I’ve read a few blogs recently that seemed to center on a question I often ask myself and feel flustered trying to answer: Where is the middle-ground between apathy and self-righteousness? Especially with regards to a stranger who seems to be involved in unhealthy behaviors?

On Fit to the Finish’s blog post (here), the scene is set: an overweight mother unloads groceries with her overweight daughter; they both stop midway to enjoy soda and a candy bar, the mother advising her daughter, “You can’t go wrong with a soda and a candy bar on a hot day.” Blogger Diane who watched the scene, asked her readers if it’s anyone’s place to say anything.

Big Fat Deal (here) recently brought up a woman who received an anonymous Post-It note that read “Please do not take this the wrong way, I am just concerned for your health. Have you considered Weight Watchers?”

Comments on both blog posts unanimously say: butt out. Comments on the mother-daughter story agree that saying nothing is the best choice. Commenters on the Post-It note story focused on the harm such a move could make to the recipient.

Look, I feel ya. That whole Post-It note thing is such a passive-aggressive cop-out. And I abhor whenever anyone precedes a statement or question with “don’t take this the wrong way” or “no offense” — both which indicate the speaker is already well aware of his/her forthcoming douchebaggery, so why bother even speak? Boggles my mind. In both cases, the assumption is that overweight people must be involved in unhealthy eating patterns that would require intervention. Is that so far-fetched?

Here’s where I start to feel like an enabling wuss — if we can agree, and many of us do, that unhealthy processed foods are addictive (see here); that many people show (neurologically) the same signs of addiction to fast food that alcoholics do with alcohol; when are we simply acting as spectators to a show of self-destruction? Granted, many of us still probably wouldn’t approach a raging alcoholic stranger on the street and be like, “yo, put the bottle down, don’t you know that stuff’s bad for you?” so why would we approach someone, anyone, scarfing down a double double, milkshake and fries? Here are some of the predominant reasons:

• Where’s the line between someone who simply doesn’t fit the Western-propagation of “thinness” and someone who is truly at an unhealthy weight? Can anyone “know” this by observance alone?
• We don’t know back-story. We don’t know whether this is perennial behavior or a once-in-a-while thing; we don’t know the cause of obesity for sure (and, hey, thin people eat like crap, too); we don’t want to say something and offend the person (potentially perpetuating cycles of shame that lead to the self-destructive behavior).
• We fear for our own safety (seriously).
• We can admit that unlike other substances that can be abused, food is truly necessary to survive and if that’s what a person can afford, or what a person is accustomed to, it’s better than nothing (eating nothing = quicker death).
• We don’t want to encourage eating disorders, including orthorexia, by denying people’s rights to indulge as they see fit.
• Freedom — we’ve got choices, they made their own, so they’ll live with ‘em.
• You can lead a horse to water…yadda yadda yadda.
• We’ve all got problems/issues/therapy bills, etc. — the thing with “fatness” is that it’s like a Scarlett Letter telling the world “hey world, I’ve got issues!” Why should we so self-righteously presume we’ve got the answer; got it all figured out?

Some commenters wrote about the precarious position of us “used to be fat” people. That we can truly feel compassion for overweight people and that our leading by example is akin to activism. Feeling myself very much in a precarious spot — a spot where I can say, “hey, look at me, I did it, so can you!” (and sound presumptuous and self-righteous) and a spot where I know what it’s like to be 280 pounds and think if one more person assumes they know what’s it like, I’m going to wear a sandwich board that says, “silence is golden.”

I’m torn because the issue is even more complicated when it’s a loved one we’re talking about and not simply a stranger.

One of my most pervasive memories is of a trip to Hermosa Beach with my father and twin brother. This was early on in my parents’ divorce and my dad was house-sitting and brought us along over the weekend to enjoy some time with him. One day during the trip, my dad handed my twin and me our own weight-loss charts — mine with a picture of a woman staring fanatically at her scale, my twin’s with a dude doing the same. We later ordered pizza and diet soda for lunch. This is one scene of many in which attempts at instilling in us the “weight loss can-do” simply floundered. I can recall the hundreds my father spent monthly on Udo’s vitamins and fish oils that were blended lovingly by my mom with fresh fruits each morning for a couple months straight. My twin and I plugged our noses with each sip and couldn’t wait to come home after school, when our parents were at work, to gorge on the boxes of cookies and crackers waiting patiently for our return.

I’m torn because I know first-hand that watching someone “lead by example” can actually make you feel more hopeless. Sometimes I’d see people eating salads for lunch and dinner and tell myself, “gosh, I can never just eat salad! No way!” We can’t step outside of ourselves to see when we’re misrepresenting reality, misinterpreting the circumstances, justifying bad behavior, not giving ourselves a chance. Sometimes we simply see it as “this is me” and everyone/everything else is simply antithetical to me.

Alternately, I’m torn because I know first-hand that watching my twin brother succeed at turning his life around gave me the impetus to do the same.

I’m torn because I would also stay silent watching the overweight candy-eating woman instill in her daughter an unhealthy emotional relationship with food that could have life-long negative consequences.

Somehow amidst all of this frayed thought, I think there’s a thin line between apathy and self-righteousness where we find social responsibility.

A comment on Diane’s blog really echoed the core of where my feelings of “leading by example isn’t enough” reside. Don wrote: “…when it comes to making healthy food choices we all are swimming upstream against some mighty strong currents!…if cauliflower and broccoli had the same advertising campaign with bazillions of dollars dreaming up jingles about ‘deserving a break today’ etc. instead of salivating and gorging on high-fat, high-sugar, highly processed NON-food items we would all be running around stuffing our faces with broccoli and cauliflower!  These multi-national corporations don’t throw all their zillions of dollars into advertising because it’s just *play* money! They are looking for a HEFTY return on their dollar. At OUR COST! They are looking to wage powerful influence on our so-called ‘freedom of choice!’ Can we still exercise freedom of choice? Sure! But it takes extreme vigilance, awareness of the forces which are out to decieve [sic] and mislead us. How many average citizens out there can do this…?”

This where my frustration lies, and it is a contentious position — I don’t think people’s unhealthy eating habits are simply dictated by “choice,” especially when we’re talking about children.

I am highly cognizant of my privileged in being able to afford and access healthy foods — and most importantly, being educated on how to live as healthfully as possibly. Others live in food deserts, are bombarded with commercials to eat and drink crap, can only afford the dollar-menu, literally do not have reasonable access to fresh fruits and vegetables, get subsidized lunches of crap with more crap, etc.

The good news is that these issues are becoming more and more prominent publicly. Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign along with the Obesity Task Force (full report released; see here) are great examples of this. I know that within these two models of improvement there are issues (using the word ‘OH!!!-besity!!!” instead of ‘health’ being just one of them) — but this is huge, people! My biggest concern with the Obesity Task Force is that its board of advisors consists of governmental agencies that propagate some of the very barriers standing in people’s way to accessing health – for instance, the government subsidizes on grain crops instead of produce crops, which makes it easier for people to afford a BigMac rather than a salad (see here). Also, these governmental agencies are lobbied by industries like the Dairy Farmer’s Association, etc — the very associations with big dollars going into misleading advertising campaigns (see here).

So, I’ve totally gone on a super-long rant. I guess my long-winded psuedo-point is: we can all lead by example and tastefully and rightfully stay silent. But there does come a time when that’s not enough. Where does “enough” reside? I’m still finding my footing on that nebulous cloud of  thought, but I know that calling out food manufacturers is one way (like Michelle Obama did assertively here).

<3,

The Cranky One

Hey guys!  Happy Sunday! I wanted to point your attention to an article in The New York Times a few days ago called “‘Yes!’ to Pop Tarts! Panel Approves Bake-Sale Rules” (2/25/10) here. The article discusses a decision made by New York’s Panel for Education Policy to ban home-made goods from school bake-sales and yet allow processed foods so long as they meet a list of agreed-upon criteria (generated by the panel). If you haven’t been keeping up on NY schools and their bake sale policies (why am I — grad student on the West Coast — paying attention, you ask? For some of us it’s scantily-clad vampire and werewolf men, for others *cough,* it’s food debates! , then here’s the gist:

• A while ago (and before the article referenced above), most bake-sales used to raise funds for school programs were banned in NY city school. See article here (10/2/09). Reasons cited for this include, “Roughly 40 percent of the city’s elementary and middle school students are overweight or obese, according to the Education Department. The department also found a correlation between student health and performance on standardized tests, according to a survey it released in July.” Read the city’s proposed changes memo here, which includes only using vending machines from those the city has a contract with (hmm sounds fishy, no?) and putting timers on the machines so that its contents are inaccessible during meal times.
• Because the above regulation left school programs, clubs and activities hurting since they had relied on bake-sales to raise funds, the city panel amended the rules this past Wednesday.  “Under the new rules, students may sell fresh fruits and vegetables, or one of 27 specific packaged items that have been approved for sales in city vending machines, between the start of school and 6 p.m. on weekdays. The same goes for parent groups, except for an exception carved out for one no-brownies-barred Parent Teacher Association bake sale during the school day per month.”
• Some of the criteria the packaged foods have to meet include that they are one serving only, under 200 calories, without Splenda, and with less than 35% of the calories coming from sugar or fat, among other restrictions.

I guess I’ll say a couple nice things before I unleash the cranky. It’s great that school officials are talking about and taking seriously the fact that we rely too much on processed junk in our schools — both from the vending machines and served up in the cafeteria. Just the fact that people are noticing how kids are duped by lack of information and by misrepresentations by food companies — serving size tricks, crap foods masquerading as health foods, yadda yadda yadda — is awesome. But is saying no to home-baked foods because “’it’s impossible to know what the content is, or what the portion size is’” and yet allowing certain foods like Doritos and Pop Tarts to pass the check-list appropriate? Maybe “appropriate” isn’ the right word. Is this the smart thing to do? If we’re talking about the impossibility of knowing “content” of food, I hardly think Pop Tarts’s ingredients list would fall into a “knowable” range given you’d need to hand a kid a dictionary and chemical engineer to translate.

(Don’t mind my half-ass art. I couldn’t find a picture that said “LAYS in a state of a nature” so I made my own!)

I can just imagine little Johnny goes home from school to a mom who greets him excitedly with home-made banana bread to which he briskly asserts, “mom, I don’t know what you put in that crap, now hand me my Doritos!”

I think skepticism of packaged food is seriously warranted. But we’re kinda talking out of both sides of our crumb-filled mouths if we then allow specific food companies to monopolize our vending machines and “bake-sales” with their pre-approved packaged garbage. Sure, it’s a great idea to limit the sheer volume of crap being sold to kids on campus. Even better to limit it to items that are one-serving and under 200 calories, versus those king-sized monstrosities I so enjoyed in my youth. But what kind of message our we sending if we’re saying, in one breath, take control of your health! And then in another saying, “and it’s only food companies who can show you the way!” I get it if people worry that PTA moms add too much sugar to their blondies and macaroons and serve up cookies the size of baseball mitts, but is banning home-made goods the smart thing to do? Also, we’re sending the wrong message if kids equate the healthiness of an item with its being under 200 calories. We all know you can eat 200 calories of crap. We also know that calories from processed foods are not accepted and treated the same by our bodies as whole foods are.

Howell Wechsler with the CDC said something that stuck with me: “’Schools are supposed to be a place where we establish a model environment, and the last thing kids need is an extra source of pointless calories.’”

Hmm. Stripping responsibility from kids and families and putting it in the hands of food companies doesn’t seem like a model environment — though I can see how it would certainly be a profitable one for food companies and the politicians lobbying for them. Wouldn’t this be a great opportunity for kids and families to discuss how to read food labels, how to decipher what all that ingredient crap is in the foods they buy, how to make healthy home-made treats? (I’m sure parents need to learn this stuff as much as, if not more than, their children do!). Shouldn’t we be empowering people with knowledge? If we didn’t have food companies banking off of misguided consumers and monopolizing our airwaves, t.v.s, and grocery stores it certainly would be easier for families to navigate the basic human necessity to eat. But it ain’t that simple these days, my friends.

What do  you think about policy makers banning home-made goods from schools and yet advocating portion-controlled processed foods? Where do you draw the line between school responsibility and personal responsibility? Who should be teaching our kids about nutrition?

I’d love your thoughts!

<3,

The Cranky One