Gotta love that public health nutrition urge to 'make food more affordable' rather than 'make less people poor'. Really shows what the priorities are, which, in my mind are more about finding justification to keep themselves relevant when they are in fact, largely redundant. They are considering FOP 'healthy' labelling here too; it all just one massive red herring to distract from legitimate health equity, which does not lie in a piece of fucking salmon.
I gotta speak up for my public health nutrition people! Public health is actually one of the few nutrition realms where people ARE talking about poverty alleviation and social determinants of health. It's just that public health has little power over, say, raising the minimum wage, building more affordable housing, making education more equitable, etc. But there has been a shift away from "let's put in a farmer's market!" and instead towards doubling the value of EBT for produce, adding fresh produce vouchers to the WIC program, etc. -- moves that acknowledge people literally need the equivalent of money in their pockets in order to afford fresh food. There is also a ton of work behind the scenes on the policy side of things, with the upcoming Farm Bill, to make the food system more equitable and not only reflect the priorities of the biggest food manufacturers and food producers with the most lobbyists.
I'm really glad to hear of these shifts -- i've been reporting on public health for almost 20 years and this was NOT the framing even a few years ago and certainly not a decade ago. The "war on ob*sity" mandate has kept everyone laser-focused on personal choices and farmer's markets for far too long. Yes to giving people money for food!!
Sounds like y'all are doing way better in the US than we are over here - there definitely seems to be much more focus on FOP labelling, regressive taxation and calorie counts on menus and school gardens here with only lip-service to SDoH. Maybe it is happening and it's just less visible?
It probably is! Check out what is going on in your local food policy council -- it is a great place to get to know people and organizations addressing issues with grassroots solutions.
Oct 11, 2022·edited Oct 11, 2022Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith
Thanks for mentioning that there needs to be a nutritional floor for food manufacturers. As a public health dietitian, I think this is often the part that gets left out of the conversation, and instead the focus is on how X decision affects a fairly privileged, food-literate segment of the population, rather than the population as a whole. I agree that changes like this trickle down into food marketing in a way that is stigmatizing and shaming to a lot of people -- but they are also used to improve the "floor" for regulations around free snacks for food-insecure children in afterschool programs, for example. Food manufacturers will cut every corner they are allowed to, in order to save money. That is especially true for food products that are not public-facing, such as those that are sold to schools. If the regulation is for "majority of the grains must be whole grains," then every single product will be 51% whole grains and no more. (I went to a school food commodity product tasting -- side note: fascinating! -- and this was absolutely the case.) There is no incentive to them to do anything more than is required, and a lot of incentive to cut corners wherever they can legally do so. The guardrails need to be there to keep them in check, even if it feels arbitrary to create a cutoff point for "healthy."
Agree agree agree!! I abhor the "healthy" on food packaging because who's to say what's right for any individual? Most of us know what feels best in our body yet if we ignore the emotional fulfillment food provides, we get nowhere. I don't want someone labeling and categorizing foods into binary categories. A restricted eater client swooned over EVOO and red wine vinegar dressing and pooh-pooh'd Ranch until I did a side-by-side comparison of nutrients. Ranch blew the other out of the water "health-wise." All foods are emotionally equal yet marginalized folx (and all those living on limited incomes and support) often HAVE to buy the on sale mac 'n cheese and drive-thru lanes to survive whether it's "healthy" or not. Let's not make them feel badly about their choices. We have enough shame in our world. Stop with the food.
Some times you gotta show 'em. Another client said white potato didn't stand a chance against her sweet potato (same dinner for 7 years). She gasped when I showed her the stats.
I am both furious and terrified about how these new labels are going to affect kids in particular.
No one making this decision has ever seen someone become so undernourished from orthorexia that they developed anorexia and had to be hospitalized.
No one making this decision has had to re-nourish a child from an eating disorder and heard them say they prefer death to eating the "unhealthy" food.
No one making this decision has ever seen a child with ARFID struggle to get their nutritional needs met without the predictable pre-packaged items or fast food.
LOVE THIS SO MUCH!!! How many times have I been shamed in the grocery store for what's in my fucking cart by someone with much "healthier" choices? I once had a woman even point to things (smoked sausage, elbow macaroni) and said this was why I was fat. I told her that I liked those things, and that I'm on a very limited income and they're affordable for me. She told me if I "really tried" I could find a way to do better. I would never do this to someone else.
Am I the only person who doesn’t give a flying fig what the FDA says? “Healthy” eating only resulted in a bad situation with disordered eating and over exercising. I avoid that stuff like the … well you know.
THANK YOU for this!! Shifting my mindset to view health/nutrition as a matter of, essentially, addition rather than subtraction, was the formative basis for eventually growing into a complete, health-oriented approach to food. I simply started asking myself, "What could I add to this meal, to make it 'feel' healthier to me?" instead of viewing it as "this is not a healthy food." It could be as simple as throwing some frozen spinach into boxed mac/cheese (a meal I serve at least once a week to this day), but it felt revolutionary because the first question, of course, was "but that means possibly eating MORE food, not LESS," which felt very at-odds with what I had always believed "healthy" meant. Health meant swapping unhealthy foods out for unhealthy foods! Not adding MORE food to unhealthy food just to dress it up in nutrition. Eventually I was able to answer that question to myself, and be like, "if I eat more food overall because I am adding different nutritional profiles to the food I'm eating, then that's probably food I am meant to be eating." Ultimately, the only "down side" of nutrition by addition is that the primary goal of it isn't weight loss - but it took me a while to really shine the light on that dark place within myself and see it.
Eventually, over years, I was able to grow away from the dominating concern about the physical health of any given meal, and view "healthy food" as encompassing my feelings, my headspace, and mental devotion to supplying a meal at any given time, etc. And able to see, ultimately, that overall health is an infrastructural issue, not the result of any personal choice. We have built society in a way that creates epidemics (of loneliness, caregiving, schooling, nutrition, etc) and recognizing that was both terrifying, because it meant I couldn't solve these problems myself, not to the extent I wanted; and freeing, because it meant that I was able to release myself of the burden of trying to solve these problems myself. But it all started with the very deliberate focus on "health" as being something I could add to a food, a meal, etc rather than something inherent to and defining about any specific food.
I feel pretty meh about the new labels. I am happy for the avocados, and as a child of the Snackwell generation (and oh, how my mother loved to chide the commercials for those - they were for people too weak to just eat healthily in the first place, in her mind! Wanting cookies at all, even "cheat" cookies, was the failure) I am happy at the thought of....less of that, overall. But, I have little faith that any broad bureaucratic labeling of foods will ultimately be very health-focused in the end, even before we get into the lobbying side of it.
This is so right on! Today in STAT which I get daily, there is a link to articles in Nature and a tool to look at the actual scientific evidence behind healthy eating recommendations. Check it out!
I'm skeptical about the nutritional value of lots of vegetables. Celery is nutritionally pointless. Green beans don't have all that much going for them. People will rhapsodize about their wonderful sauteed zucchini, but what has zucchini done for you lately? It has some vitamin C, I guess, although heat destroys vitamin C. If you LIKE those things, fair enough, but you're not more virtuous than someone eating corn flakes. But the belief in the value and virtue of vegetables goes completely unquestioned even in forums like yours, Virginia. Some day I'd like to see a little closer inspection of the importance of vegetables, especially since all the research shows that no one is eating them and yet our lifespans continue to increase*.
*Yes, recently our lifespans in the U.S. have begun to drop due to COVID and fentanyl, but I haven't seen any research suggesting that roasted summer squash counteracts either COVID or fentanyl.
Oh I'm absolutely here for this kind of questioning -- and if you felt it was missing from this piece, just know that it was because I was trying to string so many ideas together and not write 5000 words. But this is where I was going with the part about, a cheeseburger is often the healthier choice. It provides a ton of nutrition (protein, fat, vitamins, etc) AND fills me up in a way that a salad for lunch just never does .
Gotta love that public health nutrition urge to 'make food more affordable' rather than 'make less people poor'. Really shows what the priorities are, which, in my mind are more about finding justification to keep themselves relevant when they are in fact, largely redundant. They are considering FOP 'healthy' labelling here too; it all just one massive red herring to distract from legitimate health equity, which does not lie in a piece of fucking salmon.
I gotta speak up for my public health nutrition people! Public health is actually one of the few nutrition realms where people ARE talking about poverty alleviation and social determinants of health. It's just that public health has little power over, say, raising the minimum wage, building more affordable housing, making education more equitable, etc. But there has been a shift away from "let's put in a farmer's market!" and instead towards doubling the value of EBT for produce, adding fresh produce vouchers to the WIC program, etc. -- moves that acknowledge people literally need the equivalent of money in their pockets in order to afford fresh food. There is also a ton of work behind the scenes on the policy side of things, with the upcoming Farm Bill, to make the food system more equitable and not only reflect the priorities of the biggest food manufacturers and food producers with the most lobbyists.
I'm really glad to hear of these shifts -- i've been reporting on public health for almost 20 years and this was NOT the framing even a few years ago and certainly not a decade ago. The "war on ob*sity" mandate has kept everyone laser-focused on personal choices and farmer's markets for far too long. Yes to giving people money for food!!
Sounds like y'all are doing way better in the US than we are over here - there definitely seems to be much more focus on FOP labelling, regressive taxation and calorie counts on menus and school gardens here with only lip-service to SDoH. Maybe it is happening and it's just less visible?
It probably is! Check out what is going on in your local food policy council -- it is a great place to get to know people and organizations addressing issues with grassroots solutions.
EXACTLY.
Thanks for mentioning that there needs to be a nutritional floor for food manufacturers. As a public health dietitian, I think this is often the part that gets left out of the conversation, and instead the focus is on how X decision affects a fairly privileged, food-literate segment of the population, rather than the population as a whole. I agree that changes like this trickle down into food marketing in a way that is stigmatizing and shaming to a lot of people -- but they are also used to improve the "floor" for regulations around free snacks for food-insecure children in afterschool programs, for example. Food manufacturers will cut every corner they are allowed to, in order to save money. That is especially true for food products that are not public-facing, such as those that are sold to schools. If the regulation is for "majority of the grains must be whole grains," then every single product will be 51% whole grains and no more. (I went to a school food commodity product tasting -- side note: fascinating! -- and this was absolutely the case.) There is no incentive to them to do anything more than is required, and a lot of incentive to cut corners wherever they can legally do so. The guardrails need to be there to keep them in check, even if it feels arbitrary to create a cutoff point for "healthy."
Yes, I'm all for more guardrails! We just don't need to be using the guardrails to shame and stigmatize consumers.
More labels and more demonizing of foods is a nightmare for people struggling with eating disorders.
1000 percent
Agree agree agree!! I abhor the "healthy" on food packaging because who's to say what's right for any individual? Most of us know what feels best in our body yet if we ignore the emotional fulfillment food provides, we get nowhere. I don't want someone labeling and categorizing foods into binary categories. A restricted eater client swooned over EVOO and red wine vinegar dressing and pooh-pooh'd Ranch until I did a side-by-side comparison of nutrients. Ranch blew the other out of the water "health-wise." All foods are emotionally equal yet marginalized folx (and all those living on limited incomes and support) often HAVE to buy the on sale mac 'n cheese and drive-thru lanes to survive whether it's "healthy" or not. Let's not make them feel badly about their choices. We have enough shame in our world. Stop with the food.
Oh so fascinating about the side-by-side on dressings!
Some times you gotta show 'em. Another client said white potato didn't stand a chance against her sweet potato (same dinner for 7 years). She gasped when I showed her the stats.
So well said, Virginia.
I am both furious and terrified about how these new labels are going to affect kids in particular.
No one making this decision has ever seen someone become so undernourished from orthorexia that they developed anorexia and had to be hospitalized.
No one making this decision has had to re-nourish a child from an eating disorder and heard them say they prefer death to eating the "unhealthy" food.
No one making this decision has ever seen a child with ARFID struggle to get their nutritional needs met without the predictable pre-packaged items or fast food.
Amen amen amen. It's going to have a lot of unintended consequences, none of which are health-promoting.
LOVE THIS SO MUCH!!! How many times have I been shamed in the grocery store for what's in my fucking cart by someone with much "healthier" choices? I once had a woman even point to things (smoked sausage, elbow macaroni) and said this was why I was fat. I told her that I liked those things, and that I'm on a very limited income and they're affordable for me. She told me if I "really tried" I could find a way to do better. I would never do this to someone else.
That's so fucked up and I'm so sorry you've experienced it. (Also smoked sausage and macaroni is delicious.)
Ugh, so sorry that happened to you.
Thank you for writing this <3
Am I the only person who doesn’t give a flying fig what the FDA says? “Healthy” eating only resulted in a bad situation with disordered eating and over exercising. I avoid that stuff like the … well you know.
THANK YOU for this!! Shifting my mindset to view health/nutrition as a matter of, essentially, addition rather than subtraction, was the formative basis for eventually growing into a complete, health-oriented approach to food. I simply started asking myself, "What could I add to this meal, to make it 'feel' healthier to me?" instead of viewing it as "this is not a healthy food." It could be as simple as throwing some frozen spinach into boxed mac/cheese (a meal I serve at least once a week to this day), but it felt revolutionary because the first question, of course, was "but that means possibly eating MORE food, not LESS," which felt very at-odds with what I had always believed "healthy" meant. Health meant swapping unhealthy foods out for unhealthy foods! Not adding MORE food to unhealthy food just to dress it up in nutrition. Eventually I was able to answer that question to myself, and be like, "if I eat more food overall because I am adding different nutritional profiles to the food I'm eating, then that's probably food I am meant to be eating." Ultimately, the only "down side" of nutrition by addition is that the primary goal of it isn't weight loss - but it took me a while to really shine the light on that dark place within myself and see it.
Eventually, over years, I was able to grow away from the dominating concern about the physical health of any given meal, and view "healthy food" as encompassing my feelings, my headspace, and mental devotion to supplying a meal at any given time, etc. And able to see, ultimately, that overall health is an infrastructural issue, not the result of any personal choice. We have built society in a way that creates epidemics (of loneliness, caregiving, schooling, nutrition, etc) and recognizing that was both terrifying, because it meant I couldn't solve these problems myself, not to the extent I wanted; and freeing, because it meant that I was able to release myself of the burden of trying to solve these problems myself. But it all started with the very deliberate focus on "health" as being something I could add to a food, a meal, etc rather than something inherent to and defining about any specific food.
I feel pretty meh about the new labels. I am happy for the avocados, and as a child of the Snackwell generation (and oh, how my mother loved to chide the commercials for those - they were for people too weak to just eat healthily in the first place, in her mind! Wanting cookies at all, even "cheat" cookies, was the failure) I am happy at the thought of....less of that, overall. But, I have little faith that any broad bureaucratic labeling of foods will ultimately be very health-focused in the end, even before we get into the lobbying side of it.
This is so right on! Today in STAT which I get daily, there is a link to articles in Nature and a tool to look at the actual scientific evidence behind healthy eating recommendations. Check it out!
I'm skeptical about the nutritional value of lots of vegetables. Celery is nutritionally pointless. Green beans don't have all that much going for them. People will rhapsodize about their wonderful sauteed zucchini, but what has zucchini done for you lately? It has some vitamin C, I guess, although heat destroys vitamin C. If you LIKE those things, fair enough, but you're not more virtuous than someone eating corn flakes. But the belief in the value and virtue of vegetables goes completely unquestioned even in forums like yours, Virginia. Some day I'd like to see a little closer inspection of the importance of vegetables, especially since all the research shows that no one is eating them and yet our lifespans continue to increase*.
*Yes, recently our lifespans in the U.S. have begun to drop due to COVID and fentanyl, but I haven't seen any research suggesting that roasted summer squash counteracts either COVID or fentanyl.
Oh I'm absolutely here for this kind of questioning -- and if you felt it was missing from this piece, just know that it was because I was trying to string so many ideas together and not write 5000 words. But this is where I was going with the part about, a cheeseburger is often the healthier choice. It provides a ton of nutrition (protein, fat, vitamins, etc) AND fills me up in a way that a salad for lunch just never does .
Thanks! I can appreciate that you can't make every possible point in every single essay. :-)
https://conscienhealth.org/2022/10/healthy-energy-bars-and-unhealthy-milk/