• Food for Thought

• Developing Creativity

Like clockwork, diet books appear on the bookstore displays at the beginning of the New Year. Losing weight is the most common resolution made and broken every year. Recently I read the best advice on eating: Eat food. That seems obvious, but Michael Pollan, the author of In Defense of Food, clarifies with his great grandmother rule: Don’t eat anything that your great grandmother would not recognize as food.

Quickly that rule eliminates all sorts of prepared, processed and fabricated foods. Reducing what you eat to basic food products like meat, fish, poultry, fruits, and vegetables can cut out lots of preservatives, additives, and calories. On the other hand, I feel uneasy when I hear people talking about food as if they are selecting their meals from the periodic table of elements. Eating to get calcium or zinc, or potassium takes the pleasure out of food. I recall Meryl Streep re-enacting Julia Child’s delight in eating French food in the film Julie and Julia. I think that’s more of what we in Louisiana experience…the joy of eating, and it shows. We have one of the highest obesity rates in the country; however, our wonderful food may not be the only reason why.

Twenty-three million Americans have limited access to affordable, quality food because they live in “food deserts,” low income urban or rural areas more than a mile from a supermarket, according to Let’s Move, First-Lady Michelle Obama anti-obesity initiative. A report from Tulane University confirms that in Louisiana low income minority and rural communities statewide, “it is easy to buy soda or fast food while it is hard to find fresh fruits and vegetables.” These areas have access primarily to smaller corner stores that stock limited produce (Health Food Study). Food deserts in your area can be identified using the interactive map, called the Food Environment Atlas.

The President’s administration has announced that it will invest $400 million a year to bring supermarkets to underserved areas; help smaller stores carry healthier food options; and bring farmers markets and fresh foods into underserved communities to help eliminate food deserts within seven years. More information about starting a farmers market can be found at the Farmers Market Coalition.

In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle author Barbara Kingsolver writes of her year-long effort to eat only food that she, herself, has grown or raised or that has been grown or raised by local farmers and producers in her area. Not an easy task and not one that many of us would assume. She also thinks that generating food locally leads to healthier eating and could have an impact on national energy consumption. “Each food item in a typical U.S. meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles,” she claims. Could we help reduce our country’s dependence on oil by reducing our demand for foods grown outside of our area and out of season? She thinks so.

In some of the scariest parts of her book, Kingsolver describes how tenuous our food production line is. Our dependence on a few massive corporate farms growing few varieties and the marketing of predominantly hybrid seeds that produce inconsistent products in the next generation of seeds increase our potential for catastrophic crop failures and widespread starvation similar to that of the Irish potato famine. In that light, the preservation of non-hybrid heirloom seeds, seed exchanges, and Norway’s “doomsday” seed vault begin to make more sense.

If you are looking for basic nutritional information, you may want to check LPB’s programs to fight childhood obesity. The Louisiana Obesity Council also has links to many prevention strategies that you may want to review.

All of this should give you food for thought ! What do you think?

Ellen W. Wydra, Ph.D.
Director, Educational Television and Technology

We want to know your opinion! Click here if comment box area below is not visible!