A few years ago, I was your typical office-worker: stressed out, uneven energy, overweight, and inconsistent complexion. Now I'm just your typical 28-year old urban hunter-gatherer on a quest to be healthy, and having a few adventures along the way. See my full bio.
I hate when people use the phrase the "Standard American Diet", or SAD, to exemplify what's wrong with our food system. It's so contemptuous. The problem with Coca Cola and Snickers isn't that they're American foods. The problem with soda pop and candy bars is that they're industrial foods. Some of the earliest industrial foods, like refined flour and sugar, and industrial food processing methods, like pasteurization or canning, weren't American in origin at all. The Industrial Revolution started in the UK, people. The Europeans started it.
Is it any wonder that America became a fast food nation? First, we were a melting pot and had no food traditions to start with. Blaming America for not having a food culture that could resist industrial foods makes as much sense as blaming Native Americans for not having immune systems that could resist small pox. Second, America is really good at that whole industrial growth thing. We did a kick-ass job of making food damn cheap and damn tasty. And when America decides to get healthy, look out -- cause we're gonna be really damn healthy.
See, a traditional food culture, like in France, might keep industrial foods at bay, but it also slows the kind of food and health innovation that you read about on this blog and others like it.
So I'm not saying Standard American Diet (SAD) anymore. Next time you hear someone use it, see if you can pick up on the emotion driving it. It's probably either thinly-veiled contempt or deeply repressed self-loathing.
I encourage you to start using the phrase "industrial diets" and "industrial foods". The problem is industrial diets, people - not American diets.
Comments
Great post, thank you! I
Great post, thank you! I will be adopting this phrase from now on, along with "pseudo food" - from the book "If it's not Food don't eat it!" I found Kelly Hayford's (the author of the book) explanation of the definition of food very helpful.I don't think everyone using the SAD acronym is full of contempt or self-loathing though. It has become something almost fad-ish, popular, and I think does server a purpose in opening people's eyes to how we have let this junk become standard fare.
I understand why you find it
I understand why you find it contemptuous, but the thing is that a lot of this stuff IS American. As a Brit I hold my hands up for starting the whole industrialisation thing, but it's interesting that America, which as you say had no food tradition to build on, has pretty much soaked up every international cuisine and made them all converge towards this Americanized/industrialised/refined/unhealthy model. For instance, here in the UK you can go to an Italian restaurant and be served a thin pizza with lots of homemade tomato sauce, fresh herbs and a light sprinkle of cheese. If you go to an American restaurant and order same pizza, it'll be fried thick crust with sugary sauce, mounds of cheese and fatty cured meat. You can't argue that these sorts of hybrid foods were born in the USA, and it's that kind of thing people have in mind when they talk about SAD. And sorry, but Coke is American too, and it originated as a health tonic!I guess we have two different issues - there is the industrialisation of food, which depletes even the best natural foods of their nutrients, and then there is the choice of foods. And actually, they're both a problem.
First John, it's really
First John, it's really great to see people like you taking an interest in diet and health which is poneof the leading worldwide problems today.It doesn't matter what name you give it, the simple fact is that the food the average American eats has little nutrition and too many harmful substances as well as far too many calories. The problems with our diet goes far beyond simply coke and junk foods. A little research into what makes up the Standard American Diet reveals the problem quite clearly. I would be happy to discuss at length if you would like.Keep up the great work!
First John, it's really
First John, it's really great to see people like you taking an interest in diet and health which is poneof the leading worldwide problems today.It doesn't matter what name you give it, the simple fact is that the food the average American eats has little nutrition and too many harmful substances as well as far too many calories. The problems with our diet goes far beyond simply coke and junk foods. A little research into what makes up the Standard American Diet reveals the problem quite clearly. I would be happy to discuss at length if you would like.Keep up the great work!
That's hilarious! I saw a
That's hilarious! I saw a piece in some online paper the other day--I think it was the Vancouver Sun--talking about the Western diet destroying health and I stopped up short and said, "Whoa, wait a minute. The French diet is a Western diet, right? And they're healthier than we are, right? When are we going to start saying 'industrial'? Oh right, industry can do no wrong! It'll be a cold day in hell..."There must be something in the water. (Besides the industrial fluoride and the industrial chlorine...) :D
I never thought about it that
I never thought about it that way before, but you are right. Crappy processed food is not an American problem, it is a human problem affecting people around the world. And I agree, I don't like the use of the word "American" as a pejorative, as if there was something inherently unhealthy about the USA. "Industrial diets" and "industrial foods", it is!
I never thought of it like
I never thought of it like that. Thanks for enlightning me!
I agree we should not use
I agree we should not use the moniker with contempt. However, even our modern-Paleolithic vegetables and fruits usually don't come from our own backyard but are produced and delivered by the food industry. The term "Average American Diet" would be more accurate and would avoid the use of the SAD acronym. Regardless of the terminology, the key issue is knowing, on average, where dietary calories come from so we can determine where the nutritional challenges lie and whether we are making progress.Graphics showing the average daily calories per capita in the U.S. diet located at paleoterran.com
Industrial diet. Id. It's who
Industrial diet. Id. It's who you are.Great post - and good point.I am sooooo using this phrase to replace SAD. Everywhere.
Point well taken. I'll turn
Point well taken. I'll turn phrases! ty
Awwww....but it works so
Awwww....but it works so well as an acronym!
I disagree. In France, they
I disagree. In France, they make great food, industrially. In America, we make less healthy food, industrially.If we ever make healthy food, it will be done industrially - and sold in Wal-Mart.The healthiness of the food is orthogonal to whether or not it is produced industrially, just as how food tastes is orthogonal to whether or not it is produced industrially. E.g. suppose (just suppose) I raise Manglaitsa pigs industrially. You raise a pink pig in your backyard, and give it belly scratches and massages every day. We decide to have a competion. You kill Wilbur and serve a chop. I kill pig #34234 and serve a chop from it. #34234's chop will beat Wilbur's chop any day, and you know it.That's a good thing - it means if and when we go for healthy food, it will be as cheap and plentiful as possible.
I think you have to make a
I think you have to make a distinction between industrial foods - which are bad - and the use of technology in the production of traditional foods, which is fine. Pork is not really an industrial food, regardless of how it's raised (although some argument can be made when they're fed a chemically produced abomination). If you call any food that uses industrial technology "industrial food" then everything is industrial. Even organic farmers growing traditional vegetables use tractors. As for France, they don't produce great food industrially. They produce the same crap as in the US industrially. It's in all the grocery stores - chips, sodas, processed desserts, etc. They also, however, make a lot of traditional non-industrial foods - fruits, vegetables, meats, and dairy produced on small farms using (more or less) traditional methods. Plenty of French cheese is not in any meaningful sense industrial - it's produced on small dairy farms where the cows graze on the same grasses they have for centuries and produced by traditional methods.
I think I understand you. You
I think I understand you. You are saying that this stuff - which tastes great - is not "industrial food". It is produced with technology, but is a traditional food: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_L1UB__fiez0/TTN7wFXYsFI/AAAAAAAADAg/o1PE8AMKRE0/s1600/ibericoproduction.jpgI agree with you.Unfortunately, most people don't understand that.They figure that those Iberico pigs raised in the confinement are about as unhealthy, if not more unhealthy, than margarine, refined sugar, etc.
Could not agree more. It
Could not agree more. It just propagates the misconception that Americans are uniquely fat and unhealthy, that America has the worst food, and that Americans are the creators of all things unwholesome. That couldn't be further from the truth. The British were really the founders of the industrial food movement (bad British teeth? bad British diet!). And the American diet is not uniquely bad even today. Many countries in the Middle East, for example, have obesity rates about as high as the US while having higher rates of malnutrition. And that's despite the fact that there are hardly any McDonalds or other American style fast food joints. And very little packaged processed food like potato chips and twinkies. Not everything about the American diet is bad, either. The abundance of animal products -- even when they're raised in industrial feed lots -- is still a net benefit. Actually, one of the biggest myths out there is that the American diet is much worse today than in the past. All the evidence suggests that the American diet was much worse in the 19th century, and possibly into the early 20th as well. Rates of chronic diseases, caused at least in part by malnutrition, were significantly higher in the early 20th century. The average American's diet has gotten worse in the last 40 years or so, in large part because of the application of modern chemistry to the industrialization of food. But even despite that, the average American today is fairly healthy by historical standards. In part, that's because there really isn't any "standard" American diet. There are plenty of people who eat nothing but industrial crap, but there are also tens of millions of Americans who eat very healthy diets by global standards. Americans have been eating more and more vegetables (especialy fresh vegetables) since at least 1970, and sugar consumption has finally started to decline over the last 10 years, which as far as I can tell is the first time in recorded history when a whole country voluntarily cut back on sugar.
until the Standfard American
until the Standfard American Diet becomes non industrial, I believe it is accurate and appropriate.
John, this is great! You have
John, this is great! You have a way with words...Guess that's why you're writing a book. Good job & THANKS.
Yes, yes. Consensus is
Yes, yes. Consensus is slowly moving to exactly that: "Industrial foods are the problem. Let's avoid them!"The controversy, then, is what to include in the category of industrial foods.It is easy to point out sugar, HFCS and seed oils, as they entered our diet recently.But how about our good, old friend grains then?Today's white, industrially produced bread you buy in a store is note healthy. The process of producing modern bread is highly complicated. And this bread is often filled with additives which are almost by definition industrial. So modern bread is industrial food. And we must avoid it.But it is not so easy, in my opinion, to rule out stuff like simple pan cakes made of coarse whole grain and water with a pinch of salt. That process is very simple, and you can do it with primitive grains.Where do we draw the line?Personally, I don't eat grains at all when I can avoid it. But I'm not really convinced that foods containing grains always fall into into the category of industrialized foods. It is more nuanced than that.