When I defended fast food against the charge that it was to blame for our increasing obesity, most comments said that obesity was the result of lack of exercise. I think that is a superficial explanation too, so I wanted to throw some more straws in the wind which suggest to me that culture in general, and mums in particular, are to blame.
In her new book French Women Don’t Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure Mireille Guiliano tackles the question of why the French, whose diet is relatively high in fat, don’t get obese. Her answer is that they eat smaller portions and don’t gorge. Why? Because they have a culture where they love food and they eat for enjoyment, not to get full. So far, so good. If calories in equal calories out, you don’t get fat, so tinkering with the “in” side of the equation – eating – can be just as effective as tinkering with the “out” side – exercise.
So why does our culture tend to gorge? Is it because we hate food, or is something else at play? I’d suggest it is because we are living in cultures which have lost their confidence and this is the root cause of obesity. Here are a couple of examples.
The Movie Supersize Me shows what can happen to a man who lives only on Macdonald’s and eats the largest portions that they will serve him. But almost every suburban household I know plays its own version of supersizing. Cooks (almost always mothers, but fathers do the same thing with the barbeque) habitually over-cater. Why? For an older generation it could have been related to the Depression, but these days it’s “all about the cook”. If plates aren’t full to over-flowing someone might think they don’t care or love their children enough.
Fear, as various commentators have noted, is a potent factor in selling political solutions. It is also a factor in selling food profitably. “Family size” returns greater profits. It allows for economies of scale in packaging and distribution, at the same time that it insures suburban providores against the fear that people will think poorly of them because their children are too thin. A win for food manufacturers, and for fearful mums and dads.
Fearful mums and dads are also not just pumping additional calories into kids, but when the inevitable adipose tissue turns up they’re not prepared to talk to kids about it. The children might get a complex about food, and eat even more, or worse, become anorexic. This is not just an abstract issue for me. I’ve been told by mothers and teachers that I can’t talk to a young lady close to me about her weight because “you will give her anorexia”. Doctors (who should know better) have even produced graphs to prove she is within average parameters, thus conjuring away the need to talk, even when the pinch test proves conclusively she is not average. How do you sensibly discuss good food attitudes with children when you fear that the whole of society will blame you if those kids later develop health problems despite, not because of, your intervention? Too hard for most. Better to lie.
Fear also works on the output side. Yesterday’s Sunday Mail carried a story headed “Enemy at the gate” about the fears that suburban parents have that their children will be abducted if they let them walk to school. Despite the fact that there has not been a rise in crime, or abductions of children, since the 60s and 70s when most of us did walk to school, parents have worked themselves into such a state they they want their children to live in a bubble. And children who live in bubbles inevitably become fat, especially if they are being super-sized at home.
The SM article quoted a survey into attitudes and said that it showed similar results to surveys taken in the US, Canada and Britain – all the major Anglo-Saxon countries. Is it coincidental that there is also a “fat epidemic” in all of these countries? I don’t think so. I think it is a product of a lack of confidence in ourselves and our culture. Perhaps the real reason the French don’t get fat and we do, is that they have never for one moment doubted that Paris is the centre of the world. It’s time to get comfortable in our skins, before we burst out of them.