Libertiste

Yesterday I was reading a copy of Ladies’ Home Journal — at, where else, the doctor’s office (I’ve had a nagging cold, which partially explains the time between posts) — and was not a little distressed by the content. I know our world is full of misinformation about what constitutes healthy eating, but here, within the pages of this venerable old institution, it was ratcheted up to a level of hysteria I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

Not that I should be surprised. For many years I’ve rolled my eyes at the covers of mainstream women’s magazines in the supermarket checkout line, nearly all of which sport cover lines like “Lose 25 pounds FAST!” alongside a photo of, say, a seven-layer chocolate cake (First stands out as a repeat offender). The juxtaposition is so insanely blatant, there’s no way the editors don’t notice. There must be something behind it.

So this particular issue of Ladies’ Home Journal (the cover is above — I wish I could link to something, but nearly all the content on their site requires registration) included, among other things, a “funny” weight-loss diary by Marie Osmond, who gasped a confession that when she’s feeling tired, she grabs whatever unhealthy junk she can get her hands on. Like bread! Guess what, Marie. This is bread:

… and so is this:

But yeah — practically an entire food group = evil. That’s totally livable. Elsewhere in the magazine, a new weight-loss diet warned of the dangers of carbohydrates — didn’t we get over this in 2005? — and included a list of “Good Foods” and “Bad Foods.” There’s your first red flag; any diet that decries official “Bad Foods,” other than trans-fat, screams “arbitrary” to me. But even better, this list of poisonous foods included fruit juice, bananas, and skim milk — along with some shaky scientific claims about carbs and the glycemic index. I wonder how many women read that and think, gee, I’ve never heard before that skim milk makes me fat. This must be highly advanced, exclusive information! And this, I realized, is how the diet industry makes money.

There is no money in telling people that it’s as simple as, “eat food, not too much, mostly plants” — sales of Michael Pollan’s books notwithstanding (an author who seems to be read only by people who are pretty smart about food already, in my experience). To make money, you must convince people that eating healthy is very, very hard. That it requires secret, closely guarded information not available to the general public. That it takes as more time and commitment than going back for your Master’s. And you can do it only with lots of outside help.

The government is pretty good about encouraging people to be more active, but it’s so entangled in the bad-food machine by corn and soy subsidies that I don’t think it will ever be a voice loud enough to compete with this widespread manipulation. And the factory farming system fights against freshness every step of the way, creating such a glut of empty calories with those corn and soy products that the food industry needs to keep coming up with new junk foods to make sure we buy those calories and consume them. And then there’s that misinformation, so widespread now that it’s in the trusted pages of the magazines our mothers and grandmothers used to read.

What can we do? Just about the only thing one person can — vote with our dollars. Don’t buy the lie. You already know how to eat healthy. Listen to your body, not the magazines, and you’ll do fine. Once you shut out the shouts and clutter of bad information, you’ll actually be able to hear what it’s telling you.