Is Food the New Sex? (2009)
hoover.org
hoover.org
The most important - really, the only - point that this waffling diatribe offers is that food and sex are moral equivalents. Except it doesn't ever prove that point. Rather, it sort of wafts it in the air ("is food the new sex?"), assumes they are connected ("The question before us today is not whether the two appetites are closely connected") then throws out random just-so assertions ("Both [...] can prove ruinous not only to oneself, but also to other people, and even to society itself")
The next thousand lines of condescending feigned surprise basically amount to "oh, how strange it is that although sex and food are very similar, we treat them differently". Yes, that would be surprising if they were very similar. But what if they're not very similar and you just made that up because it would be convenient for your worldview?
When your conclusion is your premise, anything is possible. I present here my new essay: Is Sex the New Eugenics? Sex and eugenics are inextricably linked. At various times laws have been made and wars have been fought over both sex and eugenics. We previously thought eugenics was a good idea but we now see it as morally bankrupt. We previously thought sex was morally bankrupt but we now see it as a good idea. But since they're the same, that's wrong. Sex and Eugenics are the same. Nietzsche.
To start, "What happens when, for the first time in history, adult human beings are free to have all the sex and food they want?"
This is only true for a subset of the people, but it's always been true for a subset of the people. When I read about the nobility of the 1600s, I see that there was a whole lot of sex going on, and surely they had enough food for themselves.
The 1960s/1970s era of free love, after the pill and before HIV/AIDS and drug resistant venereal diseases was also, I think, more free than now. The author writes that HIV/AIDS is "manageable", for those with access to good medical care, but doesn't dismiss the point that it's not true that adults now are freer in their ways than (again, a subpopulation of) adults in the 1960s.
"let us imagine some broad features of the world seen through two different sets of eyes: a hypothetical 30-year-old housewife from 1958 named Betty, and her hypothetical granddaughter Jennifer, of the same age, today."
Home deep freezers weren't really available until after the Second World War, so that description of a 1958 era is one of food plenty, not food deficit, and that description is only true for a couple of decades.
"If there is anything “fresh” on the plate, it is likely a potato."
That's just not true. I've seen the pictures of the farmers in the late 1800s/early 1900s coming into town with their produce on wagons. There's more than just potatoes during the growing season.
For a real-world example, see http://www.foodtimeline.org/fooddecades.html , and quoting from Barbara Hubbard, Chicago Daily Tribune, May 20, 1956: "This is a treat for them, especially when they are served hamburgers, fruit salad, carrot sticks, and an ice cream bar for dessert. They consider this menu a real party and what could be easier for Mother. When the children finish their supper they usually go upstairs to watch Daddy shave and tell him about their day. Then he reads them a story and tucks them into bed. This gives me time to broil a steak, mix the green salad, and dress the baked potatoes with sour cream and chives."
So, the children have fruit salad and carrot sticks, and in addition to potato, the adults have a green salad.
On the same link, a menu from Family Circle, August 1957, includes corn, salad, and honeydew melon, and from Women's Day 1959 has tomatoes, vegetable salad, and a fruit basket. Both have more than just potatoes.
"Wavering in and out of vegetarianism"
As was recently pointed out to me, C.S. Lewis in "Voyage of the Dawn Treader", written in the 1950s, ridicules vegetarianism as being faddish.
It's easy to believe that the author created examples specifically to illustrate a point, rather than to describe real cultural trends.
What I see, when I look at the same events, is a move away from a conformist culture to a diverse culture. The moral strictures of church, class, race, gender, etc. are less binding.
Remember too the author writes for the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank. As such, works from them are more likely to be aligned with conservative views, and not, say, rail against patriarchy.
At the moment my father is having chronic bowel issues, so my sisters are urging "probiotics", a term coined in 1907 (patent medicine era) that has little or no actual proof of efficacy, but that doesn't stop marketers from acting like it's critical to health. The doctor is not wrong if he doesn't bring up probiotics, just like he's not wrong for not bringing up alternative medicine.
>This is only true for a subset of the people, but it's always been true for a subset of the people. When I read about the nobility of the 1600s, I see that there was a whole lot of sex going on, and surely they had enough food for themselves.
No, the freedom to have all the sex you want is new, for pretty much everyone in the US. Not everyone takes advantage of it, but there is little or no limit on your private sexual behavior now. Just consider gay marriage. And there was a huge risk with private sexual behavior back then.
Part of the "food woo" is the curse of capitalism, the infinite and never ending expansion of choice in the marketplace. With all those new food variations, it's important to convince people that they are eating wrong. That it is becoming a moral choice is just icing on the cake for marketers.
You say your memories of the 1950s are in agreement with it. I point out multiple examples from that era which show it isn't the case. I trust copies of literature from that era better than I do memories of childhood. I know how distorted my own memories of childhood were compared to the reality of the 1970s.
Here's another: http://calorielab.com/news/2005/08/25/family-dinners-school-... - "Dinners consisted of meat, potatoes, a green vegetable, dinner rolls, salad. and dessert." Or look at the image of a Swanson's TV dinner from the 1950s , http://leitesculinaria.com/10348/writings-dining-through-the... , with potato and peas.
You say your mom wasn't shopping at a farmer's market. I never mentioned that - my reference was to 50 years previous. Fruit and vegetables are available at the supermarket. Here are pictures of a 1950s supermarket. http://fl4projects.tumblr.com/post/16150521363 . See the produce section? Same for http://www.pinterest.com/pin/27021666487620537/ .
You say that "food woo" is rampant now. I pointed out that C.S. Lewis against vegetarianism of the 1950s. Or I can point you to http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/12/food/fo-36243 and how "From the 1930s through the '60s, Americans were convinced you had to have a certain kind of bowl to make a proper green salad: a plain, unvarnished wooden bowl which could never be washed." Or I could point out the radium craze of the early 1900s, when it seems you could get just about anything with a bit of radium added to it, for good health.
Here's a better description of my point, at http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/articles/article10.htm :
> Why do so many people think American families are facing worse problems now than in the past? Partly it's because we compare the complex and diverse families of the 1900s with the seemingly more standard-issue ones of the 1950s, a unique decade when every long-term trend of the 20th century was temporarily reversed. In the 1950s, for the first time in 100 years, the divorce rate fell while marriage and fertility rates soared, creating a boom in nuclear-family living. The percentage of foreign-born individuals in the country decreased. And the debates over social and cultural issues that had divided Americans for 150 years were silenced, suggesting a national consensus on family values and norms. ...
> But much nostalgia for the 1950s is a result of selective amnesia-the same process that makes childhood memories of summer vacations grow sunnier with each passing year. The superficial sameness Of 1950s family life was achieved through censorship, coercion and discrimination. People with unconventional beliefs faced governmental investigation and arbitrary firings. African Americans and Mexican Americans were prevented from voting in some states by literacy tests that were not administered to whites. Individuals who didn't follow the rigid gender and sexual rules of the day were ostracized.
The 1950s also had the "curse of capitalism". All of the new processed food companies want to get in on the action, after the rationing of the war. Look at http://thehairpin.com/2013/10/lets-eat-some-weird-shi and see just how many ways the free market was trying to convince people in the 1950s to add a bit of their branded processed food to a recipe. "Fill the center of the peaches with Miracle Whip." "Split frankfurter buns in half and spread with Kraft Mayonnaise. Fill with good thick strips of Velveeta and brush the tops of the buns with melted butter or Parkay Margarine.", etc.
I don't see any awareness of these issues in that essay, which makes it very frustrating to read. It comes across like a specific, typically conservative viewpoint which emphasizes a certain hierarchical conformist culture.
> I trust copies of literature from that era better than I do memories of childhood.
You're doing it wrong! :)
Really. "Literature" that specifies what people should eat is likely pulp (a class of literature). You can't gain any information about my diet--or even the average diet--by flipping through the magazine racks at the grocery store checkout--not in this decade or decades past.
That's evidence that people's memory fades or changes over time. Of course that's well known. For example, "Not only are our memories faulty (anyone who has uncovered old diaries knows that), but more importantly Schiller says our memories change each time they are recalled. What we recall is only a facsimile of things gone by.", from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/am-i-right/201307/your-m... .
I have printed menu suggestions, restaurant menus, and pictures and movies from the 1950s which say that "meat and two veg" was far more common than just potatoes.
Certainly it's not indicative of anyone's specific diet. Certainly it may be true for the OP's history. But if the only "fresh" vegetable on a typical dinner was potato, why are there so many non-potatoes vegetables in those pictures of 1950s grocery stores?
Recall too that the original essay discusses a hypothetical diet of the 1950s, and a comparison to a hypothetical one now. There are not that many vegetarians now for the modern example to be representative of a general modern trend, and I pointed out that vegetarianism was also part of general culture of the 1950s. The essay is therefore an artificially constructed and I argue essentially meaningless comparison.
Here's a perhaps atypical diary entry from 1954 for a farewell dinner, http://annbkennedy.blogspot.se/2013/04/june-29-30-1954-farew...:
> Long menu in courses--celery, etc., soup, then small lobsters with rice, filet mignon, gr. beans, mushrooms, then asparagus salad, peach melba, coffee & fruit.
That's yet another piece of evidence that says that many people ate dinner with fresh vegetables other than potato.
(To be fair, in winter it would be hard to get fresh veg. But the essay is using fresh veg as a proxy for food surplus, and it's better to look at food surplus directly. Otherwise it makes no sense to say that King Louis XIV of France, deprived of fresh peas in winter, is somehow food impoverished.)
This is not an internet points game and it is not wikipedia. This is a conversation between more or less like-minded people. Personal insight is to be valued.
If you want to actually prove your point, get the 1950/1960 US Census data, average them, analyze the income and employment numbers, and tell me how the center of the bell curve could afford a three course meal on the daily. Don't forget that 36% of the country wasn't employed at all (in 1950, includes children), but still needed to eat (includes children!).
In short, yes, you can trump personal memory with hard numbers (and you should!)--but not with a mere large volume of citations.
You make a statement about the bell curve. Jennifer, the modern vegetarian, is not in the bell curve.
http://www.vegetariantimes.com/article/vegetarianism-in-amer... suggests that 10 percent of U.S., adults, or 22.8 million people, say they largely follow a vegetarian-inclined diet.
Even if it's 20%, that's still not near the center of the modern US diet. So already the essay isn't a strong match to modern culture.
I sure can say that someone is wrong about their memory, but in this case I'm saying that the OP's recollections don't fit the data. Even if true for the OP, it appears to be atypical.
You complain that I mention pulp sources. I've also mentioned diary entries. Every single entry is a "personal insight."
See http://diaries.markbartlett.net/diary58.html for another example. "We had fried chicken, mashed potatoes, salad, date nut bread and coffee for dinner." and "Mrs. Colburn gave us sack of green beans and Mrs. Burnett more green beans, onions and beets." (Some of that would have been canned, but some certainly eaten fresh.) "Mr. and Mrs. Kluckman and baby here tonight – brought green beans and cabbage."
Or http://melissa-ellison.tripod.com/id25.html from 1933, "July 9 We were all alone today. No one came. Very warm. We had string beans for dinner today." (They picked and canned the string beans the day before, so these were fresh beans.) "Sept 26 Very warm and sultry. We are again to have boiled bacon and swisschard for dinner today." "Nov 14 Cloudy and snowflurries. We had spare ribs and carrotts cooked together for dinner."
https://www.ashleighbrilliant.com/Diary%201951.%20America.ht... which is about a British man visiting the US in 1951: "For dinner I had fruit and soup and bread and broccoli & 2 huge lamb chops & Pepsi Cola & chocolate cake & milk.", "We had a fine lunch of meat, potatoes, vegetables, apple juice, raspberries & ice-cream." (It's entirely possible that the vegetables were canned or frozen. At some point though I don't think it makes a difference. Most of my vegetables now are frozen too.)
I'll make my point again. The author of the essay sets up a hypothetical "Betty" from 1958 in a situation which does not appear to be characteristic of the larger society. The OP - the one who linked to the essay - finds the description to be characteristic of the OP's own history. That doesn't mean that that OP's memory is a true reflection of the time.
You want me, I believe, to demonstrate somehow that the OP must not be correct. I am trying instead to show that the hypothetical Betty is likely not characteristic of the era, and given the well-known problems with human memory, I want something stronger than a childhood memory when the available "pulp" evidence so strongly shows a much wider variety of food dishes for that era.
This was absolutely the era before the War on Poverty, and before the Civil Rights era. The essay seems to exclude immigrant foods (fresh bok choi for Chinese dishes), regional foods (like Southern dishes with collard greens), etc. That's why I argue that it isn't representative of the 1950s, but only representative perhaps of the most culturally influential social groups of that era .. and the OP may also be a member of that group.
> there is little or no limit on your private sexual behavior now
Umm, what about the increasing restrictions on access to abortion, and the continued efforts to prevent teaching effective birth control methods?
Instead, over the last 25 years or so there's been increased funding for "abstinence only" methods, which result in making it harder for people to know what sexual freedom means.
And here's the thing, neither you nor I really know what private sexual behavior was like in the 1950s, because by definition it was private. That's why the Kinsey reports of the late '40s and '50s were so shocking.
What I want is the freedom to not have to keep my entire sexuality private, not the freedom to have whatever sort of private sex I can get. Those are different things. JFK could have extramarital affairs as could his father, Joe Kennedy. People know about it. But because they were privileged, upper-class white males with political power, they could away with it.
While there are still people who today can lose their jobs for having pre-marital sex. For example, http://www.10news.com/news/woman-sues-san-diego-christian-co... .
In that case, San Diego Christian College's "contract, in part, says "… sexually immoral behavior, including premarital sex, adultery, pornography and homosexuality …" are not allowed."
This is clearly a counter-example to your statement that "pretty much everyone in the US" has the freedom to have all the sex they want.
Same for http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/catholic-religio... . "Firing unwed teachers who become pregnant is not uncommon for private religious schools. It's not necessarily illegal, either. Although federal law generally forbids discrimination against pregnant women, the Supreme Court has ruled that religious employers are protected from certain discrimination lawsuits brought by employees who serve in ministerial roles."
Or here's a "prison guard fired after having sex with convicted wife-beater on parole" http://www.ottawasun.com/2014/09/18/prison-guard-fired-after... . In that case it's likely an abuse of power issue, but it's still a restriction on having sex.
The challenge is to show that "the freedom to have all the sex you want" is any more prevalent now than during the free love era the (re)bloomed in 1960s, or the sexual promiscuity of the 1970s. (Eg, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco#Drug_subculture_and_sexua... )
I have a book, written in the 1970s, which says something like "kids these days consider a handjob about as commonplace as a handshake."
The reality is prostitution is still illegal in the vast majority of the US which is a clear sign of a deeply repressed culture. However, TV and video game ratings are another. As is the fairly common ban on breastfeeding in public let alone a lack of nude beaches. And the list just keeps getting longer.
No. Don't be absurd. By and large the conversation people are having here is meaningful because we're talking about the extent to which people (mostly american citizens of the age of majority in this case) face substantial constraints to doing what they want, constraints which are imposed on them by a third party against their will. If your counterexamples substantially consist of people voluntarily making commitments for the sake of their beliefs in a world where avoiding that commitment is trivial, then your counterexamples don't really expose a problem and any remedies which would purport to address the problem would in fact act to reduce freedom.
You are, however, right to retreat from some of the trivial barriers you had been mentioning before and looking instead into the sphere of cultural sentiment and public perception. This is easily more relevant than availability of opportunities of employment by a religious institution.
The only reason I bring up culture is to demonstrate the point is not just slightly wrong, but clearly into the realm of absurdity. However, I fear this is one of those cases where simply debating the point seems to elevate the counter point from absurdity into some 'debatable' category for reasonable ideas.
PS: If we had moved on the idea of a 26 way gay marriage between Hollywood celebrities lasting for 1 day of drunken revelry would not even raise eyebrows.
Except for the tiny problem that you need somebody who wants to have sex with you to have sex.
...
>> Remember too the author writes for the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank. As such, works from them are more likely to be aligned with conservative views, and not, say, rail against patriarchy.
There's no need to politicize the article and then make subjective judgements based on your affiliations... Read the article for its merits. She talks about a lot more than just veggies.
There is a repeated point driven accros that people of this area are morally depleted, in difference to previous generations. It's summed up in the introduction statement:
> * things we might signal by shorthand as mindful eating, and mindless sex*
This goes along though the whole piece, a lot of mentions goes toward porn, some about drugs, and the main point is again summed up at the end:
> [Nietzsch]He could not possibly have foreseen our world: one in which sex would indeed become “morally neutral” in the eyes of a great many people — even as food would come to replace it as source of moral authority.
A lot of words and energy is spent presenting current people's sex life as mindless, morally depleted where as in "the good old days" it wasn't the case. It's so egregious that it feels like the food talk is just a red herring and this essay just really wants to grieve about people's sexual life.
So I'd agree with you, the author talks about a lot more than just veggies, actually it would mainly be about her thought on sex.
You can't fault anyone pointing out that it's written by a conservative think tank.
By passing off the moralities as a fad, the author seems utterly clueless of the fact that when more people have pre-marital sex, no one is harmed, but when people raise millions of animals to be eaten, there is a victim (the animal).
[1] http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
If my original point wasn't clear, it's dumb to pattern match based on supposed political affiliations and then make judgements without allowing the arguments to stand on their own. On the same note, I think you are projecting your stereotypes of "conservatives" onto her observations of society... I don't think she's necessarily advocating for one side or the other.
What bothers me the most is that the article wants to tackle sex, and eventually food, but the claims on both subjects are peculiar, unrealistic and mainly unfounded.
People aren't less moral than they were centuries ago, be it towards sex or anything else. Different people can now openly have different moralities, different POV have come to be tolerated and the law and society has changed in its view of sexual orientation and marriage. But these sexual behaviors or way of thinking didn't just become a thing now that they are legal or accepted, people were just doing them behind closed doors, were openly seen as exceptions, or got banned from society/killed/deported.
Arguing that morality has gone south in two centuries is just an other way of saying "Society as a whole should have a single moral compass, the one of two centuries ago, let's bash any different moralities".
And sadly the same goes for the food argument. There is so much "junk" food now because people produce and actually consume it. Arguying that we've become more morally concerned about food when literally thousands of tons of generic food is produced and eaten everyday is also delusional. Some peope care a lot more about what they it, of course, just as centuries ago rich people would also care about who makes their bread, what is their meat, if it's poisoned, and if it's nutritionous and tasty. There's no way a bourgeois would eat the same food as a farmer, and with choice comes educated behaviors, preferences and opinions. People didn't just judge with the same criteria, and it would be misleading to say that prefering organic vegetables to sanglier meat is a more moral choice.
I gave as another example JFK, whose many affairs were well known, but never tut-tutted as much as, say, the teenager in high school who suddenly had to visit with family out of state for 8 months.
One of my stereotypes is that that conservatives tend to not analyze history as an oppressive patriarchy where social structures are set up to reinforce certain discriminatory behavior.
Do you disagree with that characterization of most conservative analysis?
I think it's an important factor. I quoted another essay which goes into why those are important factors. Since the essay did not address them (that I could tell), I thought it was lacking.
The parent isn't politicizing anything, they are saying a true statement that they think can be important for discriminating minds to help evaluate the claims in a richer context of important background information.
Your knee-jerk reaction to this particular truth says a lot about you. For the benefit of others, however, I'd appreciate if you would let us read what others have to say, instead of encouraging censorship.
Maybe you can help me become more discriminating in my thinking as well? I'd hate to commit more thought crime.
I had to check then the author's background. Interesting bio, though I still don't understand what her academic basis is:
http://www.hoover.org/profiles/mary-eberstadt
It seems she was mostly involved in politically related work?
Edit: researching more, I've just found she was a "Telluride scholar" which actually doesn't say much:
What is the thesis posited in the article?
It's almost as if there is a conservation law for
conservative ideas. Sex isn't doing it anymore, so we
are switching to food where we impose moral judgements
on others who are "doing it wrong".
It seems like the author is describing how food ethics have waxed while sexual ethics have waned. The final paragraphs about how that might be described by the ascendancy of the philosophy of Nietzsche (postmodern, materialist, and individualist), which certainly isn't a conservative philosphy (at least not in the American sense).
Though perhaps you mean that there's conservation of morality? As in, everyone is compelled to judge each other by some standard or another? I suppose that could be true. But if it is, it's either a condemnation of postmodernism or of mankind itself since that compulsion would pit humanity against the "that's fine if it works for you" attitude.
In response to this, I wouldn't exactly say people have made healthy eating into a new Categorical Imperative. Instead, they've become paranoid and superstitious about what it is in modern food that's hurting them. Hence we get ridiculous cargo cults like gluten-free, organic, anti-GMO, everything Dr. Oz pushes, etc. Meanwhile, evidence-based approaches to the issue have not yet produced a diet that is optimal, practical, and that provides the level of enjoyment that we're used to from food. I personally think that Soylent is off to a promising start, although it has a long way to go.
You are almost certainly too young to remember it in the United States, but it wasn't that long ago that food was terribly dangerous. Start at non-sterile meat, bad canning practices (botulism killed 2,000+ per year in the United States until around WWII, down to a handful today) and go all the way to pellagra (an easily-solved Vitamin B deficiency that still killed 7500 people per year in the US in the 1930s; effectively 0 today).
Remember Wonder Bread? It seems like evil simple carbs today, but it was initially popular precisely because the color and texture proved that it wasn't adulterated like many local bakers did at the time (flour was expensive, sawdust was cheap and could stretch meager supplies).
Food was not safe for a long time.
I worry about a similar thing for computer security. A lot of the threats that we used to think about in terms of, say, viruses, wanted to get the user's attention either through innocuous mischief, or by showing off with spectacularly destructive behavior, like deleting files or crashing the machine or even erasing the hard drive. "Look at me, I infected your computer!" And later we saw adware which tries to get the user's attention for marketing purposes (which is definitely still a thing).
But now a whole lot of attackers have a goal of long-term, pervasive, convert compromise, to be used selectively later on -- botnets for DDoS attacks and spam, keyloggers for delayed financial fraud or government surveillance, "advanced persistent threats" to compromise infrastructure, maybe in service of transitively compromising other infrastructure.
http://www.isaca.org/chapters2/Norway/NordicConference/Docum...
So in the past there was a common expectation that a virus would do something that the user could notice, or else what's the point? Whereas nowadays if someone says "the government is spying on me, my computer displayed a weird security warning message" it tends to reduce the credibility of the claim, because we expect that botnet developers and government hackers are as covert as possible, delaying the moment when victims of compromise would notice anything's wrong for as far as possible, trying to break or obfuscate the link between the attack and its results as much as possible.
So in one sense computers have also gotten more dangerous because there are more powerful and pervasive attackers, but in another sense there may be a trend away from risks of getting any kind of malware whose effects you will notice any time soon.
There's maybe a couple dozen kinds of bacteria that pose a threat, the vast majority are either benign or good for us.
Attempting to eliminate food danger can paradoxically increase the danger. If you go to a grocery in Europe you'll see eggs sitting on shelves instead of inside the fridge as you'd see in the US. This is because eggs in the US are cleaned so much that the egg's cuticle is washed away, which is the egg's natural barrier to bacteria. In Europe they do not wash the cuticle away and eggs store safely on room-temp shelves.
I'd suggest that sterile meat is more dangerous as it is devoid of the natural bacterial "cloak" that provides protection from the nasty bugs.
Maybe because they've had a nasty encounter with food poisoning?
> I'd suggest that sterile meat is more dangerous as it is devoid of the natural bacterial "cloak" that provides protection from the nasty bugs.
I'd like to see a reference to a scientific study that demonstrated that.
Schoen's comment below makes an excellent, related point: older generations might have a lower, or at least different standard of what constitutes "dangerous" food. It used to be that dangerous food would immediately give you an infectious disease; whereas today, dangerous food very slowly gives you a chronic non-communicable diease.
...it was the first bread sold to consumers presliced, and that (and before it was preslicing, its quality for slicing) was heavily and effectively marketed.
Ironically, Wonder and other cheap white bread -- and other mass produced foodstuffs of the same period of mass industrialization of food supply -- and their popularity contributed several of the deficiency-related diseases you refer to as evidence of food being dangerous (later, they were enriched specifically to address the deficiencies that diets heavy in the them produced.)
The fact that you lump this in with gluten-free and anti-GMO, which are themselves interesting and unique topics of discussion that have in common only their faddishness, and then lump all three of these in with a charlatan like Dr. Oz, shows to me that you have an oversimplified view of these issues.
Nice try, but no.
"On average, GM technology adoption has reduced chemical pesticide use by 37%, increased crop yields by 22%, and increased farmer profits by 68%. Yield gains and pesticide reductions are larger for insect-resistant crops than for herbicide-tolerant crops. Yield and profit gains are higher in developing countries than in developed countries." (emphasis mine)
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone...
"Study of 100 Billion Animals Finds GMOs Safe"
http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/comprehensive-s...
"A recent study has shown that for those with non-Celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS), the gluten itself might not be to blame for GI troubles."
http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/does-non-celia...
"Organic food no more nutritious than conventionally grown food"
http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/organic-food-no-more-nutr...
...
Admittedly, the issue of organic food is more controversial than the others. There was also a study showing that organic foods had higher levels of antioxidants: http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-organic-foods-20140715...
But given the amount of money people spend on organic food and the level of enthusiasm for it, you would think it cured cancer--not that there was inconclusive evidence that it might have somewhat higher levels of antioxidants and lower levels of pesticide residue. In any case, antioxidants can be supplemented, much more cheaply than buying organic food. But that doesn't provide the level of enjoyment (or for some people, the pseudo-religious experience) of buying organic produce.
And THAT is as complex as I think the issue is. The term "cargo cult" hits close enough to the mark, for me.
Regarding GMOs, what is interesting is not the fact that an organism was geneticially modified in a lab. What one wants to know is why it was modified. You can bet that your Roundup Ready crop is going to be slathered in ...Roundup. It's up to you to decide whether or not that's a big deal. The point is that this isn't superstition, it's basic fact-finding about the food we eat.
I never claimed that organic produce is more nutritous than non-organic produce. I did suggest that it's a reasonable working hypothesis that it is safer because of lower pesticide levels.
If anything on your list deserves your derisive attitude, it's the gluten-free craze. I have very little interest in that one; it strikes me as another diet fad and the testimonials are reiminiscent of other bogus complaints, e.g. re MSG. Which is too bad, since celiac disease is real and these patients are now being taken less seriously.
"the amount of money" Spending 10 cents more per pound for the organic fair-trade bananas so I can practice the precautionary principle and possibly help improve the lot of the serfs that pick them seems OK to me.
"You would think it cured cancer" Well, it is one of the things people are hoping to prevent...
Of course, none of this touches on the other reasons one might be picky about how their food is sourced, namely environmental and labor concerns.
What frustrates me so much about your post is that you see people doing things for stupid reasons and conclude from this that there aren't good reasons for doing these things. There are plenty of smart, dare I say skeptical (seems to be one of the fetishes on HN), people thinking about these issues who don't share your perspective.
But the thing is, famine is really not good for you. If pesticides prevent that (and, arguably, they have done pretty well at doing so), then they're better than the alternative of not using them.
Of course, the best alternative is "neither"...
As a 20-something in the US, you're certainly very uninformed.
Gluten free, organic and anti-gmo have nothing to do with cargo cults and food fanatism.
Essentially nobody buys gluten-free products because they're gluten free (except who needs it). GF products are a very little minority, because the lack of gluten is a serious limitation in food preparation. Plus, such products are very expesive. Nobody turns "gluten-free" unless he has to.
Organic is part of a bigger cultural picture. In some countries, the majority of the people eat [much] organic. Nobody expects to become super fit and super healthy from it. It's just a choice judged to be healthier as a whole. It's actually the opposite of a cargo cult, since people who choose organic, do it for life, not to follow a fad who lasts a short time (which is essential to cargo culting).
And finally, it's not smart to bash anti-GMO just because smart people are supposed to be pro-GMO. There are also rational reasons for being anti-GMO and cretinic reasons for being pro-GMO (like assuming that the increased yield of a crop automatically implies economic convenience).
If Soylent is optimal and provides enjoyment, well, you better move to another country and try real food. Besides, in the bigger picture, Soylent carries the assumption that human nutrition is nothing else than intake of isolated nutritional elements, which is foolish.
That's demonstrably untrue. The existence of non-Celiac gluten sensitivity is not demonstrated by science. It is a clear example of the "nocebo" effect. I know lots of people eating gluten free because they believe they have to...but, there's no reason to believe that's true.
Specifically, the research team that first posited gluten sensitivity followed up with a more comprehensive study, and found: "On current evidence the existence of the entity of NCGS remains unsubstantiated". And, "Recent randomized controlled re-challenge trials have suggested that gluten may worsen gastrointestinal symptoms, but failed to confirm patients with self-perceived NCGS have specific gluten sensitivity."
Reference: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24026574 (Though I can't find a full article text online for free, Googling about this study will find pretty good summaries of it, and that's where I found one of the quotes above.)
Cargo cults are groups who follow rituals they don't understand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
If a group is following a diet without understanding it, I think it's apt (though perhaps needlessly divisive) to call that group a cargo cult. If someone doesn't eat gluten and can't describe what gluten is and why it's bad, he or she is exhibiting the behavior of a member of a cargo cult.
Jonathan Haidt's TED talk on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives touches on sex and food (see time index 7:09): http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind
If there is a shift in the decades in common cultural attitudes, it might be explained by a general pendulum swing back and forth between conservative attitudes versus liberal attitudes holding more common sway in any particular decade.
You don't have to agree with the author's conclusions (I mostly don't) to be interested in the way food is being treated in recent years as simultaneously a status symbol and the object of moral and political dogma.
Caligula famously threw a banquet once consisting of thousands of flamingo tongues, camel heels, and roast ostrich. Quoting from http://archive.archaeology.org/0111/abstracts/romans.html :
> Eating well was not just a daily ritual, it was a philosophy and a way of life in Imperial Rome. Your reputation and acceptance in the upper echelons of society was often determined by your abilities as a generous host and as a connoisseur.
"Healthy eating", as the essay observes, has a long history in the US. Kellogg started the Battle Creek Sanitarium in the 1860s. Quoting from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Creek_Sanitarium, Kellogg "encouraged a low-fat, low-protein diet with an emphasis on whole grains, fiber-rich foods, and most importantly, nuts. Kellogg also recommended a daily intake of fresh air, exercise, and the importance of hygiene. Many of the theories of John Harvey Kellogg were later published in his book The Road to Wellness."
> Battle Creek utilised information as known at that time to provide nutritional requirements for health and well-being relative to each person's requirements. Food required careful prescriptive preparation, with care also taken to ensure appetiveness and palatability were recognised. The diet lists included "scores of special dishes and hundreds of special food preparations, each of which has been carefully studied in relation to its nutritive and therapeutic properties", with the diet lists used "by the physicians in arranging the diet prescriptions of individual patients".
You may know Kellogg better as the producer of corn flakes.
Diet was also used as social distinction. As a clear example, Italian Americans brought with them a love of garlic, which wasn't popular in the US. A xenophobic slur was to call someone of Italian food heritage a "garlic eater." See http://www.billszone.com/fanzone/archive/index.php/t-224620.... for an example:
> In 1960 "we had become truly one nation and one people"?!?!? Really??? You want to tell that to the millions of blacks under Jim Crow laws...government sanctioned institutional RACISM. Holy Jesus! Pat has now lost any semblance of that honesty I gave him.
> Then he distorts history, leaving out the rank "racism" that the Irish...German...Italians...Poles...Jews and "other Eastern Europeans" suffered when they came to this country. My God...I felt first hand the prejudice and rank hatred directed toward Italians we'll into the 80's. Most notably, by the father of a woman I was seeing. He was a WASP, and he left no doubt that my Italian heritage made me a low life. He derisively called me "garlic eater" and let it be known that his daughter was too good for a Dago like me.
Perhaps the author is trying to explore why they prototypical conservative believes one way and the prototypical liberal believes another. I'm not sure just calling one "conservative" and the other "liberal" really explains anything.
The problem with the example is that "Betty is much like any other American home cook in 1958" hides the diversity of America. Had Betty been living in New Mexico, there would be green chile on the plate. Had Betty been living in Louisiana then the food would be different still.
But by given simple hypothetical examples it's all too easy for us to fill in the details with what we think are the right answers.
The food guilt thing is a product of marketing. Visit a Whole Foods and look at the displays.
Sex guilt is back. (For straight people only.) It's not clear why. In the US, it's not due to religion; the religious right peaked in the last century. There are whole new areas of guilt since the 1980s, from sexual harassment to an expanded definition of rape. Not only are abortions harder to get, even birth control pills are harder to get. Women's clothing is more conservative, too.
I'm not so sure about that, not all societies that can "have all the food" they want are fat, for example France.
I'm a French person who's been living in the US for about 5 years now. My main realization regarding the way food is treated in each country is that in France, the relationship with food is conditioned culturally very strongly since the moment you're born. When you grow up as a French person in a culturally French family, you grow up in an environment where you constantly hear about what foods go and don't go with one another, how you should eat, etc. You hear this through your own family, through meals at schools, through meals you share when you go to your friend's house, and so on. Little things like "you're supposed to eat bread with your salad", "we've already had meat for lunch let's not have it for dinner", "don't eat with your hands", etc. For the first 18 years of your life, you hear these things on an everyday basis to the point that when you start living on your own, they're part of your subconscious. If you ate pizza on Monday, you're not going to eat it again on Tuesday because you'll hear your grandma's voice in your head that says "You already had pizza last night, eat some vegetables tonight". When you have dinner with your friends in college, you're likely to still cook something fairly healthy because most people share that upbringing with you. And then when you raise a family of your own, you yourself repeat these things and the cycle continues.
This culture has evolved and been passed from generation to generation over centuries, and the result is that the average French person has a fairly strong instinct for "eating healthily" because of this, even though they're not compulsively counting calories at every meal. Their cultural baggage means they can just cook according to their gut, and their meals are likely to be balanced over time. The same is probably true for other countries with strong food cultures such as other mediterranean countries, Japan/South Korea, and so on.
Such a culture does not exist to such an extent in the US. I've found the contrast to be pretty stark - when I eat with French friends, there's an entire set of manners and habits that are never expressed but mutually understood, which does not happen when I eat with most American friends. As a teenager, I lived in the US with a host family for a summer who never ate together - different family members would just pick and choose from the fridge at different times of the day as they saw fit, with no regards for whether their food intake was balanced or not; then maybe once or twice a week, they'd have a barbecue all together. This would be completely inconceivable in a French family.
That being said, France is changing, families are becoming more and more multicultural, and things like fast food restaurants are changing norms.
In russia, where climate is hard, earth is not very fertile and one unsuccessful harvest could mean country-scaled global hunger, food culture is more about eating while you can, conservate food while it's fresh. With current excess of food there are many fat men and women out there.
I believe that all countries will develop food culture very soon, it's already happening around. Dietology is a popular topic.
even birth control pills are harder to get
Nope, not even close. Access to food is not a causal relationship with being fat and fat people exist even when food isn't easily accessible. Fat people have existed since people have existed.
On what basis do we claim that Jennifer thinks sex is "de gustibus", for example? I suspect it is more likely that both would hold similar reservations, just regarding different circumstances. For example, they both may think some sexual activity is wrong but just disagree on which in particular.
Maybe Betty thinks gay sex is wrong and Jennifer doesn't, but they would both agree that a person leaving their family behind to "run off" with a new and exciting partner. In fact the suggestion otherwise strikes me as veiled grumbling about "millennials".
Try explaining something like Tinder to someone born in the first half of the previous century, and how most urban single 20-somethings use it everyday.
And the author simply asserts, without any proof, that children from divorced families do worse. Really? http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-divorce-bad-for...
I stopped reading halfway through on the assumption that the author was a Republican, and lo and behold, she's with the Hoover Institute. Thought-provoking article, but given the assumptions made and how they clash with the facts as I know them, I don't buy any of it.
I am impressed by the open-mindedness you display.
Is anyone really eating organic food because of a perceived health benefit anymore? Everyone I know who eats organic (myself included) is doing for the sake of environmental consciousness or animal welfare not personal health.