Eating the World

Here in America, every food is marketed on its nutritional merit. Looking around me, my box of Cheerios is covered on an entire side about how it's good for lowering cholesterol. This little bag of Goldfish I have here has a big label on the corner stating how it's got zero grams of trans fat, as does the big bag of Fritos sitting over there. Every bottle of VitaminWater harps on the fact that it replenishes water and essential nutrients, and even such unwholesome things as canned soup can boast that they contain 50% of the RDA for vitamin A.

In my nearly six years of time in Beijing, China, I rarely ever noticed any food, processed or not, at any supermarket, roadside stall, corner store, etc, that had labels or wording that tried to get people to notice or buy it on the merit of its nutritional benefits (or the fact that it lacked certain things known to be detrimental to nutrition). Indeed, very few foods even had a table that listed the nutritional facts, and many foods lacked a detailed list of ingredients. Over a billion people buy that food and eat it.

Speaking from strictly my own experience, I think that Chinese people on a whole are healthier than American people. Despite the absolute lack of nutrional information or any sort of regard for that information, Chinese kids have less inherited problems (such as ADHD, things like that, etc, etc) and allergies, Chinese adults are less likely to have chronic illnesses or depression. For example, I've never met a Chinese kid that was allergic to any food (or anything, indeed) and very rarely are there kids that have problems concentrating. (Given, although I have met many many people in China, my view is definitely rather narrow.) In America, however, practically every fourth person I meet has some sort of health problem that either they inherited from their parents or developed through their life.

In recent years, there have been more and more western companies entering the Chinese market with their American processed foods and such, and along with this, there has been a rise in obesity. Within another generation, problems that are common in America such as premature birth, birth defects, genetically inherited problems, etc, will probably rise. Prior to all this globalization, Chinese kids were raised only on their mothers' cooking, whatever could be afforded would be cooked and the family would eat it, and kids were not fat and families rarely had problems. (Excuse my utopian description of China; it is not and never was perfect and Chinese food is definitely way too heavy on oil and salt)

This all brings me to come to one example, Fast food. Not only does it cause numerous health problems, it also keeps the family from gathering together at home around a home cooked meal. This decreases communication and family bonding, and increases the likelihood of problems arising between members of the family. This, in my eyes, is definitely responsible at least partially for the increase in divorces, and depression amongst youngsters.

But fast food is definitely not solely responsible. Despite the supposed mass of benefits that western industrial food production has to offer, at the time when it is entering the Chinese market on a large scale, the health of Chinese people and families is deteriorating. And despite all the health foods and information that is available to America, America is still in a crisis with their food. Coincidence?

In closing for both this blog entry and this food class, I'd like to point out that food has two primary uses. One is to feed people, to nourish them. The second, something that I picked up on from class, is to bond people, to bring them together. Continuing on the theme above, food production in America largely undermines the first use of food in that industrial agriculture produces foods that most likely have many unforseen health dangers, and food consumption (think fast food, TV dinners, canned meals, grab-n-go type things) largely undermine the bonding powers of a good meal prepared at home.