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mystickeeper says, "This shit is gonna get real." Well maybe.
So I used some of my few spoons this week to go to the Michael Pollan lecture on campus. I haven't gotten around to actually finishing any his books yet, but I seem to have absorbed a lot of his ideas through reading articles and seeing interviews, and maybe just the cultural zietgiest. I went with a bunch of friends.antarcticlust and I were whispering furiously and annoying the guy in front of us; yes-- I was being That Guy! Going to the Special Hell for talking in the Theater! Well, the hockey arena, in this case. Antarcticlust took notes. There were people there in t-shirts that said "In Defense of Farming", apparently as a protest, and we talked about that some. The t-shirts were the same color as the volunteer t-shirts, which we thought was Quite Interesting, since it seems to assume a defensive position--as in, they are trying to blend in and not be tossed out. But we also thought it was brave of them for coming and protesting, even if we thought it was misguided (see below).
Michael Pollan seems to like discourse, controversy, and arguing--he does not seem at all threatened by disagreement and does not seem to get ruffled. I kind of envy this trait-- it shows great security and patience and humor, I think, and also an equivocal mind that is willing to considering other points of view. He addressed the protesters and said he agreed with their slogan: "Eat food, be healthy, thank a farmer," or some such. He said he thinks farmers hold the key to 3 crises facing America: the health crisis, the energy crisis, and the environmental crisis. (At "environment," antarcticlust inhaled and mouthed "no".) Pollan is very pro-farmer in many ways-- what he is against is big agri-business. The most damning moment was when he said that the American food industry made over 800 billion dollars last year, and less than 10% of that went to farmers. A greater share went to people who make packaging for processed foods.
Pollan is an engaging and clear speaker. I liked a lot of what he had to say. He talked a lot about "the rise of nutritionism", how that benefits processed foods (and businesses) and how it contributes to moralistic eating. Since we can't sense nutrients, we must rely on experts to tell us how to eat. He compared this to a type of religion where if you can't sense God, you must rely on a priesthood to tell you God's will. Then there are "good nutrients" (calcium, fiber, beta-carotene), and "evil nutrients" (carbs, cholesterol, trans fats, saturated fat, etc), and we are looking for these instead of eating food. Also we are chasing after health (good or bad) with each meal, instead of eating for pleasure or community or other reasons.
He and many other people have gone after "high fructose corn syrup" because it's a marker for highly processed foods. But now savvy marketers have found a way around that: by advertising their products as having "real cane sugar". They are marketing their products by saying, Look! SUGAR! Which is bizarre.
He talked of many other things but that is what stands out for me.
On twitter @ThatKarenB said, "Was anyone protesting Pollan's attitudes towards fat people? AFAICT, that's more accurate than the "anti-farming" thing."
Which I think is a good point, and I am going to talk about that now.
I would say it's not Pollan's attitudes precisely, but that he is uncritically adopting the wider cultural attitude of fatness as a disease. Several times he said that the Western diet is responsible for "heart disease, Type II diabetes, and obesity."
I have been thinking and thinking about this, and I need to think about it some more, because it's complicated and it makes me uncomfortable. One thing that helps me is reading Kate Harding: Don't You Realize Fat is Unhealthy?
Also I think it's weird to pathologize a body type. Diseases are socially constructed; what is and is not a disease is not so easy to say. And I think it's weird to say that being fat is a disease. I think it's OK to say that some things associated with being fat are diseases, that being fat might make you more likely to have certain diseases, but even then you should remember that it is not a one-to-one situation and does not apply to everyone: it's only true at the population level, and association does not necessarily imply causation, either. It is more complicated than that!
It's a false equivalancy: people like to think that being fat means being unhealthy, automatically. They like to think that being thin (but not too thin!) means good health. Well guess what, that is not always the case either. It's more complicated!
I'm not sure if Pollan would even disagree with me on these things. It's just that I want there to be less hatred of fatness and bodies, and I think his agenda (which I think is a good one) and mine can coexist. I've also been thinking about intersectionality with disability, since there is this fundamental concept of not assuming that disabled people need or want to be fixed. ("But surely-- surely being disabled is bad? Wouldn't you be fixed if you could be? Wouldn't you be thin if you could be?") (Say it with me: it's more complicated!)
Just things I'm thinking about. I'm aware not everyone will agree with me here.
ETA: there are some great comments at LJ!
mystickeeper says, "This shit is gonna get real." Well maybe.So I used some of my few spoons this week to go to the Michael Pollan lecture on campus. I haven't gotten around to actually finishing any his books yet, but I seem to have absorbed a lot of his ideas through reading articles and seeing interviews, and maybe just the cultural zietgiest. I went with a bunch of friends.
antarcticlust and I were whispering furiously and annoying the guy in front of us; yes-- I was being That Guy! Going to the Special Hell for talking in the Theater! Well, the hockey arena, in this case. Antarcticlust took notes. There were people there in t-shirts that said "In Defense of Farming", apparently as a protest, and we talked about that some. The t-shirts were the same color as the volunteer t-shirts, which we thought was Quite Interesting, since it seems to assume a defensive position--as in, they are trying to blend in and not be tossed out. But we also thought it was brave of them for coming and protesting, even if we thought it was misguided (see below). Michael Pollan seems to like discourse, controversy, and arguing--he does not seem at all threatened by disagreement and does not seem to get ruffled. I kind of envy this trait-- it shows great security and patience and humor, I think, and also an equivocal mind that is willing to considering other points of view. He addressed the protesters and said he agreed with their slogan: "Eat food, be healthy, thank a farmer," or some such. He said he thinks farmers hold the key to 3 crises facing America: the health crisis, the energy crisis, and the environmental crisis. (At "environment," antarcticlust inhaled and mouthed "no".) Pollan is very pro-farmer in many ways-- what he is against is big agri-business. The most damning moment was when he said that the American food industry made over 800 billion dollars last year, and less than 10% of that went to farmers. A greater share went to people who make packaging for processed foods.
Pollan is an engaging and clear speaker. I liked a lot of what he had to say. He talked a lot about "the rise of nutritionism", how that benefits processed foods (and businesses) and how it contributes to moralistic eating. Since we can't sense nutrients, we must rely on experts to tell us how to eat. He compared this to a type of religion where if you can't sense God, you must rely on a priesthood to tell you God's will. Then there are "good nutrients" (calcium, fiber, beta-carotene), and "evil nutrients" (carbs, cholesterol, trans fats, saturated fat, etc), and we are looking for these instead of eating food. Also we are chasing after health (good or bad) with each meal, instead of eating for pleasure or community or other reasons.
He and many other people have gone after "high fructose corn syrup" because it's a marker for highly processed foods. But now savvy marketers have found a way around that: by advertising their products as having "real cane sugar". They are marketing their products by saying, Look! SUGAR! Which is bizarre.
He talked of many other things but that is what stands out for me.
On twitter @ThatKarenB said, "Was anyone protesting Pollan's attitudes towards fat people? AFAICT, that's more accurate than the "anti-farming" thing."
Which I think is a good point, and I am going to talk about that now.
I would say it's not Pollan's attitudes precisely, but that he is uncritically adopting the wider cultural attitude of fatness as a disease. Several times he said that the Western diet is responsible for "heart disease, Type II diabetes, and obesity."
I have been thinking and thinking about this, and I need to think about it some more, because it's complicated and it makes me uncomfortable. One thing that helps me is reading Kate Harding: Don't You Realize Fat is Unhealthy?
Also I think it's weird to pathologize a body type. Diseases are socially constructed; what is and is not a disease is not so easy to say. And I think it's weird to say that being fat is a disease. I think it's OK to say that some things associated with being fat are diseases, that being fat might make you more likely to have certain diseases, but even then you should remember that it is not a one-to-one situation and does not apply to everyone: it's only true at the population level, and association does not necessarily imply causation, either. It is more complicated than that!
It's a false equivalancy: people like to think that being fat means being unhealthy, automatically. They like to think that being thin (but not too thin!) means good health. Well guess what, that is not always the case either. It's more complicated!
I'm not sure if Pollan would even disagree with me on these things. It's just that I want there to be less hatred of fatness and bodies, and I think his agenda (which I think is a good one) and mine can coexist. I've also been thinking about intersectionality with disability, since there is this fundamental concept of not assuming that disabled people need or want to be fixed. ("But surely-- surely being disabled is bad? Wouldn't you be fixed if you could be? Wouldn't you be thin if you could be?") (Say it with me: it's more complicated!)
Just things I'm thinking about. I'm aware not everyone will agree with me here.
ETA: there are some great comments at LJ!
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no subject
Date: 2009-09-27 04:07 am (UTC)I think Pollan's fans tend to overlap with a certain class of middle-class slightly elitist liberals who listen to NPR and look down on people who shop at Wal-Mart. For these people, fatness is sort of emblematic of what they see as the problems of American society--overconsumption, unsustainability, an emphasis on "more."
This is what drove me crazy about Wall-E, by the way. Well, that and the coded-pregnancy stuff. It's that uncritical acceptance of, "Red-state people drink soda by the gallon, they tool around in their SUVs that get three miles a gallon, they have houses full of cheap tchotchkes, and they're fat"--as if all of these things were inextricably linked together.
And it makes so much intuitive sense, if you have always grown up with that attitude that dieting is the natural response to being over the "right" weight, that it's very hard to replace that with a paradigm of, "It's not right to police other people's bodies," or "Health doesn't look the same for everybody."
no subject
Date: 2009-09-27 04:16 am (UTC)Oh how Wall-E hated on fat people in wheelchairs! And by "wheelchairs" I mean "powered mobility".
I almost wrote something in this postOK actually I left that in-- about the intersection of disability and fatness, which you get at in your "policing of bodies" idea. And you're right that in the movie it also intermingled ideas of moral laxness, being unobservant and disconnected, eating mindlessly, etc. Can you tell me more about the coded pregnancy? I missed that.no subject
Date: 2009-09-27 04:40 am (UTC)The comment that I made to my sister afterwards was, "Is this Children of Men with adorable robots?"
I don't know if that, by itself, is a problem for me. Maybe it's sort of brilliant and sort of ooky to tell such a biological and gender-coded story using characters who have no biology and no gender. We have to root for EVE's success because, well, the continuation of life on earth is a good thing, and she's a robot without actual emotions or free will, but--it's still ooky, to me.
Thinking on Pollan a little more, he gets himself in trouble when he's trying to negotiate the boundaries between public policy and personal responsibility. Government food policy is a disaster and there's HFCS in everything--therefore you should buy whole foods at the farmer's market. Which is true, but can we stop blaming people who don't have that luxury, and change the food policies already?
no subject
Date: 2009-09-27 04:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-27 04:57 am (UTC)I think I'm going to unlock this post because it's a great discussion, if that's OK with you.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-27 12:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-27 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-27 03:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 10:33 pm (UTC)One quick correction: I mouthed "no" at "energy," not "environment." I do not think biofuels are the solution to our energy needs - at least, they're not an ethical or environmentally sound solution.