My beef with food reform

A few years ago, Michael Pollan came to our campus and I got a ticket to hear him speak. I, like millions of others around the world, had been very impressed by the journalism and quality of writing he had applied to the problems with the American food system in his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. He is one of the key figures credited with pointing out that the ways in which we produce, process, and consume food in this country are unhealthy for people and for the environment.

After being introduced, Pollan walked onto the stage with a bag from Meijer, our regional grocery/superstore chain. I sometimes shop at Meijer, and many of my friends, colleagues and neighbors shop at Meijer—it’s one of the big names in our small Midwestern city.  

Pollan began pulling groceries out of the bag, and it quickly became clear that his intent was to use these items to mock the American food system. As I recall, the first thing he pulled out was some type of frozen breakfast that combined waffles, sausage and maybe egg in the same dish. Fair enough; the entire audience seemed to agree that it looked disgusting and un-natural. The next thing he pulled out was a tub of vanilla ice cream. Pollan pointed out that one of the recommendations he had made in his new book, In Defense of Food, was that people not buy foods with more than five ingredients. This particular ice cream brand marketed itself explicitly as having only five ingredients, and Pollan didn’t like that. At this point, I became a bit confused. This company is trying to make a less processed and more wholesome product, I thought. Isn’t that good? By the time Pollan was griping about an apple he had purchased at Meijer, I was fed up.

This sounds like a take-down of Pollan, but as I mentioned at the beginning, I still admire his journalism on the American food system. Rather, his demonstration symbolizes my problem with the movement to reform the way Americans eat, of which he is certainly not the only representative. We have started with an insightful systems analysis, which points out the ways in which U.S. agricultural and dietary policy, economic incentives, urban planning, and even school system design—as well as individual consumer choices—together produce unhealthy outcomes for people and the environment. We have then distilled that analysis to a highly individualized approach to fixing the food system that places the burden of this enormous task on individual families.

Specifically, on women. Because women still do approximately twice the amount of household cooking that men do, despite most of us now also working outside the home. It boggles my mind that this is an aspect of the food system that is almost never mentioned in talks about food reform.

To be honest, I didn’t fully understand the weight of this burden until I married, had a child, and began a 60+-hour a week job. Before these life transformations, I was just as likely as some of the most self-righteous foodies to wonder why people ‘don’t cook anymore’ in the U.S., and to think that it’s a matter of ‘education’. I agreed that there is no reason why we shouldn’t all be growing our own vegetables and cooking meals from scratch every night.

Then I confronted the reality of getting home at 6 p.m. after an exhausting day of meetings, teaching, and grading, finding the refrigerator empty, and having to contemplate dinner with a bawling toddler clinging to my leg. Pizza or takeout win out. Yes, you can use a slow cooker—if you have time in the morning to chop vegetables before rushing everyone out of the door. Yes, you can make a quick stirfry—if you have the ingredients on hand because you’ve been able to go to the grocery store in between getting home from a weekend conference and preparing for the work week. Yes, you can cook on the weekend—if you haven’t been at a conference. Yes, you can have your husband cook—if he’s not also out of town, or grinding away at a deadline.

My point is, if I, as an over-educated, relatively well-off consumer who cares about the environment and her family’s health find it hard to cook and eat well in the U.S., how much harder must it be for those who don’t have the privileges I have? We need to spread the burden for healthier food systems from individual families to the system itself. We need to make fresh, healthy food the default setting in the U.S., as it is in parts of Europe and Asia. The proliferation of farmers’ markets, food trucks, and the attempts of some grocery stores to stock local produce and healthy meal ingredients, are a great start. So is the support for more sustainable agriculture written into the most recent version of the Farm Bill (although not the cuts to food assistance programs). Urban agriculture is also great, although it may not be a reality for all families to participate.

So there are many good things being done, but here are some things I would like to see more of:

     1)  Men in the kitchen. And by that, I mean men taking responsibility for planning, shopping          for, and preparing healthy meals on weeknights, not just special occasions.

     2) More diverse voices in the food reform movement, particularly the voices of mothers—

     mothers working outside the home, poor mothers, and farming mothers.

     3) More healthy fast meal options (maybe food trucks can help here). Why are all of our fast  food options in the U.S. terribly unhealthy?

Finally, we need a more systemic approach to dealing with the problems of the American food system. Pollan was among the first prominent voices for this type of approach. As I’ve tried to point out above, changing the way we eat may involve changing the way we commute, work, live, and design our communities. A daunting task, to be sure—but so is making dinner some days.