The racism inherent in talking about "healthy food"

I really like a lot of things about this article which lays out some of the racist undertones of discussing healthy food and the obesity epidemic. Particularly the last line: that the real problem is that "some can choose and some cannot."

Food recommendations are incredibly white-centric. For example, as the article points out, dietary recommendations include a lot of dairy products, even though most non-white people (including 70% of black people and 53% of Latinos) are lactose intolerant. What isn't recommended is alternate, culturally-specific sources of calcium, like collard greens.

There is no evidence that people eat more calories now than they did a generation ago. The researcher hypothesizes that this may indicate epigenetic factors like hormones in milk and meat, and environmental toxins, both of which are known to increase obesity. But I think it could also bolster the argument that people are eating too much of the wrong food: salty, high-carb, high-fat foods.

It's not because we don't know better or can't control ourselves. It's because the way America's food system is structured, it's cheaper to eat badly than to eat well. And despite the urging of Michael Pollan and others, "vote with your fork" just isn't an option for many Americans.

Go to the grocery store and compare prices on pasta versus meat. You can buy a pound of spaghetti - dinner for four - for about $2. But the same amount of money will only buy you about half a pound of hamburger - one of the cheapest, least-healthy forms of meat - and that's only dinner for two.

Vegetables are even worse. Sure, you can buy a pound of carrots for $2. But no one is going to eat a dinner consisting mainly of carrots. Plus, vegetables spoil quickly. If you don't get around to eating them in time, you've just lost your money. And since vegetables are not calorically dense, if you're surviving on a marginal income, they are not a good choice. Better to stick with the pasta which is just as cheap but more filling.

As an unfortunate side effect, that dried pasta is also the least-healthy of all the choices I mentioned. Even when you add a cheap jar of pasta sauce, it's still nutritionally bankrupt.

How about instead of berating poor people for their choices, we start making it easier for them to earn a living wage and afford better food? Oops.

Image courtesy Flickr/Friscocali