrease in enjoyment through indulgent
consumption), Americans partially constitute their sense of personal self and identity
through their food consumption habits.
What and how we consume food, just as with other aspects of consumption in our
lifestyles, says much about how we choose to define ourselves within our society.
However, food consumption, in one particular way, becomes much more complicated
than other forms of consumption. We derive some measure of moral superiority and
higher status through increased consumption in most other areas of life. However, with
food consumption, we are expected to moderate our consumption (without any assistance
from the capitalist food system) in order to seek a slim bodily ideal. This makes it very
difficult for individuals in a culture of rampant consumption to choose to decrease
consumption in the one area that is so basic and necessary.
Eating is an act that is imbued with so many layers of meaning, from basic
survival, to feelings of nurturing and social bonding, to security as a result of abundance.
This is not something that is easy to deny and constrain for most humans, especially
when the dominant culture encourages them to consume in ever-increasing amounts. The
result is a population in which the majority experience overweight and obesity which
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bring along with them a number of potential ill health effects; effects, which in
themselves, have the potential to mediate the embodied experience of even the most welladjusted overweight individuals. Another result is that the minority of the population
which is able to attain the thin ideal (or at least get close to it) must often create discipline
in their dietary habits based on the modern teachings of nutritional science, which by its
nature, has turned food into nutrients to be counted and controlled, rather than allowing
food to be a source of indulgent enjoyment.
I believe that capitalism has been very successful in becoming the dominant force
in the American culture, and while Americans seem to have prospered as a result
(increased standard of living, increased variety, abundance of unnecessary leisure goods
available to a large quantity of people), they have also begun to experience a number of
negative effects, particularly through the loss of a traditional culture to guide them in
their decision making. In our food habits, we have lost the accumulated cultural
knowledge that was once passed down through an institutionalized and health-promoting
cuisine. In its place, we get to choose from thousands of new food products that are
created every day, and for which we are the testing ground for their effects. The actions
of these foods on our bodies change our embodied experience in the society, which has a
strong effect on our sense of agency and our views of our selves.
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CHAPTER SIX
Conclusion
In modern America, capitalism is the predominant cultural value that structures
the food system. The current American relationship to food is strained, at best, as twothirds of Americans experience overweight and obesity and are at risk for a number of
serious health complications. An understanding of the historic and political-economic
aspects of the American food system is necessary to address the effects of our modern
food habits on our ideas of our selves. Through linking what people eat, how they choose
what they eat, and the effects of these choices on their embodied experiences, this thesis
has addressed the way in which the American culture influences not only our food
consumption habits, but also the views we take of our selves.
For this thesis, I interviewed or surveyed 63 people in central Florida regarding
what they eat, where they get their information about what to eat, and their experiences in
the American foodways. What I found was that the majority of individuals look at food
as being either “good” or “bad” based on the nutritional content of the foods. However,
while most people looked to the nutritional value of the various foods available to them,
the majority continued to eat many foods that they considered to be “bad” for them.
There was typically a sense of guilt experienced after having eaten in this way, as they
considered this sort of indulgence to go against their larger dietary or bodily goals.
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Most of my informants had changed their dietary habits since their childhoods,
with the majority citing an increase in the healthfulness of their diets as the motivation
for and result of these changes. Only two individuals cited relying on their family
traditions for deciding how to eat, with the overwhelming majority gathering their
information about “good” versus “bad” eating through a variety of media sources
reporting on information from nutritional science; this information was often translated
and shared through family members and friends. Most individuals attempt to include
healthy foods in their daily diets, but the primary cited factor in food choices was taste,
with convenience and price as mediating factors. This means that, while nutrition is
considered to be an important overall factor in dietary habits, most people do not make
their day-to-day meal choices based on that factor. As a result, many people eat a diet
heavy in tasty, cheap, convenient processed foods, rather than a healthier diet based on
whole foods (which are often more expensive, take more time to prepare, and require
some cooking expertise in order to prepare in a way that is tasty).
Eighty-six percent of individuals say that they read nutrition labels on foods to see
if they are healthy before purchasing them. However, this does not mean that products
deemed to be “unhealthy” are not purchased or consumed. In fact, based on two
observation periods during which I accompanied individuals to the grocery store for
shopping, nutrition labels were ignored in favor of purchasing new products that looked
to be tasty and which were not very expensive. These individuals made a number of
product choices based on label advertisements, even though they said that they did not
pay attention to label advertisements when purchasing foods.
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The food system has evolved in the past 150-or-so years to a state where product
innovation is a goal for most food companies, and as a result, processed foods account for
the majority of food sales. This is typically not positive for consumer health, but as new
information comes out through nutritional science (and is disseminated through various
media sources) food companies find ways to create new products that are able to claim to
be healthier than traditional products (still sold alongside the new-and-improved
products) by using the jargon of nutritional science. Michael Pollan (2008) has applied
the term “nutritionism” to the growing focus on the nutrient content of foods, rather than
on the foods themselves. The capitalist food enterprise has used this culture of
nutritionism to market new products to consumers who are looking for things like “added
fiber” or foods “rich in omega-3s.”
Many participants look to alternative nutritional information in order to find out
what they believe to be the most up-to-date and honest information about how to eat.
Many of these individuals feel that eating “all natural” or “organic” foods is best (even
though this includes organic processed foods), but the consensus among most is that
organic foods are simply too expensive for the majority of Americans. Some of the
reasons that have been posed regarding the price of organics includes that production is
decreased when using organic methods (this has not been found to be true) and that in
general, the demand for these foods remains low (and therefore price remains high)
because there is no discernable difference between traditionally produced and organically
produced foods (there is some research to the contrary, suggesting that organics have
higher levels of nutrients and other favorable characteristics). Additionally, the United
States’ government’s practice of offering price supports to large industrial farms and
112
denying them to small organic farms causes the price of organic foods to remain high
while the ingredients used in processed, innovated foods remains far lower. This makes
it difficult for even knowledgeable consumers to make the choices they would prefer to
make.
When asked if they were happy with their eating habits, less than half of my
informants said that they were happy, with a full 72 percent saying that they would be
happy to lose some weight. Even in those of a “normal” weight, there is a focus on the
choice to eat in a way that allows individual realization of the social ideals of body size
and health. Consequently, control is a central theme in the thoughts of Americans about
food. Those who control their urges to overeat “bad” foods gain a feeling of moral
superiority and are awarded higher social status as a result of their efforts to be good
American individualists by choosing to approximate the social ideals of body size.
The majority of the American population is overweight and most people seek to
emulate the thin ideal. As a result, many Americans use a variety of diet strategies or
products that they are exposed to through various media and peer sources and then often
incorporate that information into their ideas about what a healthy diet is. Unfortunately,
quick fix diets are not meant for use in the long term, and many of them do not work for
the long term, either. In general, Americans find it difficult to successfully lose weight
and then maintain it (they typically regain what they’ve lost) because the culture that
created their overweight bodies in the first place has not changed. The result is often yoyo dieting that can damage both the physical and mental health of persons that subscribe
to these methods.
113
As much of our information about food, nutrition, and body size ideals comes
from the various media, future research should focus on the way in which advertising (in
its various forms) effects an individual’s ideas about these subjects. I argue that as
people instinctively want to be a part of their social group, media images that consistently
portray thin people as average cause the group to subconsciously assess this ideal image
as the average reality and in turn cause individuals to seek acceptance into the social
group through weight loss. This may be considered tolerable for truly overweight
individuals who should lose weight for health reasons, but for those who are a few sizes
over the ideal portrayed by fashion models (but still far below the average size), for
example, and find themselves to be “fat” in comparison to the ideal, the result could be a
damage to the self esteem at the least, and damage to the body if they feel the necessity to
enact drastic measures (including adopting extremely controlled or dysfunctional eating
habits) in order to meet the false average. While the focus regarding the effects of a
bodily ideal has largely been on women in American society, it also applies to men, as
society has broadcast a particular body type that they also attempt to measure themselves
against. This is another area for which additional research is warranted.
While the American human seems to have a great measure of freedom of choice
in the modern food marketplace, the fact remains that these choices are largely
constrained by the marketplace itself. Individuals do not have complete freedom of
choice, even when they have a depth of knowledge regarding a healthy diet and are
willing to apply it in their daily food choices. Instead, they are constrained in their
choices by availability, price, need for convenience, and government policies which
affect the former (and which are mediated by industry lobbyists (Nestle 2002)). The
114
industrial capitalist food system structures the choices of its consumers, first creating the
products and then manufacturing a sense of need for these products through advertising
and skillful recommendations from (often industry-funded) nutritional “experts” in the
popular cultural media.
As people who take individual freedom of choice very seriously as a cultural
value, we revel in this perceived expansion of choices, rather than looking to previous
generations for our knowledge of how to eat well. I believe that this movement away
from a real cuisine in America has brought with it a host of problems, not the least of
which is the fact that modern Americans have little reference for how to eat well in order
to maintain a healthy balance in their lives. The few who are able to do so are often those
who have grown up in a family that adhered to a traditional cuisine (such as Italian,
Asian, and so on).
This has had a major effect on how we view ourselves as actors in our society.
First, we must choose what to eat within the constraints of our personal abilities to
consume. Then, we must find a balance for how to eat that allows us to create our bodies
in the image of the cultural ideal. The fact that the majority of people are overweight
shows that the culture has not provided a strong orienting basis for how to eat in this
balanced way. Those who do measure down to the ideal often take on somewhat
dysfunctional habits in their quest to maintain a low body weight. As the embodied
experience of individuals is mediated by their food’s effects on their bodies (both in
terms of any ill health they might experience and in terms of the societal response to their
body’s size), the subjective experience of self and identity are shaped by one’s food
consumption habits. Just as we partially construct our identities through our consumption
115
of all forms of goods, so too do we create our selves through our food consumption
habits. Therefore, in this way, we truly are what we eat.
116
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