
A Seismic Shift in How People Eat - prostoalex
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/opinion/a-seismic-shift-in-how-people-eat.html?smid=fb-nytopinion&smtyp=cur&_r=0
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jonnathanson
A fairly rushed conclusion... "Making these changes will require a complete
reorganization of these companies' fundamental business models and global
supply chains, but, ummm, hey, they have the money! Right? The end."

If only it were that simple.

The government subsidizes corn and soybeans, which is why they're everywhere
and in everything. Derivatives from corn and soybeans account for a staggering
proportion of the ingredients, 'natural' and 'artificial,' that appear in the
staple products offered by most of our biggest food companies. They're also
the feed that raises all of our meat. In fact, it's not too much of a stretch
to suggest that corn and soybeans _are_ the nation's food supply. They are
pretty much the only crops we can grow cheaply at massive mega-scale, and we
derive almost all our nutritionally questionable foods from them.

Transforming businesses the scale of McDonald's and General Mills will require
nothing short of a complete overhaul of our current agricultural economic
policy. Best of luck with that...

For a more insightful article with a deeper look into the issue, I recommend
the recent piece about McDonald's in the New Yorker.

~~~
Kluny
If they can be grown at such a massive scale, why do they need to be
subsidized? Wouldn't they get grown anyway? Why not subsidize broccoli and
quinoa instead?

(Yes I know the question is naive but I still hope for a smart answer.)

~~~
jonnathanson
They can be grown at scale _because_ they are subsidized. Other products
suffer at scale because farmers' economic incentives are heavily skewed
towards growing the subsidized crops. They carry high opportunity costs.

Apologies; I should have made the direction of causality clearer in my
original comment.

~~~
Kluny
Thanks for clarifying.

------
jkarneges
What I find most interesting about people caring about the content of their
food (which is not a new thing, although I can see it is more widespread
lately), is the effect it has on capitalism and how consumers make their
choices.

In the beginning, the best products simply functioned properly. They looked
good, tasted good, etc. Is the bread white? Does the paint stick to the wall?

At some point we started realizing that what goes into a product turns out to
be very important too. Is the bread nutritious? Is the paint lead-free? Does
the movie player have DRM? I'd say we are primarily in this phase of consumer
awareness, and the nytimes article suggests it has gone mainstream. However I
see a third level on the way:

People are now starting to care about the impact of products. In other words,
what side-effects are there in production and usage. Were animals mistreated
when producing this meal? Is the product recyclable upon discard? Did these
bananas come from an exploited third-world country? We're still in the early
stages of this phase, but I don't see it slowing down.

Being a consumer takes so much brainpower...

~~~
bad_user
Being omnivores our senses help us to distinguish good food from bad. For
example we prefer sweet food because sugar in nature is rare, the fruits
delivering sugar being a source of carbohydrates, vitamins and other essential
nutrients. We avoid bitter plants because that's usually the taste of
substances that do us harm. And rotten meat disgusts us. Plus we rely on the
wisdom of our ancestors to know what to eat.

But the food industry, in all its wisdom has produced foods that (1) lie to
our senses, (2) are rich in calories, but poor in nutrients and (3) are so
novel that our bodies aren't digesting it properly.

Being a consumer is actually easy, if you can read the signs. It's the food
industry that's feeding you the lie that nutrition is complicated and needs
expert guidance. Does the food come in a package? Does it make health claims?
Is the list of ingredients containing substances you don't recognize? Is
sucrose or high fructose corn sirup one of those ingredients? Does it come
from far away? Is it sold in a super market?

All of those are red flags you should watch out for ;-)

~~~
hueving
>Is the list of ingredients containing substances you don't recognize?

This is a bit of a bogus argument. If you had to break down meat into its
component chemicals, nobody would understand it then either. We just have a
guideline that requires man-made things to list the components which leads to
the false argument that seeing lower level chemicals in something means it's
bad.

~~~
bad_user
Yes, but my ancestors ate meat from chicken, pigs or cattle, they survived and
I'm alive as well. Compared to rats, we don't have to do a trial and error for
everything we eat, as culture is part of who we are and we've been eating most
of the same meat, vegetables and dishes for hundreds if not thousands of
years.

You are never going to see meat being broken down to its components on an
ingredients label. The only way you're going to see chemicals on such labels
is if those chemicals were added by food processors, for various desired
effects, like for improved texture, or taste, or for extending shelf life.

It's usually bad because, as I said, it's meant to fool your senses. Why do
you think sugar or HFCS is in everything these days? It's also bad in the case
of health claims and fads because _reductionist science_ is applied.

~~~
tptacek
I mean let's be specific. This article calls out Hershey for moving away from
polyglycerol polyricinoleate (PGPR) to friendlier-sounding emulsifiers. In
exactly what way does a consumer benefit from reduced consumption of PGPR?

Your ancestors also ate a lot of meat roasted over open fires, or in
comparatively primitive ovens. Within the next 20 years we're going to come to
understand exactly how carcinogenic that millennial-old practice is (
_cooking_ , it is going to turn out, is basically carcinogenic), and it's
going to make us feel silly about caring about PGPR --- and, I hope, about
looking to micronutrients in the food supply as an answer to most of our
public health concerns.

~~~
redblacktree
I'm dimly aware that that wonderful black and brown crust on the meat I've
grilled is carcinogenic, and I try really hard not to think about it.

------
ams6110
_McDonalds needs to do more than use antibiotic-free chicken. The back of the
house for its 36,000 restaurants currently looks like a mini-factory serving
fried frozen patties and french fries. It needs to look more like a kitchen
serving freshly prepared meals with locally sourced vegetables and grains —
and it still needs to taste great and be affordable._

I would have to disagree. Nobody has ever gone to McDonald's for healthy food.
McDonald's growth was fueled by its reputation for quick service, clean
(usually) restaurants, tasty food, consistency (a Big Mac is a Big Mac in New
York or California) and low price.

IMHO McDonald's needs to dump about half of its menu. Focus on basic, good-
tasting fast food, and making it fast again. Bring back the beef tallow for
frying, those french fries tasted great. Chasing the organic, vegan, whole-
grains market is a losing strategy. The McDonald's customer is not part of the
market segment that cares about any of that.

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ars
"freshly prepared meals with locally sourced vegetables and grains"

I will never understand this obsession with "local". Local is not safer, local
does not embody less CO2 (it actually has more), it does not mean more
nutritious, it does not mean less pesticides.

Pretty much the only argument that ever made even a bit of sense to me is
cultivating a relationship with the farmer - but what difference does that
make when you buy the food from a chain restaurant (as described in the quote
above), or even a grocery store?

Is this author just trying to load up the article with as many buzzwords as
possible? I noticed they didn't mentioned "organic".

~~~
tptacek
It doesn't _necessarily_ mean more nutritious or fewer pesticides, but if you
are optimizing for attributes like that, your best bets are going to end up
being a local producer.

Not all local is good, but the best producers usually are.

~~~
ars
> Not all local is good, but the best producers usually are.

Wait, so you are saying, if I live far away from the farm the exact same
produce suddenly tastes worse?

~~~
tptacek
Yes. It's _not_ the exact same produce. The very best produce doesn't travel
at all.

If you live in a major US city, go to one of the top restaurants in it
sometime for dinner, and ask your server a lot of questions about where the
vegetables come from. Chances are they don't come from big purveyors; most
will come from farms with names you can write down, and probably buy direct
from --- but not from your supermarket, and definitely not from a supplier
anywhere more than 150 miles away.

Sometimes these are gold-speaker-cable kinds of differences, and sometimes
they're real differences that you'd have to train your palate to detect (and
so why would you want to do that?), but sometimes they are _huge_ differences,
products you simply have to live in the region and buy at the right time of
year to get.

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siliconc0w
It's hard to tell if we're eating better or just being duped in a new way.
"Fat free" is bullshit, "Organic" is bullshit, "Gluten Free" is bullshit
(unless you actually have celica's).

~~~
bad_user
How is organic bullshit?

~~~
goodJobWalrus
Apart of other replies, there is also no evidence that is any better for than
conventionally grown produce.

~~~
bad_user
I'm not from the US, but from Romania. My grandparents lived on the country-
side, working the land and during the communists Romania did not have much
access to the vast quantities of pesticides and fertilizer that the US was
left with after WWII, due to a large surplus of ammonium nitrate and of
various poison gases. Our animals were not fed and grown on cheap, subsidized
corn and kept alive with antibiotics. Our diary products were not low fat. Our
white flour was given for export. Etc, etc.. And guess what, after 1990, after
the revolution, when we started importing food and adopting the "western
diet", we ended up with the same shock like everybody else ... people getting
fatter, increased rates of type II diabetes, increased rates of coronary
artery disease, etc. And most importantly I think - our food is losing its
taste, because vegetables grown with pesticides and artificial fertilizers
have shallower root systems, grow faster and thus are unable to gather the
same amount of nutrients as vegetables grown normally and in season. Same goes
for animals, like cattle or pigs or chicken, raised on corn and kept alive
with antibiotics.

In regards to your statement, organic food is the _conventional_ way to
produce food, and note that I'm not talking about any standard, but about how
people have been growing food before we discovered what fossil fuels are good
for.

There's actually plenty of evidence to go around, plenty of studies, showing
links between the western diet and type II diabetes, heart disease, obesity,
cancer, with my father's PhD thesis being one, evidence that has been ignored
because it flies in the face of the low-fat bullshit we've been fed, plus it
goes against a multi-billion dollar industry. Artificial fertilizers are also
known to be responsible for the destruction of our environment, leading to
such effects as water pollution with nitrate or acidification of the soil.

~~~
Dylan16807
But 'organic' only covers a third of that. You can make horrible junk food
with organic ingredients.

~~~
bad_user
True. We need a new word I think.

------
latch
I know it's asking a lot, but I wish people's eating habits were driven more
by environmental and humanitarian factors, than what they like or even what's
healthy (though I believe none of these are mutually exclusive). I find the
current state of things horrifying.

------
tptacek
1\. The changes in the lede of this article --- no more artificial colors, no
antibiotics in poultry, emulsifiers with friendlier names --- are marginal.
Many of them, like the food colorings, are probably there to satisfy a market
demand in the first place (not for the additives, but for the shelf-stable
properties they impart on the food) --- if the market would rather have white
cheese rather than radioactive orange, why spend the extra 0.5c per package to
make them orange? By and large, these aren't "seismic" changes. Marked changes
in macronutrient content would be, but that mostly hasn't happened.

Great example: shifts from high-fructose corn syrup to "natural" sweeteners
(an almost entirely cosmetic change that puts minimal disruption on the supply
chain), or to "gluten free" products.

2\. One seemingly enduring and significant change in the food industry is the
move away from "liquid calories". Low-fat, Atkins, Paleo, juice cleanse,
whatever: regardless of the fad, the conclusion that sweetened soft drinks are
practically toxic has probably stuck. "Americans are drinking less soda" makes
for a less sexy lede, though.

3\. The major shift I see isn't in how people eat, but rather in how the same
stuff we've always eaten is marketed to us. Maybe it's gotten easier to handle
distribution logistics, or to bring new products to market, but there are a
zillion more brands. Where in 1980 we might have had one or two category-
killing brands for any given snack, frozen meal, or beverage, we now have 100
different brands --- most of them owned by one of a few major companies.

But again, that's got less to do with "how people eat" and more to do with
market segmentation: given a roughly stable COGS for, say, microwaveable
frozen dinner entrees, customers today get to choose based on things like
loyalty to childhood favorite brands, or "organic" labeling, or "low-carb", or
"ancient grains".

Multiply serving size by calories/fats/carbs/proteins/fiber per serving,
though, and my guess is that it mostly doesn't matter which one you choose.

4\. If that (3) is the case, it doesn't really much matter that consumers are
shunning iconic American food brands. They're substituting them for niche
brands that are now or soon will be owned by PepsiCo or Kraft.

Any discussion of how Americans buy food they prepare at home probably has to
include a discussion of Whole Foods, which has in the last decade gone from a
specialty store to one of the largest grocery store chains in the country. But
look around at a WFM next time you visit, and notice what percentage of the
store is allocated to produce, dairy, and meat, and what percentage is
allocated to frozen meals, snacks, and prepared foods. The biggest difference
between a WFM and a Safeway isn't the size of the produce section (many
"conventional" grocers have bigger produce sections), but rather the size of
the prepared foods section, where you can stop in and buy a pizza, a pre-
cooked chicken, or a deli of potato salad.

~~~
hammock
I don't believe we can say there completely has been a move away from "liquid
calories," particularly when you look at the calories in a typical Starbucks
order. Your drink can easily have 400 calories, more than the chocolate
croissant you are eating with it.

Sweetened carbonated beverages are over (for now), but their non-carbonated
equivalents- Vitamin Water, Odwalla smoothies, "coffee drinks," etc are not.

~~~
tptacek
Starbucks is unhealthy, but it is nowhere near the public health problem that
PepsiCo is: as Dave Arnold points out sometimes on Cooking Issues, people use
sweetened soft drinks as a _complete hydration solution_ , often drinking
nothing but. There are people that do that with Frappucinos, but not a lot of
them.

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goodJobWalrus
It will be interesting to see whether (or when) this will be followed by a
decrease in obesity rates.

