JUNE 2004 IN
RICK ASTER’S WORLD
What is making Americans so fat? I apologize for being so blunt in asking this question, but if there ever was an occasion to use the word “fat,” this is surely it. No nation in history has collectively been so conspicuously overweight, and it’s a pattern that will have to change soon if we don’t want “American” to become a synonym for “more than a little overweight.”
Visitors to the United States in recent years, astonished by both the large portion sizes of food served in restaurants and the large body sizes of contemporary Americans, tend to conclude that the former is the cause of the latter. American popular culture attributes overweight to deficiencies of character that cause people to overeat. Scientists wonder if it isn’t some newfangled food ingredient that is the culprit — perhaps high fructose corn syrup, which has a very high epidemiological correlation to obesity. I would like to suggest that at least part of what makes America so different in the weight department is the false advertising of food, especially on television, which leads people to think that what they’re eating is something other than what it actually is.
If I had to pick one food item that is making Americans fat, it would be fast-food French fries. Of course, it’s not just this one item, but French fries are a bigger part of what Americans eat than most people realize. They provide the lion’s share of fast food calories, more than all the sandwiches and milkshakes combined. Americans annually eat a mountain of French fries, amounting to at least a trillion calories. If we cut our French fry consumption in half and changed nothing else, that would be enough to reverse the American weight-gain trend.
So what are French fries? They are commonly understood to be fried potato sticks, but in nutritional terms, that is hardly an apt description. Nutritionally, French fries contain much more fat than potato. And what kind of fat is it?
To make a fast-food French fry, you start by cutting a potato into narrow strips, or sticks. These sticks are then soaked in partially hydrogenated soybean oil, a synthetic oil made by chemically altering soybean oil to make it heavier. Partially hydrogenated soybean oil contains trans fats, a little-understood form of fat that is not found in plants and does not occur naturally in animals. Experts say trans fats cause cell wall damage and contribute more than any other kind of fat to heart disease. Salt may be added at this point to make the potato sticks hold even more of this synthetic oil than they would by themselves. Lard is sometimes added to the oil mix for flavor or to cut costs. Lard is minimally processed animal fat that, while not as unhealthy as partially hydrogenated soybean oil, is still worlds away from anything you would eat as a food. Chemical preservatives such as butylated hydroxytoluene are commonly added to protect the flavor of the product in case it happens to be stored for much longer than planned.
After the French fries are made as greasy as possible, they are frozen and packaged, and delivered in this frozen form from the factory to the restaurant. There, still frozen, they are plopped in hot, almost boiling fat, which might be more partially hydrogenated soybean oil, or perhaps a blend of natural cooking oils and beef fat. Either way, this process adds more fat to the French fries as the heat converts more of the fats into trans fats. Finally, salt is added, and the synthetic fat sticks are ready to eat — assuming you’re still hungry at this point.
People know French fries aren’t health food, but the use of a vegetable as a starting point for the recipe leads many people to think French fries are a vegetable. They are not. Don’t take my word for it. Compare the nutritional content of your favorite French fries to the nutritional information for a potato. Look at the vitamins, minerals, and the source of calories. Not very similar, is it? Now compare the French fries to the nutritional information for ordinary margarine, which is also made mostly from partially hydrogenated soybean oil. You’ll find that the French fries have more of a nutritional resemblance to margarine than they do to potatoes.
French fries, along with soft drinks, are the most profitable items in fast food, so they are heavily promoted. The phrase, “Do you want fries with that?” was invented years ago to persuade you to think of French fries as an afterthought, and perhaps to keep you from noticing that they may provide more than half of the calories of your fast-food meal. When French fries are advertised, you can easily get the impression that they are potato sticks rather than synthetic grease sticks. If you think of French fries as a vegetable when you eat them, you could easily imagine that you are eating an ordinary amount of food. But the largest serving of French fries on a typical fast food menu provides more food energy, more calories, than many people would want to eat in an entire day. If you eat French fries regularly, it is hardly surprising if you eat more food than you realize and end up getting fat. Indeed, the surprise would be if you didn’t get fat.
You can see this effect just by looking at the people waiting in line at a fast food restaurant. In all likelihood, even at a glance most of the people will be noticeably overweight.
When I point this out to people, they are usually noticing it for the first time. Fast food . . . fat people . . . they see it and make the connection in their minds. Why didn’t they notice it before? I believe there are two reasons.
First, as I mentioned, there is the popular idea that overweight is caused by overeating, which in turn is caused by a character flaw. Let me address this idea. I concede that a character flaw, however you define that, is a possible cause of overweight, but is this a credible explanation for a change in an entire nation? Has the character of Americans declined so dramatically in the last 30 years? My experience is that Americans are generally nicer and more responsible than they were 30 years ago, so the idea of a massive national decline in character doesn’t fit. Also, when I look at my friends, I rarely see any of them eating recklessly. I see no obvious differences in the way people eat that would account for the obvious differences in weight — and scientific studies bear this out. There is so little evidence for the character-flaw theory that I suspect it may be the convenient invention of powerful corporations wanting to dodge their own culpability.
Second, there are the television commercials that show fast food restaurants. These commercials show an unlikely mix of customers. They are far more healthy, lively, and attractive than the restaurants’ real-life customers. Well, let’s face it, the people you see on television aren’t fast-food customers; they are professional models and actors.
Personally, I have yet to meet a professional model or actor who eats fast food regularly. They seem to go to a great deal of trouble to create the healthy, lively appearance that makes them employable as models and actors. Giving up fast food is one of the easier things they do.
But television is so compelling that if I tell you to imagine the people at a fast food restaurant, you might imagine the professional models and actors you saw on television rather than the real-life customers you saw at real-life fast food places. And if this is the picture you have in your mind, then it may make you believe that there is no conflict between eating fast food and being a healthy, lively person.
That, of course, is the purpose of the television commercials. They want you to think that you can eat fast food and not get fat. But this particular aspect of the commercials is an outright fraud. Most people who regularly eat fast food do get fat and somewhat sluggish — not all, to be sure, but most.
If weight loss plans have to show the disclaimer “Results not typical” when they show their before-and-after photos, why shouldn’t restaurants be required to show similar disclaimers in their television commercials? When they show a restaurant populated by skinny models, the text at the bottom of the screen could say, “Most of our actual customers are fat.”
Such a disclaimer isn’t currently required, but there is nothing to stop you from thinking it every time you see a commercial for French fries, fast food, or anything fattening shown together with thin or normal-weight professional models and actors. You could laugh out loud as you point out the incongruity of these commercials to your friends and family members. Or if you prefer a more subtle approach, you can easily condition yourself so that anytime you hear the jingle, “I’m lovin’ it,” you mentally add the tag line, “Most of our actual customers are fat.” Do the same thing with any commercial message that represents the temptation of fast food or junk food to you. Just adding a few of your own thoughts to the food-related television commercials you see can make those products a lot less attractive. Then, if you eat less commercial food and lose weight, it will demonstrate the power of your thoughts. In this sense, maybe you really could “think yourself thin.”
Next month: It’s All About You
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