Food Bytes: Recent Media Comments about Our Eating Habits
by Janet Peterson

Food is a news item and how we eat it is big news. Here is a sampling of fare recently served in the media. Some items will make you gulp and others will make you hungry. Enjoy while you’re dishing up healthy food created in your own kitchen.

“For a month last year, Morgan Spurlock’s eating ritual was what he called ‘every 8-year-old’s dream.’ The filmmaker got to go to McDonald’s for all of his meals, three squares a day, for 30 straight days. . . .

“As you find out from watching ‘SUPER SIZE ME: A Film of Epic Proportions’ at the Sundance Film Festival, boy, did he ever need the detox diet his girlfriend drew up for him at the end of his fast-food frenzy.

“Warning: The witty filmmakers rated the movie ‘F” for ‘fat’ audiences, which includes most of America. . . .

“Spurlock limited his exercise and gulped down about 5,000 calories a day at McDonald’s across the country. All told he ingested about 30 pounds of sugar and 12 pounds of fat from the fast food.

“. . . the previously trim and healthy Spurlock had spent about $850, gained 24 pounds, raised his once-normal cholesterol levels by 65 points, sent his blood-fat level out of the Playland roof. . . .

“A few ‘Fat Fun Facts’ he includes in the movie: . . (1) One in four Americans visits a fast-food restaurant every day; (2) Sixty percent of all U.S. citizens are either overweight or obese; (3) Americans spent $110 billion on fast food in 2003 compared to only $3 billion in 1972; . . . (4) Each day McDonald’s feeds more people worldwide than the entire population of Spain.

“ ‘McDonald’s is a symbol in this movie because they are the biggest. This is more a look at fast-food culture and the society that we live in. . . What I do want people to start doing is thinking about eating. They need to think about what they’re doing and how this will affect them in the long run.’ ”
       -Jody Genessy, “Fast-food Flick Is A Supersize Hit,” Deseret Morning News, Jan. 21, 2004. B-1--2.

“Michael Dionne, a physical therapist in Gainesville, Georgia, who specializes in bariatrics  [the branch of medicine concerned with obesity] says more and more hospitals call on him for help in reducing injuries to nurses and orderlies who must move an increasing number of greatly overweight patients.”
       -Unmesh Kher, “How to Sell XXXL, Time (New York), Jan. 27, 2003.

“The quality of cookware, equipment and food has improved over the years, making it easier than ever to cook at home,” he [Christopher Kimball, editor of Cook’s Illustrated] said. ‘It’s easier to produce a good meal in an hour or 45 minutes than it was 20 years ago.”
       -Valerie Phillips, “This Is Only A Test. . . ,” Deseret News, Jan. 14, 2004, C-2.

“Every day, nearly one-third of U.S. children aged 4 to 19 eat fast food, which likely packs on about six extra pounds per child per year and increases the risk of obesity, a study of 6,212 youngsters found.

“The numbers, though alarming, are not surprising since billions of dollars are spent each year on fast-food advertising directed at kids, said lead author Dr. David Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children’s Hospital Boston.

The findings suggest that fast-food consumption has increased fivefold among children since 1960, Ludwig said.”
       -Lindsey Tanner, “Study Links Fast Food to High Risk of Childhood Obesity,” Deseret News, Associated Press, Jan. 5, 2004.

“Living within one’s means might include eating in restaurants only occasionally rather than daily or regularly.”
       -“Pay Thy Debt,” Church News, Sept. 20, 2003, 16.

“There’s no doubt that a house filled with the scent of baking is warm and inviting. A whiff of cinnamon or vanilla is definitely alluring. So, when life is getting too hectic, take a break and bake something for you and your family. Not only does the delicious aroma soothe the senses, but some find the act of baking itself can be very relaxing. Performing the methodical tasks of measuring, stirring, kneading and mixing takes your mind off your daily stresses and leaves you free to focus on the task at hand.”
       -“Aroma Therapy,” Food and Family, Fall 2003, 48.

Editorial cartoon: Two would-be terrorists are sitting talking to each other. The first one says, “Obesity is the #1 killer in the U.S.” His cohort says, “Forget another terrorist attack; we’ll just wait until Americans eat themselves to death.”
       -Deseret News, Nov. 10, 2003.

“The average American consumes the equivalent of nearly two teaspoons of salt every day, almost double the upper limit for good health. And before anyone protests about hardly touching the salt shaker, consider: The vast majority of that sodium is hidden inside common foods, from spaghetti sauce to frozen dinners.

“Now public health specialists are pressuring food manufacturers and restaurants to cut the salt, because too much sodium is bad for your blood pressure—and high blood pressure hurts your heart, brain, and kidneys. . . .

“Time-crunched families depend on the convenience of processed foods, so the American Public Health Association, backed by dozens of other health and medical groups, issued a challenge to the industry: Cut in half the sodium in those foods over the next ten years.”
       -Lauran Neergaard, “ ‘Hidden Sodium’ Called Big Threat,” Associated Press, Deseret News, July 29, 2003, A-2.

“In the back of a small shop in Queens, hundreds of packages are stacked to the ceiling. They hold a feast of fragile things: freshly-baked bread, homemade candy, and in one plastic bag, Florerncio Sosa’s favorite mole sauce, cooked by his mother-in-law 48 hours early in a tiny village 2,200 miles away.

“ ‘There’s nothing like the flavor of a mother’s cooking,’ said Mr. Sosa, 31, a factory worker who left Mexico for New York in 1990 and never returned. ‘It’s a way of going back.’

“Week after week, the packages make their way from Puebla, Mexico, to Tulcingo Travel in Jackson Heights, part of a thriving underground of cross-border couriers who fly back and forth between the New York areas and Latin America, transporting the sorely missed pleasure of home to the city’s immigrants with an immediacy that is changing their way of life. . . .

“Tucked in plastic bags and Tupperware containers, an array of things—legal and illegal—cross the border every day: cooked guinea pigs (an Ecuadorean delicacy,) videotapes of missed baptisms and weddings, goats baked in cactus leaves, bundles of ripe chili peppers. . . .

“Mr. Sosa could have walked a block from the small house he shares with nine relatives to buy mole sauce from a Mexican grocer. When asked why he shells out roughly $25 of his $350 weekly salary for packages from Mexico when he could make or buy the food here, he replied with the words echoed by many others: ‘No es lo mismo’—‘It’s not the same.’ “
       -Andrea Elliott, “For Mom’s Cooking, 2,200 Miles Isn’t Too Far,” New York Times, Aug. 11, 2003.

“A General Mills family-management specialist offers the following ideas for family dinner time:

·                      Remember the importance of dinner. Eating dinner together as a family is a simple way to nourish and nurture children.

·                      Ask for help with dinner decisions. Plan ahead to decide at 4 ;.m. what’s for dinner.

·                      Cook smart and simple. Put together a basic list of your family’s favorite dinner menus, to fill in gaps. Pick six or seven meals that you can prepare in less than 30 minutes, and always keep the ingredients for them in your pantry and refrigerator.

·                      Create a smart shopping list that includes items for your family’s favorite meals, plus other staples including milk, bread and fruit.

·                      Rely on teamwork. Assign mealtime tasks by age, skill level and time availability.

-Associated Press, “Cook Smart, Simple Dinners,” Deseret News, Oct. 1, 2003, C-5.