Dr. Kracker

The beginning of each New Year inspires us to make resolutions for the upcoming 365 days. Health club memberships typically soar in January and February, the workout rooms are crowded and empty lockers are scarce. But within a few months, the new members’ enthusiasm wanes, it’s easier to find a free treadmill, and free lockers become available again.

It’s curious to me that we so often give up on our resolutions so quickly, because following through any self-improvement resolution makes us feel so good. We like challenges and we like to succeed. We feel good as long as we follow the path and meet our objectives. Yet making lasting changes and true transformations is difficult to do. Past habits, long set ways of doing things and a status quo mindset are not easily broken.

Along with new exercise programs, the New Year often inspires new dietary resolutions — my wife waited until January 1 to join my daughter and me in our plant strong diet. Aside from losing weight or feeling healthier, the food choices we make have impact in other, less obvious, ways — not only on us personally, but also the rest of society. I think the New Year is a good time to reflect on these wider implications and the possibility for change, too.

One of 2009’s best books was James McWilliams Just Food. In it, McWilliams explores the options for sustainable agriculture in the 21st century. He looks very critically at the locavore movement. A strong supporter of organic farming, McWilliams is not afraid to examine its limitations and the implications of lower yielding farming. He looks at what genetically modified seeds have been able to deliver in terms of higher yields and lower use of herbicides and pesticides. But he also shows that much of their great potential to generate more efficient use of fertilizer and plant survivability under drought conditions has yet to be delivered. McWilliams’ harshest criticism is reserved for our government’s subsidy of corn, saying its elimination would go a long way toward helping sort out what our nation should grow, how much we should grow and where it should be grown. Given the heavy influence of Iowa in the early presidential primaries, however, I doubt I’ll ever see sufficient political resolve to eliminate this distortion of our natural resources and national finances. Nonetheless, the book presents a great overview of our agriculture system and its ability to deliver healthy, nutritious food in a sustainable manner. And fittingly, the book provides some hopeful notes in the last chapters. I read with great excitement about emerging opportunities for aquaculture and its ability to raise tons of tilapia and greens on a very few acres.

The point of the McWilliams book is to identify a sustainable way of eating: “just food” is food that comes from an agricultural system “we can rightly associate with the justice of sustainability.” This focus on justice has made me examine the moral component of food, and who decides the moral parameters. Would there be such a thing as a virtuous diet that follows from the moral component? Is a moral component to food and diet an effective way to improve diet and nutrition? Does it matter that I may be saving the planet by eating kale when others are enjoying their corn-fed beef fajitas and undermining all my efforts? I’m not totally comfortable thinking in these terms and I question the success of a moralistic approach to diet.

Consider for a moment the ways our American culture intersects food with religion. As a Catholic, I grew up with meatless Fridays. When this restriction ended, my two brothers and five sisters were quite happy to say goodbye to fish sticks and grilled peanut butter sandwiches. The good news was that my mother used no-meat days to introduce us to artichokes, and thus at an early age I discovered the joys of unveiling the artichoke heart, and how rewarding it was to scrape all those boring leaves with our teeth and cut away those annoying bristles to reach the elusive heart. Jewish dietary laws still define the lives of many Americans and many more Israelis. Muslims fast during Ramadan and avoid pork and alcohol. A virtuous life has meant and continues to mean following these dietary restrictions for many of us. In this sense there is definitely a virtuous diet, but my own religious background makes me very skeptical of rules that use moral injunctions to limit freedoms.

Some vegetarians and vegans make diet an organizing principal of life, and in this sense diet quickly crosses over into the sphere of religion and morals. The issue of animal rights and their inhumane treatment in confined feeding operations is drawing more and more criticism and has been compared by some authors to the horrors of the exploitation of slaves. Michael Pollan examined this issue carefully in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and I urge you to check out his book, as well as Jonathan Foer’s Eating Animals, for a much fuller examination of this question than I can provide in this short newsletter. I will admit that following a vegan diet for health reasons has made it possible for me to sidestep this moral issue, and in many ways, I feel less than courageous in my stance.

Food is one issue that unites us and divides us. I was a vegetarian during much of my young adulthood and came back to meat because I was so often embarrassed and reluctant to tell a host that I couldn’t eat the food that they were offering. I didn’t want food to interfere with their generosity and friendship, especially when I was living abroad. These days, we are much more aware of how important diet is in everyone’s lives and how diet is becoming an expression of our approach to life, and it is pretty normal to check in with people regarding any dietary issues before planning a menu. In the case of large gatherings like Thanksgiving, omnivores (at least here in Austin) almost always make certain that there are adequate vegan and vegetarian options. The amazing thing about food is its role as the center of and the creator of community. It would be wonderful if we never lose sight of this key role for food.

With the discussion of sustainability (and who can argue against making life sustainable?) diet has taken on yet another moral dimension. Inevitably we as individuals choose how we are going to eat and what we are going to eat, even if our early food patterns are established before conscious choice comes into play. As kids we pretty much obediently eat what is placed in front of us. As we grow up and our tastes broaden, our relationship with food also evolves into a utilitarian attitude. Food is fuel, and we seek as much of it as we can find to fill up the tank, often as inexpensively as possible. The change in the food mindset or food attitude may undergo significant transformation as we connect with different social groups, discover different ways and things to eat, or work in an early food-related establishment, like a restaurant or bakery, where a whole new door opens for us. A significant partner who’s gone through a food reevaluation can opens one’s eyes; in my case, it was a first serious love interest who gave me the joy of baking. I joke with my 15-year old that his anti-vegan views will change when he falls in love with a vegan. And as we age, diet becomes a health factor, especially when we are told that unless we change what we eat, we will suffer serious consequences. There are myriad reasons our food choices change, but one true thing is certain: they are seldom fixed for life.

Because food is so personal, many of the best-intentioned educational programs (such as the food pyramid) never gain traction. Diets intrude on choice, and any time choice is restricted, individualism pushes back and resists. I know that it does in my case. It doesn’t matter how rational and well-meaning the information and recommendations are if they interfere with personal choice. Because government programs like the food pyramid over-rely on education and information, they are probably condemned to irrelevance and perpetual indifference on the part of the general public. And due to this same resistance to changes, so many New Year’s dietary resolutions never get very far.

Consider smoking: in their early days, cigarettes were regarded as almost strictly a health issue, with very few moral implications. Initially, there was very little headway gained in lowering the percentage of people who smoked. The warning labels on packages were printed for years. The negative effects of smoking were well known. The individual’s economic cost of smoking kept increasing as sin taxes were imposed. But it was only when non-smokers gained the right to smoke-free environments and smokers were exiled from buildings that change gathered momentum. Under the pressure of exile and being made into social pariahs, many smokers capitulated and quit. Given the many illnesses and early deaths that smoking caused, this has been a very welcome transformation, even if the individual rights of smokers were infringed or trampled, in their own view.

The dangers and implications of dietary neglect are not that dissimilar. The health costs of diabetes are going to triple in 25 years to $336 billion annually according to the journal Diabetes Care (as reported in Bloomberg News). Diabetes (to single out just one chronic disease) is preventable and responds well to dietary intervention. Still, we are a long way from laws creating sugar-free, fat free or heart healthy zones to force change in the eating culture. Yet will the healthy continue to willingly pay for those who refuse to change their eating habits? Perhaps more ominous, will coming generations be able to fund their own healthcare as well as support the care of the aging population that suffers from diet induced chronic diseases? No one can predict the future and attitudes of the population. It may well be that the totality of the arguments for animal rights, public health, ecology and sustainable agriculture will sway enough people and create enough momentum to achieve the conclusions of Just Food: treat beef and grain fed animals as a costly delicacy rather than the every-day choice.

So where does this leave us with the New Year and new diets? Is this the year to cut back on beef and to increase vegetables? I would urge everyone to look at what is in your self interest. If you want to find a diet that furthers the goal of sustainable agriculture and protects the environment, by all means explore the less meat and no-meat options. It’s very easy to experience the positive effects a plant stronger diet adds to your life. Health careful dieting promises better weight control, more energy (since less weight will be schlepped around), more colorful eating as the richness of the vegetable world is experienced, and more adventuresome eating as new textures, tastes and sensations are explored. One of the real pleasures of dietary change is that there are so many foods that can be gained — like the artichoke hearts of my youth — and a new diet can be more about abundance than about deprivation. And in the work place, where many of us spend 1/3 of our lives, companies are waking up to diet and health and creating employee incentive plans to reduce blood pressure, cholesterol and body mass in order to promote wellness. New companies, like The Full Yield, are emerging to offer foods and plans for making these transformations easier for employees, and in this sense the work place is taking the lead to isolate poor dietary choices, much as smoking was banned.

Dietary change on a society-wide basis will not happen quickly, Diet remains an individual choice and the best results come from individuals freely choosing. It is up to each of us to personally decide whether to follow our self interest or the greater good of society as a whole. And if you do change, take moderate steps to create the momentum of success. And happy are the choices when self interest and the general good coincide.

Have a health careful 2010.