Problem-Solution Paper draft 2

One of the most mesmerizing memories I have from my first experience as an exchange student was entering in an American grocery store for the first time. All I could think about was “Huge”. That place looked more like a mall to me than a single store: gigantic packages of any sort, precooked meals in cans or frozen and so much junk food that my grandmother would have had a panic attack just being there. Between the shock and the curiosity, I wandered around the store with suspicious interest until I found the worst thing an Italian could ever imagine. Canned pasta. It was in that moment that I understood how unrecoverable the relationship between Americans and food was. “How hard could it be to boil some water, cook the pasta and add sauce?”- I kept thinking.

Me during that first trip to the Grocery Store in Raleigh (NC), 2009

The more I travel the more I realize that statistics place the USA as the country with the largest obesity level for a good reason. The “American diet” is full of excesses, from the portions, to the sauces and sides. Strange, I would say, since the USA is such a multicultural country,  where foods of many different nationalities are available and the choice is incredibly high. Nevertheless, it seems to me that such a wide offer did not lead to a positive result in the American nutrition. Why one of the nations with the highest availability of products and food choices shows the highest pattern of obesity and diet-related problems? This is the question that I asked myself while walking through an American grocery store, and it is the same question that many other researchers try to answer in their studies in order to find a solution. A study I found interesting analyzed and compared perceptions of individuals from different countries with respect to food and diet. In “Attitudes to Food and the Role of Food in Life in the USA” (Rozin, P. 2003), people from four different countries are tested. The differences between nationalities, which were USA, Japan, France and Belgium, emerge quite strongly showing different culture-related patterns. Japanese, for example, strongly believe on the importance of food for one’s health and have many traditions connected with food preparation and healthy nutrition. French, as it could have been guessed, do not show such a high interest in healthy eating but lead the survey when it comes to pleasure and importance of food. Their diet relies more on experiencing good food and having a good time rather than eating healthy, but still their obesity rate is significantly lower than the USA’s one. Americans provide a very interesting analysis of how they relate to food: concern and worry are the primary factors which explain such a relation. Most Americans face in their lives constant body-image issues which create a difficult approach to nutrition, leading to additional stress. Another interesting factor discovered is that people in the US have very low culinary associations with food, considering it mere nutrition rather than a cultural and entertaining activity. Therefore Americans are highly dissatisfied with their relation with food even though they try hard to maintain a healthy diet. I would like to analyze more deeply the possible causes of such a  phenomenon.

What differentiates Americans from the other cultures analyzed, is the incredible availability of cheap unhealthy food in their country, and I am not talking about fast food only.

Photo Credit: Wendell via Compfight

In most of European and Asian countries, there is not such an amount of processed foods or fast foods: meals are prepared at home from scratch with fresh ingredients! The US, on the other hand, is the leader of fattening, fried and “filled-with-chemicals” food. It looks like people have very little interest in knowing what they are eating as long as it allows them to get through the day and the faster they can have it, the better. This leads to a loss of importance of food and a large gap in the US culinary culture. One of the aspects of American culture that I noticed is that food sometimes is seen as a therapy to reduce stress and people abuse of the very high offer of comfort foods, while in foreign countries even though people may receive the same relief from eating under pressure, they do not have the same access to such bad meals. This difference in supplies between US and other countries is that abroad raw and fresh foods are usually quite cheap because produced locally, while in the US, for many different reasons, fresh products are much more expensive than most of unhealthy foods, attracting therefore people who cannot afford a highly differentiated and expensive diet. These points explains the correlation between obesity and poverty in the USA.

Photo Credit: Alexandre Chang via Compfight
Photo Credit: Alexandre 

After asking a few friends’ opinions, I confirmed that even though in the USA the food is believed to be extremely multicultural, in the end it is completely different from the one in the country of origin, showing strong signs of American adaptation, especially unhealthy changes. Italy is famous for its Mediterranean diet overseas, while Italian food here is not considered as healthy. As I had the chance to prove, Italian restaurants here believe the “Alfredo sauce” to be a traditional Italian one, while it was invented by a New Yorker. A friend of mine who spend most of his life in Japan before moving to the US told me that sushi here is very different form the real one, and Japanese restaurants here do not show the attachment of the Japanese culture to food preparation. I think that the most important issue arising from this analysis is that the USA is lacking a proper food culture and education which can help people in choosing a certain diet and in having a more positive and participative relation with food and its preparation. If people were passionate and cared about food, they would never hurt their bodies with so much junk!

How could this process change? Well, there are various initiatives like “The menus of change” which promote, through the joint effort of specialists and businesses, a new healthy approach to food for the country. In “Bending American Food Culture”, the representatives of the movement explain different approaches to change how Americans see food and relate to it, trying to increase the awareness of the benefits of a healthy diet from the schools to the restaurants. The aim is to “Shape the food culture” in a way that it does not harm people. The turning point of their theory is the reliance on the so called “Millennials”, the recent generation born between 1980 and 2000, which seem to have a different attitude toward food, showing an interest in the experience that nutrition can give other than the sustenance. Through the support of this generations, the Menus of Change wants to increase the passion for food as a recreational tool and as a fundamental factor for wellbeing. One of the methods to reach these goals is to change the offer from the cooks and chefs first, and then through an awakening of the Americans’ cooking skills.

Another possible partial solution to the problem, would be to make fat, unhealthy and processed foods more expensive or more limited, through the help of the institutions. The government could impose a tax on the sale of certain products, even on some fast-food restaurants, in order to make people who rely on the low cost of such products look elsewhere. Limitations in producing or selling some products are quite extreme solutions but they could be applied together with a tax until the population is educated enough not to demand products which are bad for its own health. These partial solutions are, I believe, not enough to solve the problem, they are just palliative treatments of a more complex issue which is not solved by reducing the supply or making certain products more expensive. Moreover, many people in poverty rely on these extremely cheap forms of nutrition as an alternative to starving, and would probably find themselves in a much worse position without access to fast-food.

One last possible solution is one that has been already implemented in the UK and which has been started in the US by the famous British chef, Jamie Oliver: a “Food Revolution”. Ashamed of the eating habits of the English population, the chef abandoned the direction of his famous restaurants to start a battle against bad food education in his own country. The central point of such a revolution is that he started it from school lunches of young children, believing that serving them the wrong food and not teaching them to recognize what is healthy was a very important variable in the overall diet of children. Jamie, after successfully introducing some of his reforms in the British school lunch programs, decided to do the same with the US. The most important parts of this Food Revolution are the educational aspect, given by changing how the school system handles meals, and a great set of activities to involve the local community in the recognition of bad food habits and how to change them. One of the most important tools of Jamie’s project is the visibility. The TV show is aired on the most important TV channels and is able to reach more people than any small project. The public is able to see how unhealthy some food habits are without being directly part of the project. The Food Revolution has all the right prerequisites to be an incredible movement about food education, but unfortunately, notwithstanding its popularity, it has some flaws in application. First of all, in order for school lunches programs to drop processed foods for fresh ones, are required high additional costs that the government and sometimes even the families are not willing to cover. Moreover, usually children prefer unhealthy foods to fresh ones, leading to an incredible number of kids leaving the school lunch programs. Finally, even though the involvement of the community in a process of acknowledgment and education is extremely helpful, it cannot reach people everywhere and the TV screen is not a strong enough tool to break bad habits. Jamie Oliver’s work and passion are admirable, but I am still convinced that the process of creating a healthy food culture requires understanding of the problem and commitment in order to overcome it, processes which can only be obtained through extensive education of people at all ages on a regular basis until they are the ones willing to change.

These are two promo clips of Oliver’s Revolution:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-mYAoWu-O8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGYs4KS_djg

I believe the suggestions offered in the last report of the Menus of change suit the issue almost perfectly. People need to rediscover the passion of dealing with food and recreate cultural traditions in order to give it the right importance. The new generations have shown many characteristics which I find to be in common with my own cultural roots, like how food can become a social experience and a pleasant activity. Moreover, changing the supply involving restaurants, organizations and producers in such a revolutionary food movement is at the base for a change in the mentality of this society.

In conclusion, the problem of Americans and their relation with food is at a turning point and I cannot wait for my American friends to start make an amazing progress in what could be their new positive and healthy food culture.

Chiara Paganelli

References

• Menus of Change: http://www.menusofchange.org
• On Air with Ryan Seacrest,  (2010, January 22). Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Promo. Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-mYAoWu-O8

• On Air with Ryan Seacrest, (2010, February 24). Potato or Tomato? Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGYs4KS_djg
• P. Rozin, C. Fischler, S.Imada, A. Sarubin & A. Wrzesniewski. (2003). Attitudes to Food and the Role of Food in Life in the U.S.A., Japan, Flemish Belgium and France: Possible Implications for the Diet–Health Debate. , Journal of personality and social psychology, vol 85, iss1, pag 132-141.

• PR. Newswire (2012). Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Day Inspires Millions Worldwide to Stand Up for Real Food. PR, Newswire
• T.Webster, (2013) . Bending American Food Culture. IDEA Fitness Journal, 10(8), 38-47