The Gospel of Food

{WARNING: Quote-heavy prose to follow}

Barry Glassner, author of the bestseller,The Culture of Fear, has attempted in his new book, The Gospel of Food, to debunk the various myths in American culture surrounding food.  According to Glassner, we live in a society enslaved by the "gospel of naught,” or a culture that deems certain foods off-limits for various reasons having mostly to do with health, but frequently (as Glassner slyly notes) for reasons having more to do with fashion than anything else. He systematically examines the major health studies determining mainstream nutritional recommendations, the organic and the larger, commercial food industry, the restaurant and fast food industries, as well as something he calls "food adventurers" (hint: they’re not as adventurous as you think).

A lot of diet books clang in my mailbox, and a book like The Gospel of Food is, in many ways, a welcome relief to the dietary red-flag-waving that the media promotes.  Glassner quite rightly points out that there are a lot of conflicting scientific studies out there, and food components like fats and carbohydrates are both touted and demonized according to whom you decide--for whatever reasons--to listen to at the time. Ingredients like pomegranates, blueberries, or soy are anointed the new nutritional messiahs* and the health conscious consumer is exhorted in turn to give up potatoes or orange juice or even diet soda. Experts have "taken the joy out of eating" and it's time to "(e)at what you want," Glassner emphatically states. 

But while Glassner takes pains to show the flaws in the studies experts cite to back up their nutritional recommendations, the same flaws exist in the studies he uses to prop up his own argument.  If, as he says on p. 21, "(p)eople often misreport what they eat not because they consciously want to deceive but because they are not paying careful attention or they think of themselves as eating another sort of diet than they really do," it follows that self-reporting in studies with contradictory claims would be similarly skewed.  He also looks carefully at the funding of some of the major studies and finds, unsurprisingly, the fingerprints of the food industry scattered throughout (he uses the example of Dr. David Kessler and Dr. Meir Stampfer, two scientists with formidable credentials who appeared in a video news release produced by General Mills promoting whole grains).    Still, Glassner doesn't hesitate to cite an industry-funded study when it suits his own argument.  A study funded in part by Mars Inc. causes him to declare, "(p)eople who eat candy live longer than those who abstain,” while he dismisses a study on a previous page that finds soy beneficial to controlling cholesterol because the study was funded (again, in part) by ConAgra.  Why exactly is a soy producer less reliable than a candy-manufacturer?

He brushes aside most of the health claims of the organic industry by glibly stating "the worst that can be said about the levels of synthetic chemicals in conventional foods is that they may be high enough in some cases to put fetuses and some children at risk." Whose children, I have to wonder?  And whose fetuses?  Mine? Yours?  A migrant worker's?  Does it really matter?  While he rejects Michael Pollan's argument for local, organically sustainable agriculture as essentially an unrealistic and elitist position, he calmly dismisses the danger of pesticide use because that "danger to adults is negligible."  However, he ignores the case Pollan makes against the governmental practice of subsidizing corn.  Because of these subsidies, the U.S. agricultural and livestock industry now maximizes the consumption of corn surpluses at the expense of crop variety and the well being of its animals.  If instead, Pollan argues, other crops were subsidized, the price of organics would drop as the availability rises for the average consumer.

In fact, a strong undercurrent of populism runs throughout Glassner's book--even, dare I say it, a fairly standard sort of academic Marxism.  We denigrate fast food and blame it for the obesity epidemic because it's the fare of poor people.  Critics need to "come up with an equally tempting affordable alternative."  He dismisses O'Naturals, an organic fast-food chain owned by yogurt-maker Stoneyfield Farms because their target consumer is "an upper-middle class woman who listens to National Public Radio and believes in holistic medicine."   Food adventurers and their search for "authenticity" also incur the class-sensitive Glassner's scorn. He takes a two-pronged approach in his critique: chowhounds (and he means the real ones of Chowhound.com) are both ignorant about how ethnic food is actually prepared (and tastes) in its native country (a rather sweeping generalization, don’t you think, especially when it appears Glassner bases his opinion on one study by a sociologist looking at Thai food in Dallas?) and he accuses them of searching for what another sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, calls “cultural capital” instead of good food.   The last is a much more damning criticism, laden as the term is with all sorts of imperialistic implications.  Instead of enjoying food on its own terms, these colonizing chowhounds really frequent the more obscure ethnic restaurants as a way to display “a mark of sophistication” and “to elevate one’s social status.”

I think there might be a grain of truth to this last critique (aren’t there always people in any social group who are there because of the perceived cachet membership brings?) but for the true lover of great food, what’s on the plate always trumps whatever else the restaurant might provide.  If the food is good, most of us will pull up a chair to the table whether or not it’s scratched Formica or zinc imported from France. Glassner is correct to question why American culture has come to a point where foods drift, almost arbitrarily in his configuration, into two opposing categories: the good and the forbidden.  The flaw in his argument, however, is to simply dismiss critical analysis as so much media static. 

People are getting fatter, and even a non-scientist like me (and Glassner, for that matter) can sense instinctively that perhaps exercising more while reducing calories (and eating more fruits and vegetables seems to help with this) might be a reasonable plan for long-term health. I do think America has a history of faddism, not just with food but also in music, clothing and any number of other things. This doesn’t mean overarching nutritional guidelines (eat less, exercise more) should be dismissed just because one doctor or another wants to sell a particular diet book.  Eating less is hard and exercise isn’t that fun for the non-athlete; of course we all would prefer an easier way.  Although charges of elitism are less easy to dismiss, poverty in this country affects health in so many different ways, not the least of which is affordable health care, I’m compelled to wonder why it’s so wrong to suggest different ways we can address both nutrition and hunger at the same time.  And can’t an O’Naturals co-exist with MacDonald’s in this society?  In Glassner’s rush to hit every aspect of the food industry and culture in The Gospel of Food, his analysis is sometimes thin and abbreviated.  While denouncing our tendency to sort food into categories of black and white, negative and positive, he seems unable to avoid falling into the same trap himself when he uses class as the basis of his argument.

*although lord help the person that throws another goji berry in my food

Comments

[eaternyc]

I have read THE GOSPEL OF FOOD and don't share your take at all. For a more balanced assessment of this important book, and with great links, check out:
http://www.chow.com/grinder/2130

[brandon]

I think the Chow piece has great links but is short on real analysis. I don't disagree with Glassner that we live in a society that has a strange, conflicted relationship with food. However, I do think the structure of his argument is a little shaky and that he falls in to the same trap of setting up binary oppositions that he is, in fact, critiquing.

David Kamp, in his wonderful book, The United Stats of Arugula, says that"(t)he junk-food and diet-food people need to learn that natural and gourmet foods need not be flavorless, expensive, or 'elitist'; the foodie sophisticates need to lose their smugness and patronizing tone and embrace capitalist enterprise and engagement with big companies as a good thinga, the most effective means of proselytizing on behalf of real, healthful foods."

[FoodCzar]

While you bring up a few decent arguments in your critique of Glassner, you have to keep in mynd what type of lens he is carrying...he is a Sociologist (SOCIAL Scientist), NOT a foody...Gospel certainly was bold enough to question many of these food fads/trends...One of the first to actually bring these issues to the table and provide actual NON-ANECDOTAL research to back it up...Kudos, Glassner