Diet and Tradition

"EATING MY SPINACH
Four Days on the Uncle Sam Diet ..."

I love this William Grimes article on the 2005 government dietary guidelines, the ones which recommended 9 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. What I love about this article is that he discusses the role of culture and tradition in maintaining a diet. How are people supposed to stick to a diet day in and day out for the rest of their lives?

As a cultural document, the guidelines are strange. They set themselves the worthy but futile goal of imposing a style of eating for which Americans have no model. It's all very well to announce that everyone should eat five servings of vegetables a day. But where does that fit in the culinary template that Americans instinctively consult when planning a meal? The typical American dinner is an entrée with a starch and a vegetable, preceded in some cases by a salad or soup and followed with dessert.

For Asians, it's quite normal to eat multiple vegetable dishes at the same meal (even at breakfast), and to prepare very small quantities of fish or meat with much larger quantities of rice. But Americans rarely eat multiple vegetable dishes except on Thanksgiving. If they are going to triple their vegetable consumption, they'll have to greatly enlarge the vegetable portions they do eat, throwing the meal off balance, or else walk around nibbling on carrots and cauliflower florets from a plastic bag.

The new guidelines are not just health policy, they're cultural policy, too. To comply fully, Americans will have to rethink their inherited notions of what makes a meal, and what makes a meal satisfying.

That is a very tall order - even taller than the daily mound of uncooked leafy vegetables that everyone is supposed to eat.