Steiner argues that even "free range" chickens may lead miserable lives, and that the only truly moral response to widespread cruelty to animals is "to forswear the consumption of animal products of all kinds." But, he writes,

You just haven't lived until you've tried to function as a strict vegan in a meat-crazed society. [...] To be a really strict vegan is to strive to avoid all animal products, and this includes materials like leather, silk and wool, as well as a panoply of cosmetics and medications. The more you dig, the more you learn about products you would never stop to think might contain or involve animal products in their production - like wine and beer (isinglass, a kind of gelatin derived from fish bladders, is often used to "fine," or purify, these beverages), refined sugar (bone char is sometimes used to bleach it) or Band-Aids (animal products in the adhesive). Just last week I was told that those little comfort strips on most razor blades contain animal fat.

In his expression of how difficult it is to lead a truly ethical life, he has an unlikely companion: designer Todd Lynn, who has used fur in his collections. Lynn says,

I don't have a problem with people following their principles, but what bugs me is when people pick and choose. People are really misinformed about the products they wear. Nobody argues with the pesticides used on cotton plants that will kill wildlife. To think that silk or cotton doesn't do damage to the environment is a lie.

The difference between the two men is that Steiner views the sheer difficulty of a vegan lifestyle as a problem with society, while Lynn seems to be excusing fur on the grounds that other products are just as bad. But both underscore the fact that if you want to be a truly ethical consumer, it's extremely difficult to live in the modern world. It's an argument I used to hear all the time when I was a strict vegetarian — that soy cultivation was just as toxic to the environment as livestock, and that if I really wanted to be consistent I would have to eat only unprocessed, unpackaged, organically grown foods. Of course, this argument conflates environmental degradation with morality — if what you really care about is animal welfare, then it doesn't really matter if soy farms use a lot of petroleum. On the other hand, it's absolutely true that if you want your eating and buying habits to be both morally correct and healthy for the planet, your life will be very, very hard.

There are a number of possible solutions to this problem. One is to throw up your hands and not worry about ethics, which The Observer's Elizabeth Day, who interviewed Lynn, says more people are now doing with respect to fur. She points out that former PETA supporter Naomi Campbell now stars in an ad campaign for a furrier. And she quotes a spokesman for a fur trading group who says,

Fur has never been more popular. From 1998 to 2008 there has been year-on-year growth in global sales for fur. People now are more comfortable showing their love of fur.

Given the economic climate, though, fur-love may not be the biggest obstacle to ethical consumption. Rather, many of us may be too cash-strapped and stressed out to consider the larger implications of what we're buying, eating, and wearing. Steiner's solution to the difficulty of living morally — sucking it up, potentially losing friends, and making your life a rebuke to a system that thoughtlessly exploits animals and the earth — is the most ideologically consistent one. But it's also the most difficult one to sell to people who already have a lot of problems. We may need voices like Steiner's to remind us of the problems of consumption, but when it comes to advice for living, we might require a softer touch.

The question of whether radicalism or moderation is better at effecting social change is an age-old one. But in the case of our personal habits, swift, radical change on a large scale may be an unachievable goal. Steiner seems to disdain a dining companion who says, "I'm really a vegetarian - I don't eat red meat at home." This position can be annoying for vegetarians, as it leads them to be served chicken at dinner parties or pressured to eat "just a little" meat. At the same time, people who give up red meat do reduce their carbon footprints, as do people who avoid all meat one or two days a week. For those who believe meat is murder, giving it up sometimes probably doesn't seem like much of a compromise. But people who do so have given some thought to their consumption practices, and may be open to more. They may be the early adopters of a system which, while not perfect, cares more about animal welfare and environmental conservation than the old one that put animal fat in razors. Strict vegans might do well to treat these occasional vegetarians not as enemies, but as allies.

Animal, Vegetable, Miserable [NYT]
Would You Rather Go Naked? Not Any Longer [Observer]

Over at CNN, Ruben Navarrette Jr. says to "Take food racism with a grain of salt" :

This week, I was on a talk radio show when the host — a white male conservative (what are the odds?) — asked me if Americans are so sensitive that we now have to worry about "food racism." [...]

ESPN broadcaster Bob Griese has been suspended for one week for a stereotypical crack he made about NASCAR driver Juan Pablo Montoya. During a recent ESPN broadcast, a graphic appeared listing the top drivers in a NASCAR competition. When fellow analyst Chris Spielman asked where was Montoya, Griese replied he was "out having a taco."

Griese has twice apologized on air for the remark, which — according to ESPN — he now realizes was "inappropriate." Montoya, who is Colombian, has taken the high road. Asked about the comment, the driver said: "Somebody mentioned it to me. I don't really care to tell you the truth. Yeah, I don't. I could say that I spent the last three hours eating tacos, but I was actually driving a car."

We're not going to debate whether or not the remark is racist.

We're not going to talk about the other issues raised in the article, particularly around the presidential primary.

We're not going to talk about the issues inherent in ranking acts of racism.

We'll just say this: it is always fascinating to see what the media deems an interesting conversation about race.

Take Talk Of Food Racism With A Grain Of Salt [CNN]

In a PsychCentral article, Margarita Tartakovsky quotes eating expert Ellyn Satter's definition of normal eating:

Normal eating is going to the table hungry and eating until you are satisfied. It is being able to choose food you like and eat it and truly get enough of it-not just stop eating because you think you should. Normal eating is being able to give some thought to your food selection so you get nutritious food, but not being so wary and restrictive that you miss out on enjoyable food. Normal eating is giving yourself permission to eat sometimes because you are happy, sad or bored, or just because it feels good. Normal eating is mostly three meals a day, or four or five, or it can be choosing to munch along the way. It is leaving some cookies on the plate because you know you can have some again tomorrow, or it is eating more now because they taste so wonderful. Normal eating is overeating at times, feeling stuffed and uncomfortable. And it can be undereating at times and wishing you had more. Normal eating is trusting your body to make up for your mistakes in eating. Normal eating takes up some of your time and attention, but keeps its place as only one important area of your life.

Some of these things — eating until you are satisfied, for instance, seem so basic that it's sad we need permission for them. Others almost sound like sacrilege: it's really normal to eat because you are "happy, sad or bored"? Isn't that "emotional eating," something women do that sabotages them and makes them fat? Satter's definition acknowledges something few diet articles ever will — that having a piece of cake because you want it, or even because you're in a bad mood, isn't a stupid mistake only someone with no willpower would make. It's normal.

Contrast that with this advice Tartakovsky quotes from Fitness Magazine:

Make a plan and stick to it. Consuming the same simple, locally grown or organic foods week to week will help prevent you from resorting to last-minute fast-food (and unhealthy) meals. Avoid using treats, such as ice cream or other sweets, as a reward for a hard day.

Nutrition researcher David Katz, MD, won't overexcite his taste buds while trying to lose weight. ‘The more variety of foods and flavors you introduce, the more appetite is stimulated,' Dr. Katz explains. ‘If your diet resembles an all-you-can-eat buffet, you're going to eat a lot.' Dr. Katz also says that restricting meal options will help eliminate temptation. Redundancy is the safest bet.

Tips like this one — which basically boils down to "bore yourself thin" — may seem normal because magazines tout them so much. But eating to avoid exciting your taste buds is actually counterintuitive and difficult. Maybe one reason so many diets fail is because they ask people to eat in ways that are, frankly, pretty weird.

Of course, Satter's prescription for normal eating might not make people thin. But it probably wouldn't make them gain a million pounds either. The idea that you'll be morbidly obese if you let yourself eat until you're full, and don't beat yourself up about overeating occasionally, is based on an invalid principle: that fat people eat way too much of all the wrong things, while thin people carefully restrict all their food. Overweight people who don't live on a diet of donuts already know this. So why is America, which is now 66 percent overweight or obese (at least according to the CDC) still full of fat hatred?

In an article titled "America's War on the Overweight," Newsweek's Kate Dailey and Abby Ellin blame, in part, something called "the fundamental attribution error, a basic belief that whatever problems befall us personally are the result of difficult circumstances, while the same problems in other people are the result of their bad choices." They also quote Marlene Schwartz, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, who says, "A lot of people struggle themselves with their weight, and the same people that tend to get very angry at themselves for not being able to manage their weight are more likely to be biased against the obese." Interestingly, her research shows that young women, who may experience the most weight pressure, have the most negative thoughts about fat people.

But there's yet another explanation for America's rage against the overweight. According to psychologist Ryan Martin, "People actually enjoy feeling angry. It makes them feel powerful, it makes them feel greater control, and they appreciate it for that reason." Dailey and Ellin mention snarky Internet comments, one of the most popular mediums of fat hatred — and also, perhaps, one of the easiest ways to gain a feeling of control with no consequences. When Tara Parker-Pope of the Times Well blog asked her readers what they thought normal eating was, they were actually pretty well behaved. But one commented,

As long as "registered dieticians" and registered politicians subscribe to the "I'm OK; you're OK" school of health, our population will get fatter and fatter. Personal responsibility? It's so passe.

And another added,

Clearly the "norm" in America is to overeat to the point of degrading health by consuming excessive amounts of salt, fat and sugar and insufficient amounts of complex carbohydrates. The article seems to be much more a discussion of what "feelings" about eating are desireable rather than what would lead us to eat in a manner that is desireable from a health standpoint.

Discussions of food tend to make emotions run high, here as everywhere. But we'll risk it — do you agree with Satter's definition? What does normal eating mean to you?

What Is ‘Normal' Eating? [NYT]
America's War On The Overweight [Newsweek]
What Is Normal Eating? [PsychCentral]

According to the Daily Mail, women eat less with a man present than they would with a woman. When eating in a group, women ate less the more men there were. "But," writes an unnamed Daily Mail reporter, "when in all-female groups women pigged out and consumed more calories - reinforcing the image of an indulgent girls' night in with ice cream and chocolate."

In a slightly more sober and detailed (than the Daily Mail? No!) writeup for WebMD, Kathleen Doheny quotes study author Meredith Young:

"Women in groups of women tended to increase the caloric value of the food they choose," she says, compared to eating alone or with men. "The bigger the group of women, the more they eat," she says. For instance, women who ate in a group of three each ate about 650 calories, while those who ate in a group of four averaged about 800 each.

Young hypothesizes that women may eat less in front of a man "to look more feminine and in control." Doheny writes,

women want to look more attractive, especially if a potential date or mate is sitting at the table. Other research, Young says, has found that women who eat less are viewed as more attractive and that thin women are seen as more attractive.

It's not really a surprise that women still buy into the stereotype that eating a lot in front of the man is unfeminine (although it is possible that some women eat less with men out of sheer nervousness). But the Daily Mail's "indulgent girls' night" and Doheny's headline — "Ladies' Night Out a Diet Wrecker" — are a bit simplistic. Is it necessarily worse to eat more when you're with your girlfriends? Sure, there's the old trope of women goading each other into ordering dessert (and the equally popular trope of looking down on each other for eating it), but not every meal shared with women is an eating-disordered binge-fest. Some variance in how much we eat at each meal is normal, and while Young's advice — "I suggest it's just something to be aware of" — is pretty measured, it seems unnecessary and unfun to raise your diet-guard every time you go out with your friends.

Young found that men didn't change their intake no matter who their eating partners were. The Daily Mail says, "men simply eat what they want no matter who they are with." What a novel idea.

Want To Lose Weight? Women Eat Less When They Dine In The Company Of Men [Daily Mail]
Ladies' Night Out A Diet Wrecker [WebMD]

Earlier: Friends, No Friends Both Lead To Obesity

In the first study, kids were paired with either a friend or a stranger and told to eat as much as they wanted. Both overweight and "normal" weight kids ate more with a friend, but overweight kids ate more if their partners were overweight, whether they knew them or not. ScienceDaily says the study "demonstrates that friends may act as 'permission givers' on children's food intake." And study author Sarah Salvy says,

Overweight children are more likely to find food more reinforcing than non-overweight youth. Being in the company of overweight peers may give them the permission to eat more or may decrease their inhibitions, increasing what are seen as the norms of appropriate eating, or how much one should eat.

The study doesn't appear to address whether overweight children actually "find food more reinforcing," but it does manage to moralize eating by talking about it in terms of "permission." It's not odd that kids felt more comfortable eating with a friend than with a stranger, but it's interesting that coverage of the study implies that the higher intake is the disordered one. Isn't it possible that kids consciously or unconsciously eat less than they normally would when they're with a stranger, because they're uncomfortable? And isn't it also possible that overweight kids eat less with a skinnier partner because they're embarrassed about being heavier? As someone who loses my appetite when I'm stressed, I've relied on friends to cook with me and encourage me to eat during difficult times, and I have to object to the notion that eating more at a shared meal is a bad thing.

The second study examined groups of monkeys, and found that the ones who were lower in the social hierarchy — who "are often the target of aggression and aren't included in group grooming sessions as often as dominant monkeys" — gained more visceral fat, or fat in the abdominal cavity. This type of fat contributes to atherosclerosis and heart disease. In women and female monkeys, hormones can protect against these conditions, but researchers also found that monkeys with more visceral fat had lower levels of protective hormones. Study author Carol A. Shively wisely points out that "obesity is directly related to lower socioeconomic status in Western societies, as is heart disease. So, the people who have fewer resources to buffer themselves from the stresses of life are more likely to experience such health problems."

Not only do people of lower socioeconomic status have fewer material resources to cope with stress, they may also have more "social stress" as a result of being lower in the economic hierarchy. And perhaps there's a feedback loop here, in which overweight people are socially stigmatized, causing them to build up more visceral fat and increase their risk of heart disease. Visceral fat is much more dangerous than fat in other areas of the body, and the stress of being overweight in a sizeist society might cause people who don't have a lot of this type of fat (not all overweight people do; not all skinny people don't) to develop it.

So might some of the vaunted health risks of obesity actually be the result of stigma? It's possible. It would be interesting to see how overweight people fare health-wise in societies that don't look down on them (although some of these societies, like Mauritania, have their own problems). Failing that, scientists could take a more nuanced look at childhood social influences, rather than telling us that eating with friends makes kids fat.

Friendship Influences Eating Behavior, Particularly When Friends Are Overweight [ScienceDaily]
Overweight Friends Alter Eating Patterns, Study Shows [Softpedia]
New Research Links Social Stress To Harmful Fat Deposits, Heart Disease [EurekAlert]

To Michael Pollan, the nascence of Julie and Julia's paeon to celluloid gastronomy prompts a New York Times Magazine meditation on why the birth of American cuisine should have coincided with the death of the American diet. To be sure, he concludes, there's a corollation between cooking-as-specttaor sport and that Julia Child ushered in and, you know, actual cooking. But for all the disspiriting conclusions Pollan can't help drawing about our culture and our planet, there are some serious bright spots amidst the rubble. And a major one is Child-as-empowerer.

Says he,

Julie Powell operates in a world that Julia Child helped to create, one where food is taken seriously, where chefs have been welcomed into the repertory company of American celebrity and where cooking has become a broadly appealing mise-en-scène in which success stories can plausibly be set and played out. How amazing is it that we live today in a culture that has not only something called the Food Network but now a hit show on that network called "The Next Food Network Star," which thousands of 20- and 30-somethings compete eagerly to become? It would seem we have come a long way from Swanson TV dinners.

And Julia Child, he adds, had a lot to do with this. More than just the popularizer of soigne French cuisine, Child, ironically, managed to free women from kitchen drudgery with her laborious, multi-pan recipes.

Even as The Feminist Mystique was lambasting housework as drudgery - enter Friedan - Julia Child was presenting cooking as pleasurable, luxurious, spiritually sustaining. In popularizing French cuisine (which has so aften been the purview, famously, of the male chef) she was making the love of food a less-gendered and more sybaritic subject, a sign of sophistication rather than imprisonment. Indeed,

Julia never referred to her viewers as "housewives" - a word she detested - and never condescended to them. She tried to show the sort of women who read "The Feminine Mystique" that, far from oppressing them, the work of cooking approached in the proper spirit offered a kind of fulfillment and deserved an intelligent woman's attention.

On a personal level, like Friedan, Child was a housewife who'd found herself and made a career. Maybe a career that centered on a traditionally feminine sphere, but never one that depended upon an exaggerated femininity or sense of debasement. Child was, famously, "alone in the kitchen" - not preparing dinner for a husband or children, but for pleasure and accomplishment.

To suggest that Child destigmatized cooking for women, or removed the burden of context, would be absurd - the reactions to Amanda Hesser's recent piece on Michelle Obama's lack of interest in cooking is testament to this. And it also can't be denied, as Pollan points out, that obviously both parents entering the workforce had an adverse effect on the nation's eating habits, since we had never learned to balance domestic and professional duties, seeing them as stubbornly either-or. But, as Judith Jones points out in her wonderful The Tenth Muse, Child made good food democratic, removed some of the barriers that separated "fine cooking" from "cooking" and in so doing added an element of discovery and pleasure to an everyday ritual. It's not an unmixed legacy; many would surely claim that Child's focus on French cuisine served to maintain the underlying classicism of fine cooking that persists to this day, making good food's proliferation more fraught and tricky. But this was not her intention. And no one can deny that Julia's influence directly impacted on the American cuisine movement, and later, local, slow, and organic food in this country - all of which have been heavily influenced and run by progressive women.

And, as Pollan says, it's Child who allowed Powell to recapture an identity and a career, through food - a career that plays with traditional roles while confident in its autonomy. And be played by Amy Adams. And if that's not progress of a certain measure, well, I don't speak fluent American dream.

Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch [NYT Magazine]

Related: Should Michelle Obama Get Back In The Kitchen?

According to a piece in the L.A. Times, "though allergies or intolerances (and recognition of them) do appear to be on the rise, there are far more people who erroneously think they have problems with specific foods." In fact, says one researcher, "Only about 25% of people who think they have a food allergy will actually have one." And the twice-as-high rates of peanut allergies and four hundred percent increase in those who suffer from celiac disease has got to have more to do than just increased awareness and more frequent testing.

While, obviously, some do suffer from severe allergies - which need to be treated vigilantly - it's also true that a lot of kids outgrow early intolerances as their systems mature - or would, if they were allowed to try the offending article. Then too, a lot of milder "intolerances" have apparently been misdiagnosed as "allergies," leading people to avoid the foods altogether. For instance, you can have a bad reaction to gluten - it's hard for us to digest, period - and not technically suffer from the more severe "Celiac disease" (actually an autoimmune disorder.) A lot of the perceived allergies are the result of inaccurate testing. Says the article,

Common food allergy tests aren't very accurate.The only sure-fire way to test for food allergies is with food challenges, in which patients consume controlled and increasing doses of a suspected food under careful supervision. Yet doctors, especially primary care doctors who aren't allergy specialists, are far more likely to do blood tests, which are much less accurate and more difficult to interpret. Experts have seen a proliferation of blood testing by primary doctors, a trend that leads to misdiagnoses of food allergies.

Part of the problem is that a highly restrictive diet can lead to malnutrition and bone density issues. And proliferation of "allergies" trivializes those who have real ones. As anyone who suffers from a serious allergy can tell you, the vigilance and restrictions aren't something they'd wish on anyone. And yet, a lot of people do seem to wish for it - or at least some of what goes along with it. This may sound harsh, but for every person I know who lives with and manages a serious medical dietary restriction, I know someone who's always (self) diagnosed with a new allergy and intolerance (suspiciously often one that's in the news), and tends to talk about it a lot more than the former group. It's obvious that food restrictions, for the natural hypochondriac, can become a control issue and a way to garner attention. Of course, it's a slippery slope, because the power of suggestion - and placebo - are powerful. And for a parent, the suggestion of allowing harm to come to a child through carelessness must be devastating. In an often out-of-control world, it's often tempting to control those things we can - and too often, as we know, that's food. But the thing is this: while a lot of people will probably welcome new, more accurate testing and the accompanying eating freedom with cries of joy, there are also a few, I'm guessing, who won't want to hear it. And those are the ones I'll meet up with after dinner.

Think You Have Food Allergies? Think Again [LA Times]

From an early age, Frank Bruni says, he was an over-eater. Although he was naturally big-boned and had legendarily hearty appetite from early childhood, his relationship to food was always more about excess than satisfaction, and he routinely continued to eat after he was full. What is distressing about his account is that he was clearly someone who naturally loved and appreciated the tastes and experiences of food, but this natural love was tainted by his feelings about his weight and the connection that developed in his mind. The fact that he and his mom started going on diets as a child can't have helped. It's clear that Bruni and his family accepted being a "fat kid" as a bad thing, to be cured - and while clearly he was developing an unhealthy relationship to eating, the two things were conflated in a depressing and all-too-common way. (Indeed, this still seems to be the author's POV.)

The extra weight was the confirmation: once a fat kid, always a fat kid, never moving through the world in the carefree fashion of people unaccustomed to worrying about their weight, never as inconspicuous. It was the stubborn thing I seemed least able to control, and I often felt that all my shortcomings flowed from it - were somehow wrapped into and perpetuated by it. If only I could fit into pants with a waist size of 31 or 32 instead of my 33s and 34s, I could walk briskly and buoyantly into a crowded school party instead of hovering tentatively at the door, unable to decide whom to approach and questioning whether my approach would be welcome.

As a young man, Bruni becomes bulimic. While he thought of his habitual vomiting as mere weight management rather than an ED, his description tells a different story.

To be a successful bulimic, you need to have a firm handle on the bathrooms in your life: their proximity to where you're eating; the amount of privacy they offer; whether - if they're public bathrooms with more than one stall - you can hear the door swing open and the footfall of a visitor with enough advance notice to stop what you're doing and keep from being found out...You need to be conscious of time. There's no such thing as bulimia on the fly; a span of at least 10 minutes in the bathroom is optimal, because you may need 5 of them to linger at the sink, splash cold water on your face and let the redness in it die down. You should always carry a toothbrush and toothpaste, integral to eliminating telltale signs of your transgression and to rejoining polite society without any offense to it. Bulimia is a logistical and tactical challenge as much as anything else. It demands planning.

He stops, finally, when his friends hold an intervention of sorts. He says, "I succeeded, I think, because so many other extreme or warped weight-management regimens - including more Atkins and more fasting - took the place of bulimia as I struggled for decades to figure out how to answer my appetite without being undone by it and as I traced an unlikely route to the most implausible of destinations: professional eating."

These are accounts we normally hear coming from women, and it's always good to be reminded that EDs target men and boys, too - and a part of me wonders if a man who wasn't openly gay would feel as comfortable, even today, talking frankly about a disease which is still perniciously linked in the public mind only with young women. I'm also glad to read about someone who not only managed to recover, but seemingly managed to recover a love of food - enough that he can take pleasure in it in his career. (So one hopes, anyway - and this is certainly the impression anyone reading his food writing has always received - and I look forward to reading this memoir in full.) What is distressing, though, is that at no point does the adult Bruni seem to find much acceptance for his heavier self - just relief that the pain and loss of control is over. On the one hand, in his case, there seems to have been a clear relationship between his chronic overeating and his weight - and his resultant self-loathing. But even so, and perhaps this is unfair to ask in a personal memoir, I wish he were able to distinguish between the two - if only for the sake of changing things a little for a new generation of young boys, and girls, who feel that same self-loathing.

I Was A Baby Bulimic [NY Times]

Writer Mandy Katz's analysis of the zeitgeist is a little silly (is the show More to Love really an example of Fat Acceptance? Is Oprah, with her public confessions of "embarrassment" about her weight, really a paragon of Health At Every Size?), but the basic message of her article is worth repeating. "A loose alliance of therapists, scientists and others," she writes, believe,

that all people, "even" fat people, can eat whatever they want and, in the process, improve their physical and mental health and stabilize their weight. The aim is to behave as if you have reached your "goal weight" and to act on ambitions postponed while trying to become thin, everything from buying new clothes to changing careers. Regular exercise should be for fun, not for slimming.

It's not a new concept, as Katz acknowledges, but it's still a controversial one. Katz quotes Walter Willett, chair of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health, who says,

Virtually everyone who is overweight would be better off at a lower weight. There's been this misconception, fostered by the weight-is-beautiful groups, that weight doesn't matter. But the data are clear.

Leaving aside his dismissive tone, Willett doesn't mention how "everyone who is overweight" is supposed to get to "a lower weight" and stay there, probably because there's no reliable answer. Given the fact that trying to change your weight often leads to yo-yo dieting (Kathryn Griffith, interviewed in the article, has been through Weight Watchers 27 times), it's no wonder a variety of people have decided to just eat what they want already — that is, to choose "intuitive eating." A companion article, also by Katz, defines intuitive eating thus:

Intuitive eating involves returning to basic drives, dispensing with the notion of "good" or "bad" foods and rules about when to eat. Absent a fear of deprivation, the philosophy holds, one's hunger and taste cues - rather than cognitive rules - provide the most trustworthy guide toward balanced, healthy eating.

Some claim (this is Corinna Tomrley's critique of Susie Orbach) that this kind of eating will make you thin. But Kate Harding of Shapely Prose tells Katz that when she quit dieting,

I thought, ‘O.K., maybe I could be a size 10, and it won't be so bad.' As it turned out, I ended up as roughly an 18, which was exactly where I started.

Really quitting dieting may mean not just letting that Weight Watchers subscription lapse, but also giving up thinness as a goal. It's still incredibly difficult, because people like Willett (and every women's magazine ever) continue to insist that it must be everyone's goal. But psychologist and eating disorder specialist Deb Burgard says, "the pursuit of thinness as a dream is a place holder. It gets in the way of asking, ‘What is it I am dreaming of?' "

This may be true not just for individual dieters, but for our diet-obsessed society in general. Also in the Times, Roger Cohen writes about the recent study that shows that calorie-restricted monkeys live longer. The child of a primate expert, he examines a now-famous photo of two monkeys, Owen and Canto — and thinks Owen, the well-fed one, is probably happier. He writes,

It's the difference between the guy who got the marbleized rib-eye and the guy who got the oh-so-lean filet. Or between the guy who got a Château Grand Pontet St. Emilion with his brie and the guy who got water. As Edgar notes in King Lear, "Ripeness is all." You don't get to ripeness by eating apple peel for breakfast.

"When life extension supplants life quality as a goal," he continues, "you get the desolation of Canto the monkey." Long life and even health have become goals in themselves, and we seemed forgotten that a long healthy life is for something — enjoyment. When we take health, longevity, or thinness for that matter, as ends rather than means, we get our priorities screwed up. We think it's acceptable to tell people to starve themselves so that they can fit Willett's definition of what's healthy — or Vogue's definition of what's attractive. We'd be better off remembering that health is about being able to do things with your life — including eat — and that thinness is about, well what is in thinness about exactly? If you look at a women's magazine, it's about health, yes, but also attractiveness, happiness, and personal empowerment — all of which can be achieved at any size.

Tossing Out The Diet And Embracing The Fat [NYT]
To Eat Well, Be Instinctive [NYT]
The Meaning Of Life [NYT]

As has been reported before, agribusiness groups are mad that Michelle's garden is organic. The Mid America CropLife Association, which represents agriculture and pesticide companies, says, "fresh foods grown conventionally are wholesome and flavorful yet more economical." Bob Young of the American Farm Bureau Federation concurs. To Michelle, he says, "understand that you're making lifestyle choices here about how you want your food produced. Fine. But don't denigrate the other approaches to food production." His fellow Farm Bureau employee Mary Kay Thatcher adds, "If Michelle Obama was having dinner with me, I'd say the organic garden is a great thing, but use it for education about organic vs. conventional agriculture, the pros and the cons." So basically, Michelle should snap on her rubber gloves and spray her tomatoes with some hexythiazox or lambdacyhalothrin, in the interests of diversity. Or better yet, just get in a little plane and crop-dust the hell out of that shit.

Some people are even taking issue with Michelle's decision to emphasize local food. Xavier Equihua of the Chilean Exporters Association and the Chilean Avocado Committee says local food is "a charming idea and everything, but it's not practical," because local food is seasonal. He asks, "what happens if you want some grapes during the month of December? What are you going to do? Not eat grapes?" Uh, yeah? I like grapes as much as the next person, but they are not essential for survival, and while some transportation of food will always be necessary, it would do us a lot of good if we could return to a more seasonal way of eating. And really, how would Michelle, go about growing a garden that was not local? Outsource it to India? Water her avocado plants in Chile via Skype?

Of course everything Michelle Obama does is going to be scrutinized, and she deserves the opportunity to just plant a fucking garden if she feels like it. On the other hand, as Sadie said in her post on Michelle's stated aversion to cooking, "every word, from someone so admired and imitated, is an opportunity." Just as Michelle getting in the kitchen (and, as Sadie also says, Barack getting in there with her) might show America that cooking, even for busy people, is possible, Michelle's garden could show us that local, organic food is a worthy goal.

Beam points out that the White House's organic garden could stimulate demand for organic food. That might help bring prices down, so that people much poorer than the Obamas could actually afford an organic tomato. Given the dangers of many pesticides (the EPA says, "by their very nature, most pesticides create some risk of harm"), this would be a very good thing. Young and Thatcher make "different approaches to food production" sound like a wonderful rainbow of happy fruits and vegetables — some deliciously augmented with diazinon. But in reality, some "approaches" are healthier — for humans and the environment — than others, and the Obamas would do well to make these approaches more accessible to everyone.

Organic Panic [Slate]

Earlier: Should Michelle Obama Get Back In The Kitchen?

Although foodies everywhere have applauded the First Lady's commitment to healthy eating in the form of a widely-publicized White House organic garden, food writer Amanda Hesser takes issue with Michelle's stated disinterest in that food's preparation.

When The Washington Post asked Mrs. Obama for her favorite recipe, she replied, "You know, cooking isn't one of my huge things." And last month, when a boy who was visiting the White House asked her if she liked to cook, she replied: "I don't miss cooking. I'm just fine with other people cooking." Though delivered lightheartedly, and by someone with a very busy schedule, the message was unmistakable: everyday cooking is a chore...Both times Mrs. Obama missed a great opportunity to get people talking about a crucial yet neglected aspect of the food discussion: cooking. Because terrific local ingredients aren't much use if people are cooking less and less; cooking is to gardening what parenting is to childbirth.

Now, the objections to this statement are obvious: Hesser (herself a busy working mom) acknowledges that the First Lady is a busy woman with a lot of important things on her plate, and it would be disingenuous to pretend that her life, or cooking opportunities, are like that of the average American. While food and cooking, to someone in the food world, is at this point not a gendered issue, to Michelle Obama it's probably not incidental to distance herself from generations of recipe-swapping First Ladies who aligned themselves firmly with the domestic. And because Mrs. Obama does not cook much these days does not imply unilateral scorn - Mrs. Obama has mentioned cooking in the past, they've hired a chef well-versed in organic and sustainable cooking, and this year's Easter Egg Roll incorporated a cooking class for kids. A garden can teach a lot about nutrition and the environment even to those who can't or don't have the opportunity to cook. And Mrs. Obama clearly enjoys and appreciates good, healthy food - perhaps as important as anything. Besides, should a First Lady have to censor her every word? Be an example and a role model at every turn? At the end of the day, probably a lot of people can relate to a First Lady who doesn't always talk from the script - and doesn't cook.

But that would, of course, be Hesser's point - that too many people can relate. And that every word, from someone so admired and imitated, is an opportunity. One could certainly argue that the food issue is one the Obamas have been strong-armed - and Anthony Bourdain and his Waters-hating ilk would likely argue just that. But having taken on an issue, one must see it through. And having acknowledged a crisis in our nation's diet, one can't separate the issue of cooking from it. Cooking is essential to changing the nation's habits - locavore restaurants are great, but it's not Blue Hill that's going to feed the man on the street. The issue here is a tricky one, though, because Mrs. Obama has to tread a fine line: while there's nothing remotely elitist or luxurious about scratch cooking to its champions, the simple truth is that this is far from a universal view, and Mrs. Obama would risk just as much criticism from devoting time to, say, a course of cooking classes, as by her current flippancy. Hesser suggests that watching the First Lady master the preparation of food would be a great example for the country, and it would - but if it's that important, it would be nice if her husband could be in there with her occasionally - and would do quite a bit to un-load the issue.

The Commander In Chef [NY Times]

A study done at the University of Minnesota showed that one in five young women say they eat fast food more than three times a week, while 33% of dudes head out for Mickey D's more than three times a week. It makes me wonder, though, just how accurate these surveys are because they're self-reported by the eaters themselves. I've certainly lied before about what I'm eating to make it sound healthier. Are the men in your life really chowing down on Doritos more than you, or are you an equal opportunity junk food offender?

Diet Survey: Men Eat Meat, Women Eat Veggies [CNN]
Study: Young Men Eating More Fast Food [Minnesota Public Radio]

Related: Cohabitation Is Bad for Women's Health [New York Times]

In addition to similarities between the recipes and cover treatments for both books, the Times reports that that Ms. Seinfeld's publisher, Collins, rejected Ms. Lapine's book proposal because it was "too similar" to another book on its list but agreed to meet with Seinfeld when she submitted her proposal two weeks later "because of her name and her agent: Jennifer Rudolph Walsh of William Morris" (Walsh, as you may remember, was the onetime agent of notorious coed cribber Kaavya Viswanathan):

Ms. Walsh described Ms. Seinfeld as "smart, stunning, and infinitely promotable" in a cover letter.

How to Get Junior to Eat His Veggies Turns Out To Be (Too) Common Knowledge [NY Times]
How Another Seinfeld Scored Her Own Big Hit [WSJ]
Earlier:Jessica Seinfeld's Deceptively Delicious: Kinda Deceptive, Not So Delicious
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