The Curvy Nerd

The concept of food deserts — areas where a significant population, usually low-income, has no access to supermarkets and/or affordable, healthy food — came up in Monday’s post about the cost of junk food vs. healthy food. It’s easy, especially for those of us who live in cities and read blogs using our high speed Internet access, to come up with seemingly simple solutions to obesity, poor health and nutrition. Go to the grocery! Buy cheap veggies! Cook!

But what if you can’t? If you have no access to a grocery store (but MacDonalds… or 7/11 are a two minute walk), or your family can’t afford a vehicle (to get to a grocery store)? I think many of us — myself included — mean well when we engage in discourse about healthy living, but take for granted that we have access to supermarkets, Trader Joes, Whole Foods, vehicles, etc. Someone like me has the luxury of paying a higher rent for an apartment within walking distance of two grocery stores — my not having a vehicle doesn’t hinder access to healthy food. For many, it does.

Here are some factoids I picked up from this report from the USDA:

• Of all households in the United States, 2.3 million, or 2.2 percent, live more than a mile from a supermarket and do not have access to a vehicle.
• 23.5 million people live in low-income areas (areas where more than 40 percent of the population has income at or below 200 percent of Federal poverty thresholds) that are more than 1 mile from a supermarket or large grocery store. (not all of these do not have vehicles)
• Urban core areas with limited food access are characterized by higher levels of racial segregation and greater income inequality. In small-town and rural areas with limited food access, the lack of transportation infrastructure is the most defining characteristic.
• A key concern for people who live in areas with limited access is that they rely on small grocery or convenience stores that may not carry all the foods needed for a healthy diet and that may offer these foods and other food at higher prices.

This is just the tip of the iceberg – it’s a complex issue, but one that does shed some light on why so many people — especially in the low income bracket — struggle with nutrition, health and obesity. For many, the solution isn’t “go to the grocery” or “cook” because that simply isn’t possible. Look at this map of official food deserts (no car and no grocery within one mile):

What are some of the solutions? (these are just ideas I’m throwing out, none of which are “simple” — bring up your own in the comments!)

• fewer government subsides of corn & soy product, which are primarily used in processed foods and contribute to making them so cheap
• increased government subsidies of farms that produce fruits & vegetables meant to be consumed by the general public (ie: not subsidizing a corn farm when the corn is turned into high fructose corn syrup). This would (hopefully) decrease prices of fruits/vegetable, when they are available
• make organic/local fruit/veg delivery services affordable to those living in food deserts for whom transportation is an issue (what good is a grocery store if your family can’t afford to own a vehicle?)
• invest in healthy school lunch programs/distributing good foods to children at schools in food deserts.
• An incentive program to large supermarkets to set-up shop in food desert areas OR tax breaks to smaller markets so they don’t have to pass on high costs to the consumer (nothing wrong with a small market — but when they’re the only source in a food desert, they can jack up prices)

So I would love to discuss food deserts, especially from any readers who live in one or have lived in one. Have you seen a solution or program implemented that helped bring good food and nutrition to a poor area?

Last week, The New York Times published an editorial begging the question of whether junk food really is cheaper than good, healthy food. It’s conclusion was more or less no, that buying ingredients at a grocery store and cooking at home will always be more cost effective than picking up fast food. We must teach people to cook, and address the problem of those without ready access to grocery stores.

On this point, I do agree. Particularly when one is feeding a family, it will always make more sense to buy ingredients, such as chicken, pasta, rice, etc. and cook in bulk at home. If you’re a smart shopper, you can buy good ingredients and cook healthful meals — even without the aid of a Trader Joes or Whole Foods… and the pocketbook to shop at either. Generally, I recommend the article — pertaining the specifics the author argues, I cannot find fault. However, it’s the point the article DOESN’T address that I find more interesting. The article opens thusly:

THE “fact” that junk food is cheaper than real food has become a reflexive part of how we explain why so many Americans are overweight, particularly those with lower incomes. I frequently read confident statements like, “when a bag of chips is cheaper than a head of broccoli …” or “it’s more affordable to feed a family of four at McDonald’s than to cook a healthy meal for them at home.”

Emphasis is mine — this is the item the article doesn’t really address. Really, what that statement should be is “when a package of ramen costs less than a banana.” Because it DOES. Ditto for products such as Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. The article continues (after rightfully skewering the fast food, ie MacDonalds, is cheaper argument):

THE fact is that most people can afford real food. Even the nearly 50 million Americans who are enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as food stamps) receive about $5 per person per day, which is far from ideal but enough to survive. So we have to assume that money alone doesn’t guide decisions about what to eat.

The alternative to soda is water, and the alternative to junk food is not grass-fed beef and greens from a trendy farmers’ market, but anything other than junk food: rice, grains, pasta, beans, fresh vegetables, canned vegetables, frozen vegetables, meat, fish, poultry, dairy products, bread, peanut butter, a thousand other things cooked at home — in almost every case a far superior alternative.

Kudos for not trotting out the yuppie argument about grass fed beef and whole foods, but what is “real” food?  Pasta… hello Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and ramen noodles. Both are packed full of artificial flavors, chemicals and salt… but they’re CHEAP and one can buy them at the grocery store and “cook” them at home! (add to this list also: flavored pasta/rice packs, Hamburger Helper and any other number of “quick” meals that primarily contain additives, chemicals and contain negligible nutrition). Rice & grains — cheap. But so is the gravy, the sauces, etc. that people will pair with them (and they will likely buy the cheap white variety, not the actually-good-for-you brown rice alternative). And this does not even take into account all the fatty, terrible ways one can prepare “real food” — what good is a piece of chicken if it’s been in the deep-fryer, or a bunch of green beans coated in butter, bread crumbs and gravy? Grocery store shelves are packed full of terrible, cheap food… and even when Americans do cook, so many have no clue how to cook “real food” in a healthy way. (and, yes, the BEST foods to eat ARE the most expensive)

Also a favorite: the author exalts the cooking of a chicken at home, and all the healthy calories one will get… from cooking it with olive oil. But, if you’re living in a food desert, living on food stamps — $5 a person, per day — are you going to buy the $28 bottle of olive oil (even the $10 is steep for someone pinching pennies) or buy actual food? Tell me how many people who are poor and trying to get “bang for their buck” are really going to invest in olive oil? No, they will pick up the cheapest oil cooking substance you can buy — vegetable oil and other not-very-healthy varieties… or just cook with butter.

The cheapest items at the grocery store win, and nine times out of ten, those items are the shittiest.  How many of us lived off ramen noodles, mac & cheese and pb&j in college?  They are the over-produced stuff of the corporate food giants and, yes, Virginia, junk food IS cheaper. So are many, many products that are stuffed full of high fructose corn syrup and other corn-derived (and fat-making) products — thank you government subsidies of the corn industry. So while cooking > fast food is a wholly sound argument, you can just point people towards grocery stores and cooking and expect the problem to go away.

Ultimately, we agree on some of the other issues, even if our author ignores that not all cooking is created equal:

Furthermore, the engineering behind hyperprocessed food makes it virtually addictive. A 2009 study by the Scripps Research Institute indicates that overconsumption of fast food “triggers addiction-like neuroaddictive responses” in the brain, making it harder to trigger the release of dopamine. In other words the more fast food we eat, the more we need to give us pleasure; thus the report suggests that the same mechanisms underlie drug addiction and obesity.

This addiction to processed food is the result of decades of vision and hard work by the industry. For 50 years, says David A. Kessler, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and author of “The End of Overeating,” companies strove to create food that was “energy-dense, highly stimulating, and went down easy. They put it on every street corner and made it mobile, and they made it socially acceptable to eat anytime and anyplace. They created a food carnival, and that’s where we live. And if you’re used to self-stimulation every 15 minutes, well, you can’t run into the kitchen to satisfy that urge.”

And this, plus pervasive food advertising, contributes to the problem of cheap, non-nutritious, readily available food… in grocery stores, that one can “cook.” There IS a disparity in nutrition and health between those with ready access to funds and those without, and not just because poorer demographics allegedly eat at MacDonalds every day. The answer isn’t simple — ie: go to the grocery store and cook — but complicated and multi-faceted. The piece scratches the surface (very well), but we have to challenge food subsidies and food advertising (and truth in advertising!) if we want to see any real change. We live in a world where salt-laden, reconstituted pasta  costs less than fresh pasta + fresh tomatoes, basil & olive oil. Where soft drinks cost less than water.  Where people choose potato chips for snacks, not carrot sticks. There’s a lot to work on.

I want to hear your thoughts! 

(and for the record, I really, really liked the NYT article… just felt it suffered from upper middle classism just a smidge — the sweet assumption that the average person can simply walk into a grocery store and make affordable, healthy choices for cooking. Come on. Nine times of ten I would choose ramen & mac & cheese… and I know better!)

Artificial sweetener is everywhere. Calorie conscious individuals, such as myself, long gave up sugar — it’s how many calories for how many tablespoons? No thanks! — not wanting to “waste points” on sweet tea, sugar in coffee, etc.  And why drink sugar when the alternative was even sweeter, and advertised as zero calories? ZERO!

But the price we pay for our zero calorie sugar hit is a high one. I always knew, in the back of my mind, that consuming chemical substances, or really anything with “artificial” in the title, was risky business. As I like to say: something is going to kill me. Might as well be Diet Coke and coffee.

What I never quite connected was how artificial sweetener might be adversely affecting my weight. Because a chemical substance, naturally, is not food. And it’s not nutritious.

Last month, I read The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Hormone Weight Loss and as much as I abhor fad diets (and Idiot’s Guide books), I found many of the points fascinating and illuminating. There’s a complex interplay between what we eat/drink/do and how our body processes them and signals hormones. A lot of hormones related to weight loss/body can be and are messed up by processed foods, poor diet, stress, toxins etc.

And artificial sweeteners are, simply, bad news. Aspartame, specifically, more commonly known as Equal (at least as far as little packets are concerned), breaks down into several chemical substances that our bodies may not react well to, including methanol, formaldehyde and then formic acid. Yes, aspartame is ‘safe,’ but it can and does interfere with hormones — and that can lead to weight GAIN, despite the “zero calorie” benefit.   Subconsciously, I knew this. I knew I was ingesting chemicals, and I was OK with it. But I thought it was helping me maintain a healthy weight. But if it’s actively keeping me from losing weight? Deal breaker.

So I’ve decided to wean myself off Aspartame. My coffee habit has escalated to 1-2 cups a day (and 2 Equal packets per cup), plus I drink diet soda 2-3 times a week — that’s more aspartame than I am comfortable with, and certainly enough to potentially hinder my weight loss efforts. What good is eating “healthy,” including not consuming high fructose corn syrup, if I’m still ingesting something that messes up my body’s natural process? Yes, yes, I’m going from Aspartame to Splenda, but it’s a long process. Sucralose, aka Splenda, also can affect hormones and weight loss, but it is a “lesser of evils” compared to Aspartame, chemically. My next step is to switch from Splenda to something else — most likely Sugar in the Raw (but I’m still researching).

This is the first but not the last change that I will make inspired by the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Hormone Weight Loss. Yes, I’m vaguely embarrassed to follow advice from a book from the Complete Idiot’s series, but the base logic of hormone weight loss theory makes sense to me — if you fill your body with chemicals (plus toxins, which is a whole other topic), stress it out and eat crappy food, your hormones (including insulin… hellooooo diabetes!) will get off-kilter and that messes with metabolism. I’m doing a lot of things right, and was doing so before I read the book (I am not, nor have I ever been, pre-diabetic, thankfully!), but I can identify a few areas where it’s worth experimenting and making changes.

Watch this space!

Are you hooked on artificial sweeteners? Or, have you successfully ditched them? Let’s talk sugar!

The USDA and Michelle Obama have unveiled a new guideline for daily nutrition. Buh-bye bread-heavy Food Pyramid, helloooo “My Plate.”

From ChooseMyPlate.com:

Balancing Calories

• Enjoy your food, but eat less.
• Avoid oversized portions.

Foods to Increase

• Make half your plate fruits and vegetables.
• Make at least half your grains whole grains.
• Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk.

Foods to Reduce

• Compare sodium in foods like soup, bread, and frozen meals ― and choose the foods with lower numbers.
• Drink water instead of sugary drinks.

Wellllllll, not so fast, USDA! Can I just say: don’t hate on whole milk! If you’re promoting these guidelines for kids & women, a little whole milk goes a LONG way. Fat in milk = good fat, in moderation. I may be a fat kid, but I’m also a woman with fantabulous birthing hips (= healthy fat, once slimmer), and great teeth. Thanks, lifetime of whole milk! (though in small quantities – 1-2 servings a week)

Some pro-whole milk links:

Whole milk increases fertility!

Kids should whole milk until at least age 2, for healthy brain/nerve development

A pro-whole milk “natural fats” blog post

If you’re steadfastly anti-whole milk (many abhor the taste), at least drink 2%. I find pushing only fat free and 1% slightly dubious, especially for children. If you’re going to have a Milk Platform — go anti-flavored milk! Now THERE’S where we have a problem with children and milk.

Also, call me a skepticy-skeptic, but I think there’s still a bit too much emphasis on grains. Sure, you can ask people to “at least make them whole grains,” but come on – will that actually happen? Methinks schools will still insist on giving kids two servings of bread at lunch, which is CRAY-CRAY. I would have pushed more protein.

Of course, I don’t follow “food guidelines” such as this. Mostly, the question is how this new plate will effect kids and school lunch programs (to my mind). What do you think? Improvement on the Pyramid? A useless gesture? Emphasis in the wrong places?

Let’s discuss!