DIET DILEMMA--The Shortening of America
What we eat has become a test of our moral worthiness.
One thing you have never read on this blog is health nazi crap. You know the kind. It’s everywhere in both the regular and-probably even more intensively-in the alternative media. It’s all about the “Fattening of America,” the sins of fast food, and the glory of exercise. Those who do not get with the program are encouraged to feel like slobs, sloths, and slatterns. The obese are beginning to come in for the kind of social ostracism, now reserved for that stubborn pariah class-smokers, the arch demons of the health police.
VEGETARIANS and food faddists have always been on the fringes of left and utopian movements in America dating back to the salad days of Brook Farm, many of whose earnest participants dabbled in meatless diets. The vegetarianism was given a name by a group of Victorian reformers who created the VEGETARIAN SOCIETY LONDON in 1847. It was not long before such ideas crossed the puddle and were current with certain strata of OUR cultural elite.
The introduction of Hindu and Buddhist literature and culture, which accelerated after the WORLD’S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS, held in Chicago in 1893, later contributed to the spread.
Meanwhile health food faddists like-ironically-JOHN HARVEY KELLOGG and rival C.W. POST, proved potent popularizers and learned that there was gold in them there veggie hills.
On the reform front, the animal anti-cruelty movement spawned by HENRY BERGH led to a whole new line of attack on the American diet and breeding a ferocious sub-species of activists in a direct line to PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT OF ANIMALS.
And UPTON SINCLAIR, intent on rousing America’s outrage at the treatment of packing house workers in THE JUNGLE, instead turned America’s stomach leading to the creation of not only the PURE FOOD AND DRUG and MEAT INSPECTION ACTS of 1906, but a whole new generation of meat abstainers.
By the early Twenties, vegetarianism and other food obsessions were firmly fixed as a part of the emerging “Bohemian” culture and were even making inroads into popular culture via articles in mass market magazines.
Things slowed up considerably during the DEPRESSION, when most folks were simply grateful for anything to eat. Involuntary vegetarians, created by the high cost of the pork chop, gleefully re-united with their beloved meat as soon as they had jingle in their jeans again. And during WORLD WAR II, patriotic “meatless Wednesdays” aside, folks had other things on their minds. During the meat-and-potato FIFTIES, vegetarianism was safely segregated from mainstream society as the exclusive property of beatnik kooks on one hand and eccentric blue-haired ladies on the other.
Things changed rapidly in the SIXTIES and SEVENTIES. Hippies began mouthing works like MACROBIOTIC and VEGAN. WAVY GRAVY and the HOG FARM dished out tofu and brown rice to tripped out freaks at WOODSTOCK (the Festival, not the Illinois city.) This trend even penetrated the meat loving Midwest where I endured various forms of rabbit food dished up at the OTHER CHEEK COMMUNE in Chicago, a Madison collective I stayed with in the early ‘70’s, and even at WOBBLY pot lucks.
Concern about the environment spawned yet another attack on the traditional diet-it was killing poor people in Africa by converting much of the world’s grain supply to protein for the [greedy, imperialistic] American table. And use of carbon fuels in American agriculture chucked another log on the fire of GLOBAL WARMING.
Now, if I don’t “eat right” I not only have a repulsive character flaw, but am a virtual murderer and-worse-a hypocrite whose every other claim to concern for social justice in negated by my preference for a big ol’ hunk of red meat.
Not that I necessarily disagree with that assessment. I admit, it’s all more or less true. Flog me. Spit when you hear my name.
But I am not apt to change.
Look, I am a fat old man. I went over 300 pounds not long ago and there is no indication that I have “topped out.” My eating habits were cast in stone long ago. I eat mostly meat, cheese (lots of that), and grains in the form of breads and pastas. Fresh fruit, save the occasional apple, slice of summer time watermelon, or fresh strawberries, seldom sullys my plate. I get my daily dose of vegetables-out of a can-at dinner or as potatoes in various guises. I have a sweet tooth for cookies and ice cream. I have only recently switched my work day breakfast from two DANISH to an egg-cheese-bacon-on-bagel (talk about cultural insensitivity!) served by one or another malevolent fast food titan.
I can hear my arteries clogging. If heart disease doesn’t kill me, cancer caused by food additives and processed sugars surely will-or maybe diabetes. I am a dead man walking. You are invited to sneer at my funeral. Since I also don’t have any health insurance to save me from myself, that day is probably coming sooner than later anyway.
All of the above is one of my usual horribly long prologues to the topic about which I originally set out to write. I was struck by an article penned by JOSHUA HOLLAND on ALTERNET, “Are You One of the Shrinking Americans?” In it he explains that scientists have found that Europeans, due to superior diet, now tower over Americans, whose growth has evidently been stunted by just the kind of eating I do plus wide-spread poverty and a lack of access to health care for many children.
This was stunning news. As late as World War II American GI’s were generally regarded not only as liberators but as giants. Now not only do the Dutch (average male 6’1”) and the Danes (average 6’)tower over American men (average 5’10”), but so do the French! The apoplectic screams you hear are from the xenophobes and Frog haters at FOX. And this holds true even when recent immigrants from Latin America and Asia (presumably shorter) are factored out.
It’s too late for this shrinking cowboy (I once was 6’2” and have been reduced by gravity and age to an even 6.’) But maybe you little buckaroos out there ought to reconsider that BIG MAC. Here, kid, have a carrot stick on me.