Less, and Less Often
Friday, June 30th, 2006 by RLRFrom The NY Times
By Judith Warner
So Muhammad Ali has now gotten into the anti-child-obesity business, with a new line of utterly vile-sounding snacks aimed at weaning our nation’s youth off cookies, chips and other tasty treats and turning them on to vitamin- and fiber-fortified ersatz “finger foods” with flavors like “coleslaw” and “buffalo wings.”
I wish him the best of luck.
But, at the risk of somehow sounding less than enthusiastic about fighting youth fat, I would like to hazard the suggestion that replacing good-tasting-yet-unhealthy food with unappealing bite-sized morsels of virtue is probably not the best way to combat overeating.
For one thing, there’s no surer way to set off a craving for triple fudge brownies in kids (or adults) than to feed them a steady stream of diet foods. Therapists who work with compulsive overeaters have taught for decades that there’s nothing worse for people with appetite control issues than banning certain foods or labeling them as “bad.”
An excessive focus on “good” vs. “bad” food has its place, too, in the development of eating disorders, a much less frequent, but — in the case of anorexia nervosa — no less deadly problem than child obesity. And at the very least, the good-bad dichotomy feeds the joyless food-related fussiness (no gluten, no dairy, no pleasure — ever) that’s so prevalent among parents — and that really ought, as a public mental health measure, to be targeted for extinction in the next generation.
Pushing processed diet snacks also doesn’t take us beyond an essential problem in the American culture of food, which is that snacking, in and of itself, may be quite a bad thing.
When I lived in France and had my children there, my pediatrician gave me exactly one admonition regarding their feeding: “Don’t let them eat cookies all day.” The emphasis wasn’t on “cookies” but on “all day” — I guess he’d seen enough American expat moms toting around their sad little baggies of Cheerios to know that of which he spoke.
As the author Mireille Guiliano has preached so best-sellingly, French people don’t get fat. (Or at least they don’t when they follow their traditional dietary routines; in recent years, an increased use of convenience foods and decrease in family meals has been accompanied by a thickening of waistlines.) The French generally stay slim, they will tell you incessantly — I’ve had fingers waved in my face many times over this — because they don’t eat between meals, and children snack just once, at 4 o’clock, when they eat a couple of little cookies and then are done with sweets for the day.
Ali’s GOAT snacks (an acronym that stands for Greatest of All Time) are meant to be eaten in “seven rounds” throughout the day, Ali’s business partner, Peter Arnell, said this week. That’s in recognition, he said, of the fact that the American way of eating is, increasingly, “grazing.”
“Grazing” connotes all that is light and fiber-rich. Yet calories are calories, and eating “healthy snacks” all day long piles them on, as assuredly (and perhaps not as pleasurably) as a nice chocolate chip cookie with a glass of milk at 4 p.m.
Children in America need to be taught that how you eat can be as important as what you eat. They also desperately need to be educated on portion size, an issue that, for some reason, has been relegated to the status of elephant in the room this past year, as youth obesity has come to occupy center stage in the public consciousness. If those in the food industry — retailers and restaurant owners and snack manufacturers like, now, Ali — were truly interested in doing the right thing, they’d cut portion sizes down on snacks (and, indeed, on all foods) for children and adults alike.
Portion size reduction was a key recommendation of an F.D.A.-financed report on obesity that was released this month. So was starting a public education campaign to “change the social value proposition of ‘more food’ to ‘better-quality food.’ ”
So far, the portion size recommendations have occasioned the usual whining from the usual quarters about government interference and “personal responsibility.” As far as kids are concerned, the complaints ought to stop. Children need to be protected from Big Food. So long as they keep “grazing” their way through their oversized plates — and cones and snack wrappers — they’re going to have big problems.
This author has no understanding of the true medical conditions that require adults and kids to eat gluten and dairy free. Celiac disease, which affects 1 person in 133 in the United States causes an autoimmune reaction in people who consume gluten. While obesity is becoming an obvious problem here in the US, Celiac is, as well, and is linked to many more fatal conditions than obesity. In fact, Celiac can also cause obesity.
This is the sentence from the author I object to, for it belittles parents who are right for making their children’s health a priority: “And at the very least, the good-bad dichotomy feeds the joyless food-related fussiness (no gluten, no dairy, no pleasure — ever) that’s so prevalent among parents — and that really ought, as a public mental health measure, to be targeted for extinction in the next generation.” It’s attitudes such as the author’s that ought to be targeted for extinction in the next generation.
I expected more compassion from a “TrueLiberal” site.
Stephanie
I’m also a Celiac & MUST avoid gluten. I agree with some of the author’s other points– I believe that most children (& adults for that matter) are fed too many snacks & not enough FOOD, that we have lost our respect for food in many ways. But “fussiness” is not the issue with Celiac, nor with many food allergies. It’s a question of avoiding serious illness. I’m sure if the author had a child who was sick, she would change her tune in a hurry!
Stephanie, you make many valid points and we appreciate hearing them. We like posting all relative viewpoints and felt that the author had some value to add.
I am also a Celiac AND a parent of a child with Celiac disease, while the author makes some valid points about childhood obesity, her statement about “food related fussyness” especially in reference to no gluten, were extremely offensive to me. I wish that my parents had been that kind of fussy when I was a child. Then I wouldn’t have had years of health problems because of gluten. No, my parents fed me a diet rich in whole grains which they were told was healthy for me…
I demand a retraction of the statement about gluten in regards to food related fussyness. Unless you have been ill from food or have a child that gets violently ill from it, you have no business calling us fussy.
The author’s comment “no gluten, no dairy” is completely out of line. I am sure the author is aware that wheat(gluten) and dairy are two of the top eight allergens. Would she consider “no peanuts” fussy? My son’s health is my first priority and you bet I’m “fussy” if it means I’m keeping gluten out of his system and maintaining his health now that we finally know that “healthy whole grain” food is the least healthy thing he can eat.
Linda
When I first heard of the ignorant “fussy” food statement regarding gluten and dairy I thought, “No, that can’t be right. She must have been misquoted. Surely anyone would do even a modest amount of research before making such a claim against gluten and dairy free diets.” Sadly, I was wrong. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that someone would include gluten and dairy free diets in a rant against all that is wrong with eating in America.
Not only does this belittle anyone with Celiac Disease and/or dairy intolerance (I happen to have both), but it sets back our effort to have our needs taken seriously by society as a whole. Ms. Warner has done a disservice to anyone who struggles with a restrictive and MEDICALLY NECESSARY diet.
I hope that Ms. Warner receives a bit more sympathy from others if she ever finds herself living such a life (with no joy, as she so thoughtfully put it).
I certainly sympathize with the commenters who have celiac disease. However, the author was not taking aim at people who need a restrictive and medically necessary diet. Diabetics require snacking as part of maintaining blood sugar, and yet she was not indicating that diabetics shouldn’t snack. I would expect that people with celiac disease would understand better than anyone how what you eat affects health on a variety of levels, and agree with the author’s larger point- we need to care about what, when and how our children eat.