Food For Thought
An interesting article which reviews two books about gluttony:
"The deadliest sin"
< http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/11/23/the_deadliest_sin/ >
Some excerpts:
"Take a look at Europe. Kingsley Amis, a sometime restaurant critic as well
as a novelist, had a neat, two-dimensional way of sorting out European
nations: England -- nice people, nasty food; France -- nice food, nasty
people; Greece -- nice people, terrifying food; and so forth. Amis initially
thought there was a perfect negative correlation here, that nice people
invariably went along with nasty food and vice versa. But this hypothesis,
he found, was defeated by the datum of Italy -- nice people, nice food!"
[Another flaw in his hypothesis: USA -- terrifying people, terrifying food.]
"Where one does turn up a strong inverse correlation, however, is between
quality of national cuisine and fatness. The European countries that have
the nicest food -- Italy, Switzerland, and France -- also have the lowest
adult obesity rates, below 10 percent according to the latest figures from
the International Obesity Task Force. The countries that have, shall we say,
less nice food -- Greece, Finland, and Britain -- have the highest adult
obesity rates, in excess of 20 percent."
"Could a certain kind of gluttony also, paradoxically, be an aid to thinness?
Americans are certainly not getting fatter because they are eating more grandly.
Consider the number of courses we consume at a meal. In the 19th century, as
Strong reminds us in 'Feast,' a typical bourgeois dinner party ran to no fewer
than 12 courses: hors d'oeuvre, two soups (one clear, one thick), fish, the
entree, the joint or piece de resistance, a sorbet, roast and a salad, vegetables,
a hot, sweet, ice cream dessert, coffee, and liqueurs. By the beginning of the
20th century, the number of courses had contracted to eight. In the 1950s,
American etiquette books counseled five courses. Today you are lucky to get
three."
"Lately, the breakfast-lunch-dinner rhythm has been giving way to a new and
distinctively American style of continuous food-consumption throughout the
day, known as 'snacking,' 'grazing,' or 'noshing.' For the 'vast majority of
the population,' Strong laments, 'the idea of at least one meal in the day
being a shared experience is gone forever.'"
"... new profit strategy to fast-food companies: supersizing. An order of french
fries went from 200 calories in 1960 to 610 calories today. And appetites
expanded accordingly. A 2001 study by nutritionists at Penn State University
found that larger portions in themselves caused people to eat more.
Meanwhile, Americans were working longer hours and squeezing in more
meals away from home, which added to the appeal of calory-dense
convenience foods."
