A few days ago, I came across an article that suggested in 40 years the whole population will be obese! Well, we know that about 30 percent already is and Richard Posner has suggested that this is individual choice. Well, I would venture to say that the creative class is, by and large, rather fit. They are rich, right. The rich and the creative are not obese. Why, they eat better and exercise more.
So what is the creative class doing to solve this huge social problem? What are the public policy issues? The answer, Victory Bread! Yes, the British response to winning WWII. You would think that the creative class could figure out that the solution to this epidemic would be to throw out the microwave, that menace of modernity, and buy a bread machine: It’s cheaper, it’s healthier, and it’s better for the environment. Is this creative or what?
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:35 am
But the question is: does it taste good?
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Better than Wonder Bread, but if you want flavor go for the Tassajara method.
Can you bake bread in a sun oven? Now, that would be ‘green’.
August 23rd, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Yum, Victory Bread.
Well, why not? Our elected representatives have given us Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast. (As a U.S. citizen, I am so embarassed.)
But why didn’t anyone propose the name ‘Freedom Kissing’?
b.
August 23rd, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Coming from the Motor City – isn’t the structure of our cities and reliance on autos the major factor here?
August 24th, 2008 at 8:15 am
Yep, one more symptom of the automobile culture that caught wind in earnest during the ’50’s. It’s disgusting to think that a fair number of Americans are lazy that the market developed the drive-through concept to appease them. And yet even in 2008, drive by, if you must, any fast-food spot between 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. and you’ll see scores of cars lined-up in the drive through lanes. Pathetic.
August 28th, 2008 at 4:50 am
Ah, I hope Zoltan has his tongue in his cheek here…
Here in Britain the Conservative Party has started a small media campaign saying that “fat people should stop eating so much”, in response to the Government’s programmes to curb obesity via a couple of initiatives.
“Choice” has rapidly been adopted into discourse, even of the left, without understanding that no-one has any “choice”, and “freedom” is impossible. If we are socialised from birth, then are we ever “free” to “choose”? I am limited in my holiday destinations by many things, but also by the limits of the globe – I can’t go on holiday to somewhere that hasn’t been discovered or accessed yet, so how is that choice? That’s a lame example, sure, but use the analogy for buying food in a supermarket – yes I’m limited by the range in the shop, but also by my imagination, fashions, prejudices, cost, even the ease of getting the goods back to my kitchen.
My imagination, my prejudices and fashions are all dictated to some degree by advertising and marketing in all its guises (what characters on my favourite sitcom or film may be wearing/eating; what is rated as “hot” in the newpaper or magazines I read etc etc).
Extend this to diet. Put simply, people from communities (here in England, I don’t know about the USA) have their diets dictated by social norms. The “creative class” eat healthily because that’s the fashion, the social norm, the convention. People from welfare-subsistent backgrounds think that healthy eating is for “toffs” and for “pussies”. They are probably very aware that it’s healthy, but when your life is characterised by aggression, misery, arguments, depression and poverty then you really couldn’t give a brass razoo about living to be 105. If you’re poor and miserable, why prolong your poverty and misery by denying yourself a tasty fry-up, a Big Mac, fish and chips and subsisting on “rabbit food”?
The old “fat people are fat because they choose to be” is true at surface level, but the important want to unpick is “choose”. They may consciously “choose” it, but that choice is driven by the prejudices, fashions and norms of social background (or what we sometimes call “class”).
And is prolonging life by eating healthily actually such a good thing? Here in the UK we have state-provided health care. This means that we all have to pay to prolong the life of old people by putting them in care homes and paying them to have their bottoms wiped. Is this such a good thing? The opposite – to let people die – is of course not a Good Thing, but it’s a question that is perhaps too much of a taboo to ask.
August 28th, 2008 at 4:52 am
Of course “healthy” should read “unhealthy” in “they are probably very aware that it’s healthy”, and read “word” for “want” in “the important want to unpick is “choose”".
September 6th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
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