Food, Glorious Food (Part III)
I’ve already written quite a bit about the local cuisine here in Rewalsar, and also about some of the Western foods I’ve missed since coming to India. I’m scheduled now to return to the States in about a month; and it’s no secret that I’ve already assembled a list of meals to catch up on when I come back. (Hint: the first ten on the list are all-you-can-eat sushi dinners….)
Meantime, in order to preserve some sanity, I’ve done some serious food-blog cruising, reasoning that if I couldn’t enjoy my comfort foods in person, some virtual food porn would provide relief. While it worked to some degree, I also got some strange new insights into what America’s attitudes toward food must look like to the rest of the world. America has long had a reputation for super-sized fast foods, super-thin beauty standards, and super-expensive food trends, but it wasn’t until the last couple of days that I noticed that America’s food attitudes were producing a synergy that was absolutely saturated with The Crazy. The horrible part for me was that each concept started off sounding as reasonable as could be, and then kept taking little baby steps into madness…
I can only describe what the progression felt like by analogy. Once upon a time, (mumble) years ago, Lena and I were attending a pro-union demonstration in downtown San Francisco. While we were there, a well-dressed Black woman came up and began to talk to the two of us. She started going on about how she owned “all of the buildings around here” (gesturing vaguely to most of the real estate located at Polk and Market). We went along with her because hey, this is San Francisco we’re talking about; anything’s possible, right? Then her little talk moved on to the subject of earthquake proofing for all of her buildings, and we went along with this idea, too, and allowed as how earthquake-proofing was a good thing. She then began to describe how she had equipped every building with roller skates, so that if the ground started shaking, everyone could just roll the buildings to safety, and that was when we realized we were dealing with a better-dressed-than-average street crazy. These brave new food ideas would start off the same way, moving along so smoothly, only to take that Bugs Bunny-like turn past Albuquerque and off into the wilderness.
Concept 1: “Eat local”. Now this one sounded great at first, and also more than a little ironic since most people in Rewalsar “eat local’ by default. It’s just too expensive and takes too long to truck much out-of-season produce to remote points in Himachal–especially without refrigeration–so the stuff most produce-wallahs sell is grown by farmers located just over in the next valley or so. The “eat local” idea is to buy as much of your food as possible from producers located within a 100-mile radius of your home. That way you support smaller farmers, ranchers, beekeepers and such while socking it to the suppliers of the hormone- and pesticide-ridden Stepford produce usually available in Safeway. Now we MommyWizards have done our share of this, patronizing Bay Area farmer’s markets when possible to support our local growers. But I ran into a problem with the latest version of this concept. For the trendier foodies, what this idea really translates to is markets with super-expensive organic specialties, and boxes of precious baby and heirloom produce, bought on a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) membership plan of several hundred dollars a year, just for one household. You hear a lot less about things like the People’s Grocery trucking produce into West Oakland. so that non-wealthy folks can get some fresh veggies without having to rob a 7-11 first. When I try to picture a typical Rewalsar family plunking down thousands of rupees for a CSA box–the equivalent of at least a month’s earnings for many around here–all of the “that ain’t right” alarm bells go off. Eating locally is a great concept, but the execution needs work.
Concept 2: “pro-ana and pro-mia”. I was kinda surprised, and kinda not, when I encountered this one. “Ana” and “mia” are shortened slang terms for “anorexia” and “bulimia”. Over the last little while controversial “pro-ana” and “pro-mia” websites have sprung up. Some of these sites are “pro-ana-or-mia” in the sense that they are actually support group sites for anorexics and bulimics who are not fully recovered. Well, okay. A particularly vicious side effect of many eating disorders is their tendency to isolate the sufferer. So a web site that keeps these folks from being isolated, helps them find support, and maybe a way out of their eating disorder is a good thing, right? Sure. But there are also “pro-ana” and “pro-mia” sites whose purpose is to inspire anorexics and bulimics to keep on keepin’ on, completely with tips for fooling your parents about how much you’re really eating, non-food food replacements, and so on. The more reasonable ISP’s are taking down the crazier “pro-ana-mia” sites, rightfully citing Terms of Service violations, since they’re basically endangering minors. But even the saner support sites have their “WTF?” moments. The scariest area on one site listed the stuff you shouldn’t do to lose weight. One of the no-no’s listed was tying a string to a LifeSaver, swallowing it, and using the string to promote your gag reflex to puke it up again, along with any other stomach contents. Words failed me for a moment. What has to happen in a kid’s life, where that even begins to look like a reasonable meal plan? Something in America’s food attitudes has gone seriously, seriously, wrong.
In India’s more Third-World parts, obesity is not a problem most people have. If anything people are looking to bulk up and gain weight. TV ads for things like cookies still use things like the “sugar=energy” equation as a selling point. I haven’t tried it, but I expect describing an American anorexia problem to, say, a newly-arrived Tibetan refugee, or to the Biharis working in the kitchen downstairs, would be met with a complete lack of comprehension, and more than a little bewilderment.
Concept 3: CRON (Calorie Reduction - Optimal Nutrition). This idea, like ‘eating locally”, started off sounding great.They’re done studies on CRON, and mice put on the diet tend to live the equivalent of 150, 300, even 500 years. Folks who have followed the diet so far get much thinner, look younger, have better sex lives….Wowie-kazowie! Eat less food, live longer. Simple, yes?
Yes.
The trick is to get the maximum amount of nutrients in the minimum amount of calories (not at all like the anorexic goal of getting thinner). Turns out the optimum number of calories can go lower than the calories taken in by Eritrean famine sufferers. Reasonable, yes?
Yes.
Most of your nutrients will be coming from things like fresh fruits, nuts, meat, eggs, and vegetables. Sounds tasty, yes?
Yes, except for the nuts–I’m allergic.
Okay, so the way you make sure you’re following the diet correctly is to weigh your food before eating it, and calculate out the nutrient values.
Well…I don’t normally weigh my food, but I can see the sense of that.
So now we get to the expensive part of the CR diet, where to make sure you’re getting all of the nutrients your body needs, you pay US$25-US$50 for a bottle of supplements.
Hold up. How much?
US$25-US$50. Per bottle. Oh, yeah, and another bunch of $$$ for nutritional calculation software. And a computer or laptop to run it on. And the scales for weighing food. And because the diet’s so radical, you’ll need to order up a bunch of blood tests from your doctor before you start.
Sounds expensive.
But you’re living longer, dude! Just earn more money! And did we mention the cool bit where one of the diet’s leading proponents is turning orange, from all the beta-carotene he’s taking in from eating carrots and beets?
Um, wait…so…to live longer, I have to spend more money, to eat less food, and if I do it right, I turn a different color?
Yeah! Um, no! Wait a minute….
Can I get back to you? I’ve got to go to an inline-skate fitting for the House of Shields, down on Montgomery…
