There I was on the treadmill, trying to counter the cholesterol-spiking side effects of my job, watching with fascination as Hannity and Colmes “discussed” a decision by a Florida school to sell promotional space on student report cards to McDonald’s.
Colmes argued that this could encourage poor nutrition. Hannity just said he’s tired of the food police getting between him and his Big Mac.
Should schools sell ads on report cards? Probably not, but that’s not the part I was interested in. It was the food police part that caught my ear. Because I, like Hannity, bristle when someone tells me what I should (or shouldn’t) eat.
I want to make my own food choices, thanks. Even bad ones. Because, well, I’m the one eating it. Right?
Well, sort of. There are undeniable truths about the tragic price of America’s junk food habit: skyrocketing obesity and diabetes rates (hello, rising health care costs), overtaxed agricultural resources (read: increasingly scarce fertile land and fresh water), an overabundance of toxic flotsam from fertilizers and pesticides and livestock refuse.
The science is solid. Our fast-food nation cannot physically survive. To deny this is like ignoring climate change — dangerous.
But I still want my burger.
It’s a good old-fashioned “It’s bad” versus “I don’t care, I want it” throwdown, with inconceivable consequences.
Unfortunately, too many ivory-tower foodies aim to shame America into a wholesale cultural behavior shift.
But one truth about human behavior is this: Shame doesn’t work. Shame won’t force a family to choose expensive organic produce over cheap pizza rolls, or a teenager to choose a carrot stick over a cupcake. Shame won’t force a corporation to forgo profits, no matter how unethical its product. Shame won’t keep me from the drive- through. All shame does is divide us.
By and large, people don’t make logical food decisions. Deciding what to eat is id-driven, like buying a car or getting a new hairdo — an act rarely sullied by reason.
No one needs an Escalade. No one needs a $100 haircut. And yet we want these things, so we spend the money and ignore the consequences, because we can. Same goes for choosing fast food over a handful of nuts.
Eating is a primal process, driven by hunger, sensuality, convenience, the survival instinct — everything but logic. To misunderstand this is to misunderstand human nature.
There are those who take the pulpit to demand we re-create a culture where everything we eat comes from a place we know, husbanded by someone we trust. Away with the industrial status quo, they say. Only food with untarnished provenance, preferably from just up the road, will do.
Admirable, but let’s get real.
It falls on us, now, to get busy on this front. It will take generations to sort out, and we can’t know how it will play out. I certainly don’t have the solution.
But step one must be this: We must understand and acknowledge how people really make decisions about what, when and how to eat. Only within this imperfect but undeniable framework will we be able to nudge our food culture in a more sustainable and healthful direction for this century. And the next.
Tucker Shaw: 303-954-1958 or tshaw@denverpost.com
