March 9, 2009
-
“You Are What You Eat”
“You are what you think you eat.” Tom Robbins
“You are what you eat ate, too.” Michael Pollan
Until the middle of the last century, the majority of Iowans were God-fearing church-goers whose understanding of free will came from Romans 6:23 – “The wages of sin is death, but…” These days, we are mostly secular humanists and the Bible’s recipe for self determination has a modern translation: “You are what you eat.”
That is the most versatile of mantras. Moms employ it to encourage better diets, cartoonists for cheap laughs and vegetarians to shame others. It sanctifies an ambiguous array of religious dietary edicts, leaving no hiding place for the wayward Brahmin who tastes beef, or the poor imam contaminated by pork. It’s also an excellent tool for terrorizing heathens. When I worked in the Younker’s Tea Room kitchen in the 1960’s, our staff was equally divided between Jehovah’s Witnesses and some Born Again sect whose leader preached against poultry eaters. Arguments over what God meant by “the unclean animal” would begin with lively discussions about what chickens and pigs ate, escalate into strange tirades on the comparative anatomies of their digestive tracts and end in soup-spilling, bone-throwing fights.
“You are what you eat” also proselytizes true believers in the gospel of nutrition. In Europe, Gillian McKeith turned the phrase into a TV and cook book empire. In her version of self determination, we should never aspire to be cows or pigs, but lambs are fine role models, making her followers meeker than those of the dead All American guru Robert Atkins.
Like all sermons, “You are what you eat” raises doubts. As sociologist Claude Fischler put it “If you are what you eat and you don’t know what you’re eating, do you know who you are?”
It’s a fair question. Consider the basic tenet of American manhood, real men eat beef. If an army marches on its stomach, as Mao said, then America’s manifest destiny was fueled by the lust for the flesh of wild buffalo and free ranged, long horn cattle. In native American tradition, we consume not just nutrients, but character. Otherwise, snake and rat meat would be as popular as salmon and chicken and the ancients would never have thought of religious dietary prohibitions.
In today’s mainstream food systems, cattle are no longer the proud beasts of American lore, but pathetically compliant creatures who are removed from their natural habitat and forced to eat foods that their stomachs are not designed to digest. So they grow fast enough to be slaughtered, hopefully before living 450 days. Usually stunned first, they go meekly as lambs to their good night.
Most pigs and chickens have it even worse. Hogs’ ideal life span is 150 days for breeders who cramp them into confinements so miserable they can’t turn around and nip at the pig who is eating their tail. Chickens are bred to be immobile, not just flightless, but also often unable to walk. Both are usually shot full of hormones and antibiotics so they can tolerate the misery. So, as Tom Robbins noted, self-definition by diet is usually an exercise in self-delusion. The direct line from Iron Age hunters through the Chisolm Trail to John Wayne’s version of the American soul ended short of the mall food court and the Wal-Mart food center.
As food systems changed, so did the health of people consuming food. “You are what you eat” proves it’s no coincidence that obesity and diabetes rates parallel the changes in the way food was raised and brought to market. Food processing has utterly altered the foods we eat. Most Iowa “pork” is now treated with an double digit percentage of chemical water, to “enhance” its shelf life and add weight to a product sold by the pound. Most “sugar” isn’t sugar at all, but a complicated chemistry experiment with corn. Most barbecue isn’t barbecued at all, but baked, or grilled and covered with corn-sweetened tomato sauce – except in South Carolina, where barbecue is defined by law and only real wood burning Q’s can use the word.
Clearly, some states have more pride in their food traditions than Iowa does. Dairy states forced national margarine laws and taxes for nearly a century. Wisconsin banned colored margarine through the 1960’s and lobbied for national labeling restrictions on adulterated cheese. If it’s only part cheese, it’s “cheese food.” Similarly, if it’s only part juice, it’s “juice drink.” So why is “enhanced” pork food allowed to call itself “pork?”
Number one answer: consumers don’t care anymore. They prefer delusion, so they can be what they think they eat. So, what is an Iowan? Are we tasteless fools who eat all kinds of crap while smiling, the perfect test market for mass market processed foods and their dire health hazards?
Some Iowans still believe that the richest soil on earth should be used to produce amazing, pure foods, instead of huge quantities of cow growth supplement and car fuel. They continue to believe that there is enough pride in our agricultural roots to support the restaurants that encourage maverick farmers and ranchers who would rather raise something of quality and dignity than something cheap and self deceptive, with unknown consequences to our health.
