INDEPTH: FOOD
The paradox of the Canadian diet
Reporter: Kelly Crowe | Producer: Harry Schachter | January 20, 2004
It's one of life's great pleasures, from fine cuisine to home cooking, lowly grub to gourmet fare. For centuries, food has brought people together, preparing it, sharing it. But there's a paradox to the Canadian diet: we know how we should be eating, the problem is we don't.
Food, it's an international cross-cultural intergenerational source of pleasure. It's a little bit of heaven on a plate. But strip away the poetry and look closely at what food really is. It's just fuel. It's molecules of energy dressed up in an endless variety of fancy forms. It should be simple. Food is something the human body needs to survive, but it's not simple at all. Our relationship to food is a tortured guilt-ridden tug of war between indulgence and denial.
Chef Michael Bonacini says, "We are the land of milk and honey and there's plenty of it and we eat as much as we can and it's rich and it's decadent."
We know we should choose fresh, raw and natural, but we still choose all the wrong things. The fattier, the saltier, the sweeter the better.
Debbie Field, a food activist says, "It's like kids and candy stores that have gone crazy and nobody's watching to try to explain to them what's happening."
So what's going on? What's the excuse? Almost everybody wants to lose at least a little weight. Health experts tell us we're in an obesity crisis, yet every single one of us knows exactly what to do about it: eat less, exercise more.
It's a simple formula for an almost impossible task. Go back in time, all the way back to the turn of the last century, and the battle of the bulge was raging even then. Thin has been the goal for a long time. The flappers of the 1920s were watching their weight. And people understood even then about the invisible nutrients in food that promised better health.
Harvey Levenstein is a social historian who has studied two centuries of North American eating habits. He wrote two groundbreaking books on the topic.
"The key change in our ideas about food and health came about in the late 19th century, about 120 years ago, when people began to realize that not all food was the same," Levenstein says. "Food wasn't just fuel for the human engine, but that foods could be broken down into different components. The first was proteins, carbohydrates and fats.
This is how we think it was in the old days. The family sitting down together to a well-balanced meal. It's a scene that's hard to duplicate now, but what was on the table wasn't all that great nutritionally speaking because even back then, people didn't eat right. We have never eaten right. There was no golden age of food in North America.
Rena Mendelson, one of Canada's leading nutritionists, says, "You know, if we look back to the golden days of the 50s and think about what people actually ate, every home had a deep fryer. People deep-fried their own french fries in those days, they even deep-fried doughnuts. The table [had] large servings of meat. True, we had vegetables and potatoes. That nearly wasn't as golden as we sometimes think it was. People cooked with Crisco, lard, high fat. Crisco was the original source of trans fats that we're all concerned about. So sometimes we glamorize the past."
Here's a familiar warning: "Obesity is the nation's number 1 public health problem." That was the New York Times in 1952. Fifty years later, 50 years of knowing that we should be eating less, has anything improved? No, the experts say, it's actually getting worse.
Rena Mendelson says obesity is now threatening children.
The number of obese in the population is definitely rising," Mendelson says. "Probably the biggest indicator to us in terms of a problem is the number of people presenting with type 2 diabetes, children in particular. In the past, type 2 diabetes was referred to as adult onset diabetes, and now it's showing up in children, which was never before heard of. So we have not only the increasing numbers relative to the overall population, but the severity as well, and the outcome is more dangerous than it's been in the past."
The biggest paradox is this: we've known for 100 years how we should be eating, and now we know even more about what we're eating. The latest food science breakthroughs are front page news. Rena Mendelson has worked on several major surveys of eating behaviour. She says Canadians know quite a bit about nutrition.
"I think people know the basics in terms of Canada's Food Guide," Mendelson says. "They have that information, they know the value of the different food groups. So I think they have the basic information, and we find that most people are not suffering from a lack of knowledge and information. They're not just quite sure what to do with it all."
Even though we know better, our best intentions are easily swept away in a wave of temptation, and the temptation factor is something the experts don't measure. Television executives get it. They've built entire TV channels around our fascination with food. TV chefs like Michael Bonacini are the new celebrities. It's now possible to watch them roasting a chicken around the clock.
"It's moist, it's succulent, it's crispy, it's tasty. And boy, when that room fills with those flavours and smells, it's a real turn-on, it really is," Bonacini says as he prepares the chicken."
"If you're asking me do I feel guilty because it's unhealthy and a little bit sinful, I don't."
Mendelson says, "People are compelled to eat food because it's attractive, because they know it's going to taste good, and when they eat it, it tastes good and as a result they want more of it because it tastes so good. So nutrition as a value for making a choice in foods is probably playing less of an important role than it needs to."
Taste, there's another clue to the mystery of why we just can't seem to cut back. It all just tastes so good. Entire industries are devoted to making sure it tastes good. They're only trying to make us happy, to make us like the food, to make us buy it. They don't really think about whether it's good for us if our doughnuts are drenched in extra sugar and stuffed with cream.
Ask Michael Bonacini. He was asked to design a hamburger for a fast food chain.
"I will have to be honest with you and say, did I think about the health aspect?" Bonacini says. "No, I didn't. Why? I'm not exactly sure, and maybe it's because whilst I don't think man can live on filet steak alone, I enjoy a hamburger every once in a while and I do go out and enjoy a hamburger once in a while, and like most things, I want it to be tasty and moist and satisfying."
Ingredients are cheap. It doesn't cost much to add that extra meat patty or supersize those fries. That's one reason why portion sizes just keep swelling larger and larger. Bonacini still shakes his head at the portion sizes on this side of the Atlantic. He grew up in Europe, and now he runs some of Toronto's most celebrated restaurants.
"The portion sizes in North America are very large in comparison to the portion sizes that I was familiar with in England, in France, in Switzerland, in Italy where they seem to be much smaller. I would say 25, 35 per cent smaller," Bonacini says.
Who can resist the offer of all you can eat? Because we're getting more food for the same price, it seems like better value for the dollar.
"If you look at the lower priced restaurants, the chains like Denny's, for example, where you would go for breakfast, you can get breakfast – that's three eggs, four pancakes, five slices of bacon, hash brown potatoes, maybe a cup of hash brown potatoes – all for $1.99. Now, they still profit because the price of those foods is actually quite low. Now, that's enough food for a day," Mendelson says.
It means people with less money to spend on food often end up choosing the cheaper, high-fat alternatives, and that means low-income groups end up with high levels of obesity. Harvey Levenstein says that's where the real obesity epidemic lies.
"Normally an epidemic hits a huge swath of people, and to call the obesity rise an epidemic implies that everyone is being affected by it, whereas I think it's clear that although there is a worrisome rise in people's weight, much of it is concentrated among lower income people, that it's very much class related," Levenstein says.
Cheap food and huge portions, it's a dangerous combination. This is what happens when we grab a quick fast food meal. It's all in the arithmetic of calories. An average person needs about 2,000 calories a day. More than that and they'll start to get fat. But calories add up fast.
Take a sample lunch.
A Big Mac - 585 calories
Large fries - 554 calories
Medium vanilla shake - 722 calories.
Total: 1,861 calories.
That's almost enough for the whole day and it's only lunch. Make it a large vanilla shake at 1,108 calories and that's 2,247 calories.
"We're getting fatter because no matter how much we know about the dangers of obesity and, more important perhaps, no matter how much we think obesity is not attractive at all, and no matter how much we know about how it, in fact, now puts people off, it's extremely difficult to lose weight," Levenstein says.
But it can feel like circumstances are stacked against us. Food is cheap, easy, fast. It tastes good.
Our lives are busy. Exercise is hard. Is it really our fault? Shouldn't the people who are making the food take some responsibility? Shouldn't they be making it healthier before they pass it across the counter to us?
Michael Bonacini thinks consumers should be told what's in the food they're eating – the calories, the fat – but after that, it's up to customers to control what they put in their mouths.
"The bottom line is it's the consumer's choice," Bonacini says. "If I decide that I'm going to have whipped cream every day on my dessert, I think that we should be allowed to make that choice. I don't think that we need to have Big Brother over us telling us that we shouldn't be having it."
Food activist Debbie Field disagrees.
"How could it be individual if people are spending millions and millions of dollars advertising to us and we know the psychic power of this?" Field asks. "How could it be our individual fault when almost everybody hates their weight? Almost everybody thinks they're too fat or too skinny. Everybody feels they're not doing the right thing, they don't have enough self-control, and this is part of the problem. We're individualizing this rather than seeing it as a system-wide problem."
Field thinks the consumer is overwhelmed in this fast food world and she's trying to change that. Her mission is to make fresh food as convenient as fast food. She's the director of Food Share, a non-profit group that sells fresh fruits and vegetables to individual homes.
"We're trying to change how people eat. We're trying to show them that eating more vegetables and fruits can be more enjoyable. It doesn't have to be, oh, my God, I hate my broccoli, my mother's forcing me to eat my broccoli," Field says.
Field says if the choice is there, people will choose to eat fresh food, even children. The proof is in a pilot project where Food Share put salad bars in more than a dozen Toronto area schools.
"The food system has to change, and there's got to be individuals pushing the food system and individuals pushing government to regulate the food system. We need labelling," Field says.
There are signs the food industry is listening. In a series of highly publicized moves, they've announced new labelling and new lower fat choices. On January 19, 2004, Bill Johnson, chairman of McDonald's Canada, outlined his company's new "lifestyles program."
At a news conference, Johnson outlined the program for reporters: "And today you'll be the very first to hear about our healthy lifestyles program. Specifically, I want to talk to you about four key things. First, the leadership McDonald's is taking on the important societal issue of obesity, and second, I want to talk about today's launch of McDonald's restaurants of Canada's national wellness strategy."
McDonald's Canada has just announced it will provide more nutritional information and more menu choice, such as juice or milk with their children's meals. It will also invest in programs to encourage physical activity. But if we've gone for 100 years knowing the right thing and eating the wrong thing, is there any hope for change?
"I think if we had the answer, you know, we'd have been there, and people are spending billions of dollars to figure out the answer to this question both in terms of drug interventions and other interventions that might be available looking for a magic bullet. A simple message like 'eat healthy foods and be physically active,' why is it so tough for people to do that?" Mendelson says.
It's tough because we're seeking a mystical food that's quick and convenient, sweet, savoury and satisfying, and still good for us. In that elusive quest, we usually let go of the one thing we've known for generations: eat less, exercise more. A simple formula, an increasingly difficult thing to do.
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Guidelines for Healthy Eating
1. Enjoy a variety of foods.
2. Emphasize cereals, breads, other grain products, vegetables and fruit.
3. Choose lower-fat dairy products, leaner meats and food prepared with little or no fat.
4. Achieve and maintain a healthy body weight by enjoying regular physical activity and healthy eating.
5. Limit salt, alcohol and caffeine.
Source: Health Canada
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