Food as Religion and Culture

Raw milkshake: walnuts, agave, raw chocolate powder





America is often made fun of as the country with no culture. We are a very young country and do not have the hundreds- and thousands-years old traditions that most other cultures in the world have.

However, this is not at all the case. Our culture may be a little less romantic, without the artistic architecture, traditional dress, or family and community structure, but it is practiced and ingrained just the same.

Taking food as an important example: we have a totally culturally-ingrained diet. I did not realize this at all throughout my life because I am, of course, part of this culture. I thought Americans had a moderate, relaxed diet and also must eat the way we do because it has been proven to be healthy. We love science and are always studying the effects of everything. If we are so modern and smart, we wouldn't be so rigid on something like food which we can learn so much about, and thereby adjust to suit our health. We would change the way we eat at a moment's notice if we knew we needed to, or if we thought it would help us lose weight. However, it is obvious when we look that we only make such changes as still fit within our cultural way of eating.

Remember in the '80s and '90s how we were warned that animal fat contributed to heart disease. This idea is not standing the test of further scientific study, as it turns out, but how many people went vegetarian when, for a couple of decades, this was the prevailing viewpoint? Vegetarianism has been on the rise for decades, but not in the numbers you would have expected considering how widespread this belief was and actually still is.

This type of tunnel-visioned approach was really obvious to me when I went to India. I have spent two months there total, and have just found it hilarious the way any Indian will back up the way they eat, 100%. Practically everything is deep-fried, even breakfast food. Rice and bread products are eaten at absolutely every meal and snack. The spice level can sometimes be just ridiculous. All of these things are taken completely for granted as healthy and delicious. When my husband and I would occasionally point out that, nutritionally, eating a mountain of rice twice a day really amounted to nothing and probably even did harm, his parents would mostly shrug and say, sure, maybe. It didn't change what they did, and it probably never will. The changes a typical Indian would be willing to make in their diet would amount to an inch in one direction or another.

I found this silly and sometimes frustrating, and, of course, thought Americans were above that.

Americans are not above this at all. The changes 90% of Americans are willing to make are also an inch in one direction or another. Our staple foods of meat, potatoes, dairy, pizza, burgers, ice cream, and soda will never be given up by the majority of the population. These are the foundation foods of our culture, some of which are, arguably, far worse than a mountain of rice.

We DON'T listen to science unless it shows us something easy or convenient we can change. Most of us feel we have to give up our entire identities to simply leave out certain foods and become thoroughly depressed at the idea. Isn't this strange? Americans treat their diet as a religion, as does almost any other traditional culture. We follow it on faith, and conversion is extremely difficult. We eat as part of our identity, part of our comfort, part of how we connect with other people. I don't believe there is a place for faith in diet, do you?

Witness the common offense taken by many meat-eaters when it comes out you are a vegetarian, which you will know about if you happen to be one. Honestly, I could more easily say I was a pathological liar to avoid the disdain and condescension I have encountered. I keep my eating habits a secret as long as possible until a meal comes up where I have to let it be known. At least with religion, though, we have some etiquette, as we are taught to accept those who have different beliefs.

I don't mean to guilt-trip Americans--as I said, it is entirely natural to hold on to diet and food habits as part of culture. But we MUST be aware that we are doing this. If we fool ourselves into thinking we eat based solely on scientific evidence for health benefits behind food, then we will stay laughably ignorant and probably very unhealthy.

I only wish that the rigid defenders of the American diet (not that they all are that way, by any means) would simply say, "I haven't spent much time researching health and nutrition, but I like to eat meat because it tastes good. I haven't heard anything bad enough to stop me yet." At least this includes self-awareness and honesty. The most important thing for us to be honest with ourselves about is that 100% of us believe what we are told until we are adults. At that point, each one of us has a responsibility to challenge our beliefs and learn from truly trustworthy and expert sources.

Such issues become obvious if you ever read the book The China Study which I am almost halfway through now. This is the largest and most scientifically strict nutrition study ever undertaken. It involves a conglomeration of a massive number of studies conducted over a period of 27 years. It isn't a book based on conclusions from a few skewed graphs connecting animal fat with heart disease. It is finally surfacing that animal fat does not contribute to heart disease in the ways we previously thought and that those conclusions were based on some very incomplete and improperly interpreted statistics.

The evidence for consuming a plant-based diet to avoid disease, based on this study, is simply incontrovertible. Yet this doctor, in undertaking the research, had to deal with other scientists who wouldn't even work with him or who claimed results had been mixed up because the findings ran so counter to everything they believed in. By every single rigorous definition of proper and strict rules of conducting science, this study surpasses them all. Yet his own very intelligent colleagues could not psychologically cope with the answers.

And why on earth has it taken me years of being a total nutrition nerd to even hear about and then read this book? Not because it isn't rigidly backed up by the highest standards while being published, study by study, in the most prestigious and reputable scientific journals. No, it's because people do not like the answers very much. And because it hasn't been packaged and marketed as a fad diet (yet).

This is the scientific, objective, progressive society we live in? We might conduct our studies well, even come up with good ones in the first place, but, as one doctor who studies the mind/body disease connection put it, "some end up in the Bermuda Triangle." They are not argued or disputed, but they disappear, ignored, and never to be heard from again. Even studies that can save thousands and thousands of lives. Inexpensively, with no side effects, and--heck, without health insurance.

Psychology and food must be gently unwound from eachother. Food is not a religion, and even culture is not a religion. People are dying by the thousands of easily preventable diseases, and we sit here still saying, "No! I don't want to change!" What is going on with people when to simply let go of certain foods induces a personal crisis and an extreme emotional reaction? Is this crisis preferable to getting sick? Granted, we are not given a lot of tools in this world to navigate personal crises, but I'll wing it at one of those before taking my chances in a hospital bed.