Letters to the Editor
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one slice of cake does not an obese child make
The author is spot on about the fact that the point of parenting when it comes to food is to make sure their little angels grow into adults that have a healthy relationship with food. I am sick and tired of people equating the consumption of a single donut with the obesity epidemic. The person who obssessively consumes only militantly regulated portions of organic, gluten-free, fat-free, taste-free food is no more balanced in their approach to food than the person who eats every meal from McDonald's.
The anorexic who looks like she came out of magazine but is barfing up her lunch every afternoon doesn't have any better relationship with food than the person who weighs 350 pounds, but still the immediate reaction when discussing food issues is to leap on the "obesity epidemic" as the biggest horror show around and the source of all our food problems.
The truth is more subtle than that. We teach our children attitudes about food that are nothing short of insane. On the one hand, we teach our children that food is love -- witness the countless advertisements where mom makes her family feel better by cooking something good, or where dad makes his kid feel better by sharing an Oreo cookie. Indeed, some of the ads for chocolate promote an almost sexual experience just from one candy bar (although there is scientific connection between sexual pleasure hormones and chocoloate consumption, I doubt that anyone has ever acheived an orgasm munching on a Hershey bar). Then there's all the cooking shows, and "foodies" in the media selling us on the notion that fine dining is where it's at, and the right restaurant reservation confers a certain status. The avalanche of fetishization of food that goes on in modern life is unreal.
Then, on the other hand, there are the food nazis -- the diet culture that tries to tell you that everything is bad for you, all foods give you cancer, and no pleasure on earth could be worth even 5 pounds of excess fat. This is the culture promoted by women's magazines, the celebrity diet craze (where everyone is supposed to aspire to a size 2, whether it's possible for them or not), and ironically enough, much of the health food industry. Food to these people is something to fear and loathe, to be as cautious around as one might be if one was handling nitroglycerine.
Is it any wonder, then, that we're so completely messed up in how we eat? French people (who usually live longer than we do and are healthier and thinner than we are) laugh at us and our neuroses. Then they go have a small bite of cheese, a light dinner well-prepared with a cream-based sauce, and walk home without a hint of guilt or angst. Perhaps we might learn something there.