Michael Pollan’s emphasis on whole food stuck out to me. Particularly important though was his analysis of nutritional advice in the promotion of foods, which break down the whole food and focus on its component parts.
The growing gluten-free fad has increased availability and knowledge around celiac and enabled those with this untreatable autoimmune deficiency to lead a more normal and stress-free lifestyle. The gluten-free label serves as an allergy warning for myself and others with celiac disease, but for the large majority of gluten-free consumers, it is interpreted as nutritional advice.
Not until now have I considered the similarities between claims for products that are “gluten-free” and “low-fat” (for example), but I think the connection is relevant and should be explored. Just as people choose “low-fat” items because of the perceived health benefits, gluten-free often leads people to believe that they are eating healthy too; however, gluten-free is by no means synonymous with nutrition or good health. If anything, foods labeled as gluten-free are likely the exact opposite. Foods that make this health claim are almost always higher in sugar, contain additional (often unknown and unpronounceable) ingredients, and cost more. By removing the gluten, these items are added to compensate–similar to most packaged food and especially those that make nutritional claims.
By claiming items are “gluten-free” most people neglect to consider what is in the food as an alternative to gluten. By focusing on the individual ingredients and nutritional components in the food, and not the food as one whole entity, we neglect to consider what else is in our food. This is a product of fragmented nutritional advice/thinking and the inability to recognize that “the whole of a dietary pattern is evidently greater than the sum of its parts” (Pollan, 178).
Jeanne, I found your discussion on “gluten-free” foods and labeling really interesting, especially in how it connects to some of our comments from the first video conference on Thursday night. In your post, you talked about how people often read the label “gluten-free” and make assumptions about the health of the food. As you said, this same trend can apply to other food labels as well, with people often interpreting labels as nutritional advice without much thought as to what the labels really mean. In discussion, we talked about how “local” means different things at different scales, and therefore, having “local” on a label may not mean what the consumer assumes. “Local” food may not in fact have a smaller carbon footprint than food that is grown further away, nor was it necessarily grown with more sustainable practices.
The same problem with interpretation occurs with the “organic” label. While researching for a paper for my environmental studies policy class, I learned how (in general) policymakers, producers, and consumers tend to have different priorities that they want to be captured in the label “organic,” yet oftentimes these ideas are not consistent with the criteria that end up categorizing the “organic” label in policy. Under the USDA, “organic” is defined as a list of prohibited chemicals and artificial substances, and for the most part does not include criteria for sustainable practices, farm size, or nutritional quality of the food. Thus, consumers should not make assumptions about the nutrition or sustainability of “organic” foods, yet many do simply because they are unaware of what the labels really mean. As you suggested with gluten labeling, it’s important for consumers to start to think more critically about their food and what the labels tend to suggest to the consumer.
Aside from educating ourselves about what labels truly mean and recognizing our own assumptions about the foods we eat, consumers can ask themselves what they want food labels to represent. This may apply less to “gluten-free” labeling, but becomes considerably more complicated in relation to something like “organic” or “local” where the word means something different to different people. Like we started to do yesterday, it’s important that we think about what local means to us, and which components are the most important. For some people this may be the carbon footprint, while for others it may be the connections formed between members of a community. In any case, once we’ve figured out what we want to know about our food, we can start to think about how best to learn this information, and whether the word on the label really captures this aspect. For instance, like Petrini said, food miles or other sustainability indicators could be added to labels to more clearly represent the product and its impacts on climate change. Alternatively, once we determine what’s important to know about our food, we might find that a label isn’t the best way to convey this information at all. As Pollan said, food that’s fresh and produced close to home often lacks a label completely because the personal relationships between producer and consumer and the land are so close that a label would be redundant. And, as you pointed out at the end of your post, any one label on any one food doesn’t tell the story of our whole diet, which just reinforces for me the importance of critical thinking while purchasing foods.
I definitely agree that the current emphasis around a food’s nutritional value can be very problematic when consumers are trying to figure out what makes a food “healthy.” Since the USDA is not allowed to say that we should eat less meat, or that we should eat more vegetables, they have to dissect the parts of that food, so that individual elements are targeted instead of the whole food itself. This brings a scientific angle to food that makes it even more difficult for consumers to understand and maneuver the variety of different products and promotions that they face at the grocery store.
Your point about the additives in gluten free products and other supposedly healthy options relates to Pollan’s idea of imitation foods. Even though your gluten free bread might have some unfamiliar ingredients in it, is it any less “real” than some of the other processed bread products? Is dairy-free yogurt any more of an imitation food than the sugary, colorful selections of Yoplait that are offered as yogurt selections? In today’s highly processed food world, which products are real and which are merely mimicking these food-like qualities?
You make a fascinating connection here, Jeanne, between Pollan’s discussion of processed food and the increasing prominence of gluten-free food. As soon as you point this out, it’s clear that the latter is often just another case of processed food. But the connotations of the two terms lead us not see this at first. Processed food evokes pre-cooked, high-sugar, preservative-heavy selections, while gluten-free suggests an alternative that might be healthier for everyone, whether they have an allergic reaction to gluten or not. Pollan’s more recent book, In Defense of Food, coins the term “nutritionism” for food that contains additives intended to make it healthier–like the vitamins added to sugary children’s cereals.
Going back to your original connection, though, one conclusion would be to focus less on foods that are PROCESSED in order to make them gluten-free and more on whole foods that are NATURALLY gluten-free, and that can be part of a diet built around such whole foods. You’ve begun to develop a subtle and significant distinction here!