Food - Not Nutrition

Food - Not Nutrition

Last New Year’s eve we were with friends.  A potluck sort of thing, we had copious quantities of food and drink and ate like people who would be reined in by restrictive resolutions momentarily.  Not to worry, with the second cup of post-feast coffee, the hostess passed around the walnuts.  "Have one," she suggested to us all. "The omega 3 fatty acids will neutralize all the bad fats we had for dinner."

Of course, such a gesture is harmless enough.  Walnuts are a perfectly good food.  But, despite a fervent wish that is was true, the chance of the humble walnut “neutralizing” our earlier indulgence is perhaps a bit off the scale.

It occurred to me, as I reached for a second walnut, that this suggestion on the part of our hostess illuminates two of the major nutritional misunderstandings in our “world of plenty" era.

One – that nutrition has within it a property of magic.  Something small like a walnut, or a pill, or a “special combination of foods”,  can make up for nutritional irresponsibility and/or bring health about effortlessly.

Two – that problems resulting from over consumption, can be rectified by - wait for it -  consuming more.

It is a tribute to the talent and determination of the food industry advertising efforts that in a country that suffers from dramatic overconsumption, most of us still harbor a belief, or at least a  hope, that the solution to our problems lies in increasing our consumption.     

I like the idea of magic the same as anyone.  We all want to believe.  We all buy, looking for a little magic in new shoes, a bigger house, or a cutting edge piece of technology that will enhance our lives.  And, at least temporarily, all of these things seem to produce as promised.   A pill, a lotion, a different kind of cereal will cure what ails me.  Even if it doesn’t work out, even if we realize at some point that we’ve been duped, well, maybe there is something else that will fill the bill.  Hope springs eternal.  

To be sure there have been times in history when nutrition would appear to perform miracles.  To a sailor on a British ship who had not seen fresh fruits or vegetables for months and was near death from disastrous effects of scurvy – the restoration of health from a little citrus juice would seem nothing short of miraculous.

Children in the 18^th century, who were kept out of the sun and developed rickets, could be cured by a few spoonfuls of a rather disgusting fatty material taken from the livers of cods.  Amazing!

But these people were cured of deficiencies that even in their day, were relatively rare.  Today, in the western world it is fairly safe to suggest that such serious deficiencies and their dramatic cures are not the sort of nutritional problems from which we commonly suffer.

Despite the constant barrage of “studies” that find their way into the popular press about amazing nutritional facts and promise new effortless ways to health, the fact is that we understand human nutrition pretty well and there have been few, if any, dramatic changes in our understanding for quite sometime.  And, to be honest, omega three fatty acids and essential vs. non-essential amino acids, notwithstanding, good nutrition its relatively simple and easily fulfilled.  Frankly, if it was complicated, or unavailable without the help of pill manufactures or calculators, we, as a species, would have died out long ago.

Frankly, I don't like the word nutrition.  It sounds so clinical, so chemicalish.  One visualizes walls of bottles of pills usually in a comfy brown color and  screaming "natural," like there is anything natural about a pill.  It conjures up ideas like special combinations of hard to pronouces substances that will solve all our problems, combined with fear and trepidation if we get it "wrong".

By all rights I should like the word.  I spent a lot of time learning about it. I majored in nutrition and biochemistry as an undergraduate at the University of California, Davis, and have a Master's degree in public Health Nutrition from UCLA.  But I'm tired of it, the fads, the hysteria, the swooning, the hopes for magic, the confusion and the guilt.

When we say "nutrition" we are talking about food parts.    The implication is that the food does not matter - only the parts.  This idea couldn't be less true for a number of reasons.  Food is much more than the sum of its parts.

Its time to calm down.  Lets talk about food, just food and take a good look at just what food is, what it does for us and, just as important, what it doesn't do. Let's discuss the wonderful diversity of ways to eat and enjoy food.  

As the recently deceased Joan Rivers would put it,  let's talk.