Diet Practices Archives - Page 9 of 10 - Food, Fatness and Fitness

The average American will eat 2984 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches over the course of their lifetime, according to a 2016 survey. If you piled all of those PB&Js on top of each other, the 373-foot stack of sandwiches would be taller than the Statue of Liberty. Two American icons going toe-to-crust, the executives at Peter Pan peanut butter who commissioned the survey must have pleased with the results. Among the simplest of modern American staples, the rise of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich illustrates many of the major themes of recent American history. The growing popularity of the PB&J in the twentieth century reflected changing family structures and child-rearing practices as well as the evolution of food…

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In 1972 John Yudkin, a physiologist, nutritionist and founding member of the Department of Nutrition at the Queen Elisabeth College in London, published a book called “Pure, White and Deadly – The new facts about the sugar you eat as a cause of heart disease, diabetes and other killers.” Since the late 1950s, Yudkin’s research had pointed to a connection between coronary thrombosis and sugar consumption, and he had argued against common ideas of fat causing obesity and problems like coronary heart disease. However, Yudkin could not make himself heard against the powerful voice of the sugar industry and of other scientific evidence pointing the finger at another suspect, so that Yudkin’s ideas vanished and “low fat became the new…

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In May this year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) introduced new labels that will have to be printed on most packaged food products by July 2018. In a presentation at the White House, Michelle Obama praised the label as making “a real difference in providing families across the country the information they need to make healthy choices.” Recent posts on this blog have discussed notions of transparency and choice. Today, I want to add some remarks on the history and politics of the gauge on which a lot of today’s food talk is based: on calories. The new food label includes a line on added sugars as well as changes in serving sizes. Its most visible change, however,…

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“We have done it – This city has gone on a diet. Together we have reached our goal of losing 1,000,000 pounds! (…) Hopefully, we are a healthier, more vibrant, and progressive community. I would like to thank each and every person and organization who has contributed to the OKC Million program, and I encourage all to stay active, stay healthy, and stay involved. This is the beginning of a brighter future.” The “OKC Million-pound-program,” which was initiated by Mayor Mick Cornett in Oklahoma City in 2007, was a massive campaign aimed at the city’s population and the weight of their bodies. Mayor Cornett boasted in 2013 that his successful effort to bring the state’s capital into shape through restraining and disciplining…

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Two of the most memorable moments in When Harry Met Sally (USA 1989) are about food. Well, they are not exactly about food, but they try to get at something through food. Of course, the first one is the legendary fake-orgasm-and-“I’ll-have-what-she’s-having”-scene in Katz’s Delicatessen in NYC. Yet when it comes to thinking about choice, the other restaurant scene is of greater interest, when they stop for lunch in a roadside diner while traveling home from college in Chicago to New York. Whereas Harry barely looks at the menu and goes for one of its default options (“I’ll have the number 3”), Sally orders à la carte, and she adds a long and complex list of individual choices and special requests…

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Food, Fatness and Fitness

Critical Perspectives

Category Diet Practices:

PB&J: The Rise and Fall of an Iconic American Dish

Sugar is the New Fat. The “Sugar Conspiracy” and its Essentialist Vision of the Natural Body

What Calories Do

Born Again Fit? One of the Nation’s Fattest Cities on a Diet

On Choice