After We Read McGee (Intro to Gastronomy: Journal 1)

Reading McGee’s On Food and Cooking got me thinking about how most Americans know and freely use terms such as “antioxidant,” “carbohydrate,” and “saturated and trans fats.” If you were to ask them what those terms really meant, though, all they could probably tell you is that certain words mean “bad for you” and others mean “buy more Vitamin Water.”

My family lives just outside of New York City where trans fats have recently been banned entirely. Civil liberties issues not withstanding, the whole city seems to support the move regardless of a general ignorance of the mechanics that apparently make the fats so egregious.

I support healthier eating but I also think that it must include more intelligent eating. As Americans become more aware of different ingredients and cuisines, they should start to look more deeply at what they are consuming rather than taking the claims on their cereal boxes at face value.

I am currently also reading Barry Glassner’s The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food Is Wrong. In his book, Glassner points out that a lot of the food studies that Americans take as established fact (oat bran decreases cholesterol, soy helps your heart, etc) are based on incredibly small study samples which, by nature of design, (it is very hard to have people control what they eat and to report accurately on it) are likely to have much greater statistical error than the FDA would like to admit. Most Americans are also unaware that much of the “good for you” information that product labels purport is the result of large agricultural corporations lobbying the FDA. For these concerns, profit, rather than public health, is a primary motive.

An excellent example of this is the recent appearance of soy-based foods marketed towards women as containing “isoflavones” which the products, rather ambiguously, say are “Great for Women’s Health!” Most Americans believe soy to be a miracle food. They probably do not realize however, that a great deal of their product information comes from directly from the elephantine soy industry whose lobbyists only have to present a certain number of case studies to the FDA in order to garner a particular product label. According to Glassner, there is virtually no way to police which studies they choose to present and which studies they choose to ignore. It seems fairly unlikely that detracting evidence would be included in any lobbying material. Most Americans assume soy to be a wonder food. They are unaware, however, that several studies have demonstrated that in high doses (which Americans are starting to consume) soy can negatively affect brain aging and have hormonal effects which demonstrate a certain level of carcinogenicity.

Perhaps, if more people took to reading books like McGee’s and Glassner’s they would take a greater interest in what the labels on their foods were really telling them. Maybe, they’ll learn what an antioxidant actually does. Hopefully, as more and more Americans become more interested in cuisine and the culinary arts, those days are not too far off.