An Edible Quest
Baby boomers are the leaders now. Of any generation alive today, ours has seen more lies, more propaganda, more mistakes than any other, while still having the capacity to fix them. Which is why BoomerCafé co-founder David Henderson is chewing on the problem, why do we tolerate foods that are designed to kill us?
When we baby boomers were kids, we were exposed to a pack of lies, and we’re suffering for it today. And we keep getting reminded of it.
Here’s what I mean: an American friend returned recently from Canada raving about how good Coca-Cola tastes there. I don’t drink many sugar beverages but I had a Coke not long ago while working in Slovenia in Central Eastern Europe, and it was actually pretty good and reminded me of the soda fountain Cokes of my youth. It was during that trip that I also bought a bag of Peanut M&Ms during a stopover at Frankfurt airport, and they, too, tasted better than the same candy in America.
Candy and sodas aside, I find that the quality of food products is better nearly anywhere in the world than in the United States. There are easy explanations but at the top of the list are corn syrup and polyunsaturated fats.
Banned in most places on the planet as toxic substances, corn syrup and trans fats are loaded into processed foods in the U.S.
Corn syrup is a high intensity genetically modified super-sweetener made from corn, intended to prolong the shelf-life of products and create an artificial craving for more of whatever we are eating that contains the stuff. Sprite doesn’t want you to have just one can but several to quench your thirst, and corn syrup is just the trick to do it. The corn syrup tells your mind that you need more. The problem is that some people cannot stop the craving, and obesity is one of the many bad results.
Many baby boomers grew up watching the TV ads promoting products, like margarine, that are made with trans fat. Problem was … it was all a lie. Trans fat is not just bad for you, it can kill you. Companies have replaced butter and other natural ingredients with trans fat because it is cheap. Like corn syrup, trans fats are chemicals with no food or nutritional value. Eating trans fats is bad particularly for baby boomers because it increases the risk of coronary heart disease.
[Update: In a bold move, the new Chairman of the Arlington County, Virginia, Board - J. Walter Tejada - said he would encourage restaurants to ban the use of trans fats in foods.]
Let’s see … corn syrup is almost inescapable in America, and the U.S. has the most obese citizens in the world. Trans fats are loaded into foods, and the U.S. has one of the greatest instances of health disease. Am I connecting the dots?
The third thing that’s killing us is salt. God, what is it with the compulsion restaurants have to put too much salt into the food they serve us even though so many of us are aware of the link between salt and high blood pressure. I had a dinner last evening at a supposedly good restaurant in the Hyatt at Cambridge, Maryland, and the meal was inedible because of too much salt. I don’t want to single out Hyatt because the problem of over-salting is endemic at most eating places across America.
But it doesn’t end with corn syrup, trans fats, and salt. I love salmon but most of the salmon served in restaurants is farm-raised. What’s worse, they don’t always admit it. When I asked the chef at a restaurant whether his salmon was farm-raised or wild-caught, he proudly proclaimed that it was neither – his salmon was “organic” and came from Scotland. I’ve seen the so-called “organic” fish farms in Scotland and, believe me, there is nothing organic about it – the fish are jammed into floating cages so tightly that they can barely swim among their own poop. Organic salmon may be a marketing slogan but it’s still crap.
So, what’s the problem? We’re baby boomers, presumably the most educated generation in history. So why do we accept such a preponderance of really poor quality food in America? The answer is complex – advertising, lobbying, and complacency. We are brainwashed by advertising. The fat cats who profit from corn syrup and trans fats hire expensive lobbyists to get approvals in Washington. And maybe, we have just become a little too accepting that the piece of chicken the server places in front of us is actually chicken and not a chemistry set of antibiotics and growth hormones.
Okay, I admit it … I am particular about the quality of food that I eat. But if we don’t complain, who will?
Category: Baby Boomers, David Henderson
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Sites That Link to this Post
- As Baby Boomers … We Are What We Eat: BoomerCafé™ … it’s your place | August 9, 2008
- We are What We Eat | David Henderson - author, journalist | January 18, 2009
I absolutely agree with what you say. There is so much junk in the name of “food” pushed at American consumers.
About the Hyatt … well, let me suggest that the Town Dock Restaurant in nearby St. Michael’s, MD, is outstanding by comparison.
I concur as well. I found the same situation with my last visit in NZ. Many of us believe the good old USA is the most free country on this planet. Issues like this play into the calculus of my perception, what control can actually be, and those elements actually doing it. Depending on your particular personal paranoia threshold, this topic has plenty of momentum to other unsavory links, doesn’t it?
Yup, lies continue. Coverups continue, but damn the torpedoes and the Micheal Moore movies today. NO WORRIES on this special day – eat well, enjoy those around us and leave the damned TV off.
Wow! Your generation should be referred to as the self-righteous generation. Oh, and I can’t wait till you leach all that social security off of us!
You sound like a conspiratorial teenager.
Don’t blame “them” for your problems. No one forced you to eat or drink anything. The ingredients in Coke are right there on the can/bottle for you to read. Advertisers aren’t at fault for your laziness or unwillingness to read. If you are susceptible to being “brainwashed by advertising” then you’ve got more health problems to worry about, like mental illness.
I’m a “spearpoint” Boomer (Jan ’47) and reformed food junkie. Wt 210 and chol 325 seven years ago; 185 and 185 today. Suggest you do what my wife and I have done: stop carping about the contents of processed food and eat fresh. Fruit, veggies and good fresh meat and fish are readily available. All it takes is time to prepare them…use the time you spend carping about the food additives to avoid them. Prep fresh and you’ll have nothing left to carp about. Read the labels. Eat a “Med” diet. Stop buying pre-packaged, canned and frozen. Take a little personal responsibility instead of casting yourself as a victim of your own weaknesses.
Or is all the bitching just a smokescreen for nanny-government “food censorship”?
Hey Martin, I would back off about the social security comments. Most boomers are not a fan of that system. The baby boomers are paying out much more than they will ever get out of that system. If I could have opted out, I would have been far better off. Wise up. Don’t expect the goverment to do ANYTHING for you except possibly national defense.
The point I believe Henderson is making is the lack of really high quality food choices when dining in restaurants. Sure, we can shop at Whole Foods and eat organic at home but how about when we travel? God, there is such crap food across America in restaurants and so few places that consciously serve high quality.
We have become complacement with food just as we have become complacement with government. If it is dressed up pretty and too hard to figure out what is in it, we swallow it whole.
Here is a secret, though; there is a small Texas town called Dublin with a small Doctor Pepper plant tha still uses Imperical Pure Cane sugar.
Awwww, just like I remember as a kid. And the Doctor Pepper cakes as decadent, too.
Dr. Pepper still made with pure cane sugar?!!! How daring! You’ve got to respect that plant in Dublin, TX. I only wish Pepsi, Coke and other beverages gave us a choice of pure cane sugar, which is, of course, a little better tasting than corn syrup and other chemicals.
There is abundant information about eating better and, for most people, big improvements can be made without a great deal of trouble, and the worst of the foods would go away from lack of interest if we were a little more distriminating. But the ideal diet just may not be obtainable for many of us and many of the symptoms such as obesity and high cholesterol are more a function of the amount of food consumed than what is consumed.
Sure we should push for improvements. But at what time or place in history do you suppose we could have been born when our prospects for living a long, relatively healthy life would have been greater?
How we manage to feed this over populated planet as well as we do is a miracle in itself.
Boomers seem to have an inherent distrust of free markets and want the government to “fix everything”. After being weaned on “Brave New World” and “1984″, we seem destined to create similar societies in our continuing quest to make sure that everyone does what we believe is right.
Take you knowledge and encourage kindred souls not to buy the products you decry as unhealthy. Businesses can only make money if people buy their products.
If you are unsuccessful in your attempts, you can still live your own lifestyle and educate your children as to what you believe. But, don’t fall back on what has become the “boomer creed” – litigation and more government control.
Martin dude… grow the F up. The mistake we boomers made was having so many of you GenY brats, and then spoiling you. Get a life dude – go DO something. You’ve got a problem with Social Security or whatever…. just deal with it.
boomers stop whining and realize that no one is forcing you to drink cheap cornsyruped coke or poopy salmon. You went there and expected to have a good dinner FOR CHEAP. YOu can bet YOUR BOOMER BOTTOM DOLLAR that the food you admire elsewhere COSTS TWICE AS MUCH.
It was a German scientist named Normann Wilhelm who developed hydrogenation: a process for converting liquid fatty acids into solids. This spawned a dangerous byproduct, something that previously existed in nature in only very small amounts, called trans-fats. Alarms about trans-fats were first raised in the early 1980s, when studies showed they raised cholesterol in lab animals. It took until 2006 for the FDA to begin requiring manufacturers to list amounts of tans-fatty acid contents contained in their products. Several local governments, including New York and Philadelphia, have since jumped on the bandwagon, banning trans-fat use in restaurants. And many restaurants, fast food outlets, and food manufacturers have “voluntarily” shifted away from trans-fat usage for fear of lawsuits by plaintiffs whose health has been adversely affected by consumption of such products. (e.g. Within days of being sued under California’s Consumer Protection Law in 2003, Kraft Foods announced it would be “voluntarily” reducing the use of trans-fats in their Oreo cookies – so three cheers for the lawyers doing more to protect us than our elected leaders by forcing healthy change through consumer protection litigation!)
But shouldn’t we smart, overly-educated Baby Boomers know better than to eat such garbage? Apparently not. There are countless representative cases wherein smart people unknowingly, or perhaps ambivalently, consumed harmful products, unaware they were doing so. Perhaps in naive reliance that our government must be watching out for us. In the case of Hoyte vs.Yum!Brands,Inc., filed in June of 2006 in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, the plaintiff was a retired medical doctor from Maryland who alleged he unknowingly consumed food fried in trans-fats at KFC restaurants. The good news is that, by October 2006, KFC announced that it was switching to fat free oils in all of its 5,500 restaurants. Again, three cheers for the lawyers!
But, why is it that change only seems to come about by using the court system as a cudgel? Isn’t the government supposed to be protecting its citizenry? Isn’t the government supposed to be protecting us from harmful products? As long as big business continues to lobby and contribute to the American political machinery, I doubt we will see much meaningful legislation curtailing the use of high fructose corn oils, high concentrations of salt, or other harmful products until forced to do so in the courts. I’m not sure I would go so far as to characterize the government as overtly “lying” to us, as David Henderson alleges in his article (though, we certainly have been mislead into believing our government was protecting us). But, clearly, we must be ever vigilante for our own safety and that of our children.
I’m a boomer scout (’42) and I’ve got some points to make: 1)DYODD: Read labels, be a “consulting physician” in your own case, and do the research so widely available for your cases/causes. 2)Network, ask where to stay, where to eat, what to eat from the people you trust 3)Get/keep competence; get/keep confidence. 4)Act like other people are watching; act like the Tribal Elder you are. 5)Be supportive, encouraging, and a person of good will. Share the wealth. 6)Buy, fix, and eat organic foods and cut back your portions. 7)Exercise as soon as you get out of bed (you won’t need coffee to wake up).
Think continuing education. 9) Manage your own mind. 10)Be well and do good. You’re in charge now.
re:
The answer is complex – advertising, lobbying, and complacency. We are brainwashed by advertising.
Okay, so here’s the deal. Back in the twenties the permanant government worked with the best social scientists of the day and figured out the formula for managing an unruly, fairly unsophisticated populace so the would cause no trouble, especially in the times of red scares. One of their strategies was the development of a massive entertainment effort that was designed to keep the population constantly amused. The other prong was public relations and advertising both developed in the 20s, to create a vast consumer army. Worked pretty good, I’d say. One time I heard a guy on a radio talk show speaking about the overall blueprint that was develped back then and he said there was even documentaton on it. The host just hung up on him..the substabdard food, the lousy tv, the seventy basketball channels on cable, the computer-designed portion of frozen food meals. its all of a piece to keep you distracted and passive..Seems to work also. I wouldn’t be surprised if the guvment wasn’t behind the rapid development and genaral affordability of large screen tvs, a quantum leap in mass distraction. Only connect. Anti conspiracy types, take your best shot. and dio you notice the sugar you get in little packets has no sweetness?
Religion started when someone noticed that an intangible (we call it “belief” now) was eventually far, far stronger than anything tangible. Government started when someone noticed that “convincing” others to “believe” something and capitalizing on their resultant energy gathered more “profit” than any other method. Now America is caught in a world-wide struggle to destroy both of these concepts because they have proven corruptible even in the youngest of countries. The sliding collapse of effective culture has come from the belief in supremacy of “college education” or “university education” over common sense and actual knowledge (the most artificial of intelligence instead of natural and earned intelligence), chemical combinations of artificial foods, instead of the fully natural foods, and artificial structures of “information” instead of the natural determination and support of truths. These basic levels that support the rest of life have been turned into quagmires of disinformation, lies, “half-truths”, and “lies by complete omission”. The basic point of art that it should uplift the spirit (instead of just effect the psyche, whether positive or blantantly negative), the basic point of science that it should be truthful and in conformity with the laws of nature so its effect can be predicted from minute to cosmic levels, the basic point of government that it should help as many people as possible and hurt as few as possible (whatever the program or policy), the basic point that reason should be clear (and that fallacies are to be avoided as much as plague-infested rats, for fallacies of argument bring a far greater plague), all of these concepts have been abandoned in favor of hegemony in one form or another (wealth, political power, even international “influence”). We speak of “careers” and never consider the greatest “career”–being wise in our age. Youth spouts “instant catch-alls” that they have heard from dire manipulators and no chorus is heard from our institutions when those catch-alls are even openly fallacious arguments. “Winning” is all that counts, ignoring that we all “lose” eventually, and if only “winning” counts, the culture, the country, eveyone eventually loses very, very big. Rome learned–several times. Greece learned–several times. And we are learning what they learned and re-learned and re-learned. And the biggest lie is that we can’t learn until we fail miserably as “everyone else before us has failed”. Many have been told “you must die to live” and they were “human sacrifices” in dire religions. Must we come to this logical consequence before we turn away from lies and fallacies? Will we need national “contests to the death” before we realize life is not about watching others die, but about discovering more and more about the truths of life itself–the foods (science rears its beautiful head), the real and natural medicines (again, science), the real and natural joys (again, science, and…finally, actual ART)?
Looks like the new chairman of the Arlington, VA, county board wants to encourage restaurants to ban the use of trans fats in foods http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/01/AR2008010101809.html?hpid=topnews. Great move!