Eat this now!
Food is more than a way of staying alive, more than an edible commodity. "Food is never just the physical product itself," says Stephanie Hartman, who teaches a course at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., called Food and Media. "It's invested with national meanings, associated with comfort and nostalgia. There are class associations. Food can be elegant or cultured." Or it can carry a reverse snobbery. Where once the elite sampled truffles, today they might seek the best barbecued ribs or the richest macaroni and cheese.
Certainly, the descendants of immigrants may still prepare pasta or pirogi recipes handed down from the old country, but Americans as a whole don't have shared food values. We don't all cook with the same oil, have an attachment to a certain variety of plum, or dine with predictable ceremony. Such culinary eclecticism may make us uniquely vulnerable to fads. "We don't have a culture of eating, a national cuisine, a traditional way of eating that guides us," says Tanner. "So we fall prey to the latest fad or scientific pronouncement. The fact that we're more responsive to medical trends makes us more responsive to marketing." As soon as science tells us that oat bran is good for preventing heart disease, people start buying potato chips sprinkled with oat bran. "This is who we are. We're always looking for the newest way to attack this problem. We're going to try to figure out this health issue by eating," says Balzer.
Why, even when we know better, do we succumb to the lure of rich desserts and nutritionally empty snacks? Why is the look--even stronger, the smell--of the forbidden so compelling? "I've seen evidence that bakeries and supermarkets pipe faked aromas out in the store," says Doug Kysar, a professor at Cornell Law School who teaches consumer law and studies deceptive advertising. "Things like taste and smell and sight can overcome one's awareness. The classic example is the candy gantlet at the supermarket. We have a long-term desire to maintain a healthful life, but the short-term desire can trump the long-term."
Marketers know what works. They tell us we're worth it, that we deserve it. "Magnify that by 45,000 different products, add in the fake bakery smell, the mood music in supermarkets calculated to lower blink rates to a somnolent state, the way the aisles are set up to keep people in the store for a longer time--that's an enormous amount of situational forces to weaken the will," says Kysar.
Food to sell. America is truly a horn of plenty. In the early 1980s, food production came to an average of 3,300 calories a day available to every person. Then farm policy changed, and farmers no longer plowed food under or slaughtered animals to be entitled to subsidies. Today, America produces enough food to allow every man, woman, and child 3,900 calories a day. "That additional food production had to be sold," says Marion Nestle, professor in the department of nutrition at New York University and author of Food Politics. "One of the first things that happened was portion sizes started getting bigger."
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