(with the omnipresent caveat that there is nowhere capitalism does not piss me off)
There is nowhere capitalism is not pissing me off more right now than in food.
July-September is my annual season of Personal Projects, in which I pick something in my life that needs an overhaul and overhaul it. Past seasons of Personal Projects have featured home repairs, gardens and chickens, personal finance, and Relearning How to Walk.
This year, it's been food. Gotta do something with this garden produce. Also because my annual health exam came back tens across the board, except that I have high cholesterol. My doctor isn't terribly concerned (my ratio is fantastic, apparently), but it's the only health project I have so I'm gonna obsess about it. I started reading about what cholesterol is and how it works, and I fell down a rabbit hole.
Several books later:
Younger Next Year for Women, by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge, M.D.
How Not to Age, by Michael Greger, M.D.
The Plant-Based Athlete, by Matt Frazier and Robert Cheeke
Mad Cowboy, by Howard F. Lyman
Formerly Known As Food, by Kristin Lawless
What to Eat Now, by Marion Nestle
I feel physically, mentally, and emotionally better and also spiritually more crushed by capitalism than I have in a while.
I started this round of Personal Projects when I found a copy of Younger Next Year for Women in a thrift store. My mom bought this book when it came out in the mid-2000s, and my parents made it their lifestyle bible. I now have 20 years of data on how following its recommendations affects people ages 50s-70s. (Results: my mom has taken up competitive ballroom dancing and my dad can still leave me in the dust on the bike trail.) I also have 20 years of data on how doing the opposite of its recommendations affects people (my mom's sister died last year of a stroke and her husband had his right leg amputated at the knee due to complications from type 2 diabetes, which has also been robbing him of his eyesight for the past several years).
Meanwhile, when I got hit by that SUV in 2021, all my worst fears came true at once. I survived them. My brain, perhaps logically, wiped the slate and entered a new worst fear: Being that helpless again. So when Crowley and Lodge promised me that I could vastly reduce my risk of ending up helpless in my old age just by exercising more and eating better, I was all ears.
Six books and approximately one month of "daily exercise and all-whole-plants food" better, I feel great, physically/mentally/emotionally. I have more energy. I'm sleeping better. My moods are more stable. The acne I've dealt with since I was 11 is just gone. Best of all, I'm no longer taking pain medication of any kind. I had been on Tylenol round the clock since the accident to deal with the bone pain. My doc did not think this was a big deal, but I did. After all, I only have the one liver.
I'm also madder than ever at capitalism.
I approached the "change your diet" advice the way US culture teaches us: as a wholly individual project. Good health, dietarily, is about making healthy personal choices, that's all. It's about discipline and what you put in your mouth. It's that simple!
It is not that simple.
The further I went into changing my diet, the more I realized that it takes a LOT of privilege to be able to eat the way I do. I have land of my own. I have the time, knowledge, and resources to put in gardens and raise chickens. (These can be done on a shoestring but neither is free.) I also have the time and resources to hit up local farmers' markets. I have friends who garden and farm. I have the time and mental energy to meal plan, to keep track of when various produce items will go bad, and to get creative.
I have spare *money.* My monthly grocery budget has jumped about $80, net (more vegetables minus cheese and the occasional rotisserie chicken). If a doctor had prescribed me a med that does all this with an $80 copay, I'd happily pay it - but what if I didn't have $80 of wiggle room in my monthly income? I know plenty of people who don't.
I have time to read. I have multiple graduate degrees. I *don't* have any particular emotional reaction or attachment to food. I have a personality that lends itself to self-control and years of practice using it, especially around food on account of having celiac disease. I was raised on an organic farm by a pair of "health nuts" with master gardener certifications who co-founded a food co-op.
And even with all this, there are times I'm boggled. The more I read, the more I realize: Nearly everything Americans think we know about "good nutrition" is marketing and lobbying. We have no good mechanism to separate the facts from the politics.
For example: "dairy" has been a category on every food-group chart in my lifetime. Even on RFK's weirdly inverted pyramid thing, dairy is still included.
But: eliminate all the studies funded by the dairy industry, and those that remain show *zero* benefit to consuming dairy products. Rather, about 1/3 show no effect on human health, and about 2/3 show they're actually harmful. Plenty of elite athletes are out here winning championships while completely vegan. (My own father has been on a completely dairy- and lactose-free diet since the 1980s, when he developed a case of lactose intolerance so severe that lactose used in the binder of a generic medication once put him in the hospital overnight. He's been vegan since 2005.)
Dairy isn't an "essential food group" because humans need it to survive. Dairy is an "essential food group" because the dairy industry will contract if we don't buy it.
The marketing of health to us, using food as a medium, is everywhere. Yet the vast majority of "food" sold in supermarkets is highly processed and of questionable nutritional value. It's also alien to our bodies, which evolved over tens of thousands of years to eat...not this.
In What to Eat Now, Marion Nestle repeats, "Eating less is bad for business." Funny thing is, since I decided to experiment with an all-plant diet, I'm eating MORE. I'm eating more often, and I'm eating more in one sitting. (I'm also losing weight - all of it fat. My strength and endurance gains at the gym have skyrocketed.) Yet I'm certain that my "eating more" is also bad for business. It's not just how much we eat; it's also *what*. Unilever and Coca-Cola are not making money off my newfound delight in kale.
In fact, as Lawless points out, food companies have gone a long way to paint a "delight in kale" as niche or weird - somehow un-American. "American" is the guy who wants to drink his Coke and eat a Quarter Pounder in piece. I, who want bike 20 miles and then eat a sweet potato stuffed with black beans, quinoa, tomatoes, and kale, also in peace, am...something else. Of course I am. McDonald's and Coca-Cola aren't making money off me. Letting Line Go Up Less Fast is what's un-American.
"Healthy" diets aren't about "individual choice." The choices themselves are constrained. They're constrained by the information we're given from childhood about what "healthy" foods are. They're constrained by what a few large conglomerates choose to manufacture and market as "food." They're constrained by where we live, how much time we have, how good our basic math and reading skills are. They're constrained by what is easily available and what isn't. They're constrained by what we learn to associate with home, family, and happiness before we can even pronounce words like "constrained" or "associate."
Figuring out where the food industry's choices end and our "choices" begin is itself a lifelong journey. We're all just making grocery lists in the contexts we have. That some of us have healthier contexts than others is not a function of individual responsibility. Systems need changing everywhere, but perhaps nowhere do they need challenging so much as where, how, and from what we make our daily meal decisions.
Kale slaps, btw. Don't let anyone tell you differently.
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