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04.21.2005

"HartBeat" is The Hartman Group's FREE online newsletter, providing insight, analysis, information and strategy to give business leaders the knowledge and vision to build sustainable brands.

For more Hartman Group articles on OBESITY, click here...

03.10.2005 "The Balance Trap"

08.19.2004 "7 Myths of Obesity in America"

06.17.2004 "Addressing the Problem of Obesity"

02.11.2004 "Don't Tell Me I'm Obese, I'm Just Big-Boned"




For more Hartman Group articles on FOOD CULTURE, click here...

11.11.2004 "What's for Dinner?: Understanding Meal Fragmentation as a Cultural Phenomenon"

10.26.2004 "What If It's Not About the Food After All"

09.23.2004 "Asian Dinner Mixes & the Family Meal: Evolving Food Culture"

08.05.2004 "Snacking Our Way Through the Day: Food Culture in America"

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Consumer Implications Of The New Food Pyramid

HEADLINE: New Government Recommendations
Expected to Drive Obesity Rates to Record Levels

No, it's not April Fools, and no, this isn't the current issue of the Onion (though we wish we were half that creative!). Rather, this is my regrettable prediction based on the press release that rolled across my desk this Tuesday morning. I'm referring, of course, to the much heralded announcement this week of the government's new eating guidelines.

Gone is the now-familiar "Food Pyramid" we've grown accustomed to seeing in our doctor's exam room. In its place is a "new and improved" pyramid comprised of "5 different triangle-shaped guides, each geared to people's differing lifestyles and nutritional needs" (CNN.com 4/19/05). Each guide is itself comprised of numerous sub-categories. This new system was crafted, in part, as a response to the finding that "people have steadily grown fatter since the food pyramid debuted in 1992." Agriculture Secretary Mike Johans lamented that the original pyramid had "become quite familiar, but few Americans follow the recommendations." Acknowledging that the new multi-faceted pyramid is substantially more complex, the agriculture department also announced plans to offer new web-based tools designed to allow consumers to more easily implement these customized guidelines into their household eating habits.

So let's get this straight: We've all learned about the first pyramid, but apparently haven't been interested in following its guidelines, and as a result we've (mostly) gotten fatter. And the best response we can muster as a nation is to offer a substantially more complex, multi-faceted pyramid that is custom tailored to meet differing lifestyles and nutritional needs?

While some critics (ourselves included) might immediately question the logic of complicating a tool that has already failed to gain widespread cultural legitimacy, our own research suggests there is a more fundamental problem here. Namely, American consumers simply cannot and will not consistently eat according to a scientific formula, no matter how neatly it is packaged. In other words, it is not the content, packaging or marketing of the food pyramid that's the problem, it's the pyramid itself.

* * *

Eating is first and foremost a social and cultural activity.

While evidence of this proposition abounds, we need only remind ourselves that most of us understand other cultures firstly by their style of cooking and eating - what many term a cuisine. For example, while few of us understand the complexities of the many languages and dialects of the Chinese language, most of us know the differences between Mandarin and Szechwan cooking.

And not surprisingly, because things that are cultural and social are things we are supposed to be doing together, we find most peoples throughout civilization have traditionally eaten in this fashion. Be it by family, clan, class or tribe we all typically eat with others. In this, eating has established itself as one of the fundamental rituals of collective life.

And more than mere fodder for an anthropology student's doctoral thesis, we find these collective rituals actually fulfill critical functions in social structures. Cutting to the chase, we find in the case of food that the physical act of eating together - what anthropologists term commensality - actually serves to regulate food portioning and food consumption, in the process controlling caloric intake. When the mother or father dish out the food, it becomes much more difficult for their children to overeat. When you're eating dinner with friends, it is downright rude to keep refilling your plate.

But the new government guidelines, developed by scientists, nutritionists and economists actually encourage more independent eating while simultaneously discouraging communal meals. Our research has already highlighted the degree to which American consumers are struggling to eat together, as a family, in our increasingly fragmented lives. Often one or both parents needs to "stay late at work." Children's ever-growing participation in extracurricular activities, which frequently run well into the evening, pose an equal threat to the family meal. Add to this reality the increasing tendency toward picky eating - our growing tolerance for children's' unique food preference expressions - and one wonders how we ever manage to eat together.

Yet now, we are supposed to believe that whomever is in charge of preparing, obtaining and/or serving the family meal is now expected to take into account the unique food needs of each member based on their differing lifestyles and nutritional needs as suggested by our new food pyramid. As anyone who has ever prepared meals for a family member on a specific medical diet can attest, we quickly fall into the trap of preparing individual meals for each diet. In short, our belief is that such scientifically based approaches will only exacerbate the amount of individual eating, reduce opportunities for commensality and, in the process drive obesity rates even higher.

Moreover, our own evidence also suggests that such detailed, scientifically based guidelines will prove impossible to follow in the long run for the same reasons diets don't work and the same reason the low-carb craze died out. Namely, because we humans can only try to live by such artificial constraints on our humanity for so long before we must go back to being, well human. As several of our respondents in our obesity research suggested with regard to the then popular low-carb diets: "You can only eat like that for so long before you end up chucking it all and joining the rest of the world...because at the end of the day the real world does not eat that way." One respondent, in a particularly moving moment, highlighted the tragedy of what we now term the "dieter's paradox." After losing more than 100 pounds she lamented that she was terrified:

"I don't know what to do...I lost all this weight by literally locking myself in my bedroom during meal times and eating a few crackers. But if I join my family again, I can't keep to that diet. So now I feel like I must choose between being alone or becoming fat again."

Complexifying our science and fine-tuning our guidelines, you see, is only likely to drive us further into individualistic, fragmented eating habits, habits that are at once unrealistic and pathological. So perhaps it's time to give our science a much needed breather and meditate on what it really means to live and eat together, as humans - in sync not with the regression outputs of biostatisticians but with rhythms and rituals of social life.

Or maybe a more straightforward way of putting this is to point out that as Americans living in the 21st Century, we arguably live in the most scientifically advanced culture in the history of the world. Some might squabble with that last assertion, but I bet most would agree. And yet, at the same time, the best data suggest we are among the most overweight cultures to ever inhabit this planet. Do you suspect that maybe, just maybe, there might be a correlation there?

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