community-based nutritionist seeking michael pollan

Jan26

The time has come for me to pay homage to the food and environmental journalist and writer Michael Pollan, whose book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, partially served as the inspiration for my blog’s name. I say partially because I am fully aware that I have been waist-deep in food dilemmas way before his book came to be.

Many years ago, when I was a mere neophyte in this work, way before food and eating was the omnipresent topic that it is today, I was simultaneously working my first nutrition job with a WIC-Women, Infant and Children Program in some small-town communities while also serving at a hip vegetarian cafe in a cool college town–all the while trying desperately to figure out how to feed myself. By day, I talked the language of subsidized foods; by evening I enjoyed brown rice and salads with sunflower seeds, sprouts, and lemon tahini dressing; and, by night, I chowed down more than my share of the wonderful cookies we baked at the cafe.

Though I knew how to address pellagra and beriberi, I could barely identify, let alone address, my own anxious eating. Back then, in the late 1970s, I also had friends who were struggling with serious eating disorders–but the terms anorexia and bulimia were barely widely recognized. And, I still thought that the main problem with nutrition was hunger in remote places on the globe. Starving children in Biafra fueled my imagination and passion for helping when I was a kid and inspired my decision to become a nutritionist. Today, I don’t even know where Biafra is. Are there no longer starving children in the world or have they just gotten lost and forgotten in this modern feeding frenzy?

In 1981, my husband, Peter, and I found ourselves seemingly teleported to Dallas, Texas in my Oldsmobile Cutlass with our total life belongings and two cats–for the purpose of a new job. For us, it was a strange new world. Though I still held strong to my Frances Moore Lappe-inspired vegetarian lifestyle and its accouterments of grains and legumes, my heady purist beliefs were no match for that southern heat. One day while staggering around the city looking for an apartment, we stumbled into a Mexican restaurant. Suffering from heatstroke, we feebly ordered some food. I slipped back into consciousness just in time to see Pete about to dig into some dish covered in carne. Honey, I managed to say, we don’t eat meat. Though we did preserve our herbivorous habits in that cattle raising land, we dove headfirst into 7 Eleven’s newly christened, enormous 32-oz. Big Gulp in order to quench our super-sized thirst. It was just the beginning of the marketing of many super-sized offerings, and it was then that I began to realize that the food universe was shifting.

Within just four years of finishing my nutrition studies, I was working in a clinic addressing eating disorders; and only six years later, I found myself in another clinical setting witnessing the cusp of the obesity epidemic. Neither of these issues was ever addressed in my schooling. My nutrition education taught me about the functions of macro and micronutrients; gross deficiency states; approaches to some diseases and food chemistry–but it never really talked about food–where it comes from, how it itself is nourished, or about the importance of quality and vitality. Nor, how to eat it. Thankfully, by then, I had figured out for the most part how to separate my emotions from my eating, so I was a little better equipped to tend to the cares of others–just in time, for the food and eating tornado had really begun to swirl.

I am grateful then for the prolific body of work and its attendant context that Michael Pollan has so poetically brought to us–rounding out the story of understanding food. However, as it clarifies, it adds to the complexity of my work–and so too, to my dilemmas. Trying to translate this information for the folk I speak with on a daily basis is not easy.

Just the other day, I had a chat with my adorable new friend, Tomazeo, a kid in one of the schools where I work. At just eight-years-old, he is really smart and has good penmanship. He told me his teacher says he is a role model. When I told him that nutrition was a big word, and we were going to write it on his folder, he told me that he knows lots of big words, including especially, absolutely and scrumptious. I agreed that those were quite big words. I asked him if he knew what scrumptious meant and he said, “Especially yummy in the tummy”. I said, “Absolutely.” His big brown eyes then asked me, “Are hot dogs healthy?” Oh my, tracing a hamburger from bull to bun, is one thing–a hot dog is yet another. How do I break the news to this innocent child that scrumptious may actually not be so easy to define.

I am guessing that Michael Pollan got stuck in this quandary as well, which led him to publish his elementary primer, “Food Rules-An Eater’s Manual” which he describes as ‘samizdat’ nutrition. I am not familiar with that big word, and I doubt Tomazeo is either, but Pollan uses it to promote a cultural reference point “as an informal and unsanctioned way of negotiating our eating lives.”

If anyone sees or knows Michael, please let him know I am out here and I could use a big chunk of samizdat. To get his attention, tell him that I think he and I have sprung from the same natural island habitat. A vague mention on his website supports but does not confirm, my suspicion that we are from the same exit off of the big native walking path. We may have hunted the same forests, foraged the same fields–and maybe attended the same high school. Emphasize that I am down here in the trenches and need reinforcements to help me with those who are not yet in the choir. Just today, from Stephen Colbert, I learned that those 32-oz. Big Gulps had actually increased to 44-oz. since my last swallow so many years ago. Yikes!

But, mainly thank him for me. He has truly helped to change and widen our understanding of food and nutrition by leading us to understand what we are eating, where it has come from and its many implications for our health and environment. His investigations have accelerated the positive redirection of policies and practices that we are beginning to finally see come to fruition. And, I bet his writings are now included in most nutrition curricula.

And, just one more thing if I may. While only a few know this about me–and have now probably forgotten–I was a (junior) high school cheerleader–yes. Though I have certainly lost the school spirit thing, this may be a reason to revive my hometown pride along with some perky and breath-draining chants. So when you do speak to him on my behalf, can you add in a little — Goooo Michael!!!!– to help cheer him on? Thanks so much.

Thank you for listening, sharing, following and supporting my writing. Please subscribe in the sidebar to receive notice of new posts. Comments and greetings always welcome.

In health,

Elyn

Related Post: Wait, Wait, Michael Pollan

My Plate Haiku

Don’t eat anything

Your great grandmother wouldn’t

Recognize as food.

by Michael (Pollan)

I Speak for the Fat People: middle part

Jan14

Let’s put the issue of overweight into perspective. If we look at weight historically, I’m pretty certain that from the beginning of time, there have been fat people. We have all seen the pictures of early Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal men. Even those quintessential hunters and gatherers seemed capable of packing on a few pounds. After them came Confucius, King Henry the Eighth, Mamie in Gone with the Wind, Jackie Gleason, Pavarotti, Aunt Bea, and my grandmother. Chances are your grandmother was fat, too.

English: Luciano Pavarotti in Vélodrome Stadiu...

Pavarotti Image via Wikipedia

Since our early beginnings, human beings have come in varying shapes and sizes and large-size was not necessarily an aberration of medium-size. It is good that there are large-sized people. A world without them would mean a world with fewer great opera singers, chefs, women of ample bosom, football players, construction workers, and cuddly grandmothers.

It is not very difficult to become fat. You do not have to go out of your way to try. If Chinese youth can become fat, then anyone can. Only about 4% of the population has naturally model-thin bodies. That means that many models are starving themselves in order to be models. It also means that the rest of the size 2 wannabes are expending a lot of physical and mental energy in the pursuit of thinness. Carolyn Knapp, in her book Appetites, tells the story of a woman who describes the angst she feels putting on her stockings every morning. She wonders what she could have accomplished in her life with the time she has spent worrying about her weight.

There are the naturally skinny–and then there are the neurotically and pathologically skinny; and the metabolically hyper-activated skinny–those who sustain themselves on a steady diet of excessive caffeine and nicotine—or maybe extensive exercise. For the rest of us, the possibility of becoming overweight is just around the corner. We are physiologically and neurologically wired to pack it on. The ability to store fat came in pretty handy a time or two during our multi-millenial evolution. We have about 107 compensatory mechanisms that prevent us from starving to death. A bunch of those certainly kicked in to save our forefathers when they were unable to kill a bison. In people who attempt to starve themselves toward thinness, the body fights back–it regains the lost weight plus more, and then absolutely refuses to budge.

In addition, we are wired for comfort. Research shows that the food habits that sustain us are those that we developed while still wrapped in the loving veil of early childhood. Whether that happened to be gazelle, chicken soup, mashed potatoes or cheeseburgers, you will probably turn to those foods as an adult. Believe me, the corporate world certainly knows this. The Happy Meal ensures that today’s toddlers will become tomorrow’s adult fast-food consumers. The concept of comfort foods is one I hear a lot about during my spy missions. Women have confessed to me that they would choose a good loaf of bread over sex. The quality of the sex is not indicated in this context.

Then, of course, there are our natural temperaments as well as good old genetics. I listened once to the tender story of a woman who was adopted as a child. She never met her birth mother, but she possessed a very old, poor quality home movie that she believes is of her mother. Though she struggles to see the face better in search of subtle resemblances, it is the woman’s thighs that confirm her finding. She states, “Look at the thighs. Those are my thighs.”

On top of all this, let’s sprinkle on a life change, or just daily, chronic stress. Take your pick. Break-ups, abuse, graduate school, poverty, working long hours, caregiving, depression or menopause are possible choices. And, God forbid you should simply possess a deep sensuous life-affirming passion for cooking and eating.** Throw any of these on your plate and if your primal wiring wasn’t enough to enlist you, then current circumstances will. Even the once-thins can become the now-fat–especially in this current milieu where food is literally out to get ya. Not even the high school cheerleader is immune. Any emotional state that is heightened, increases for many, the desire to seek food for a reward. When one is working their way up the weight chart, it is because they are possessed by physical or emotional hunger or physiological changes that they can neither understand nor control.

I can hear you begin to protest that it has to be more than just this. Aren’t we soooo bad? We ate the piece of chocolate cake (and we loved it). How could we? How dare we? That translates into four hours of floor mopping according to the calorie expenditure charts. That must be fair penance for the crime. As a spy, my days are peppered with the monologues and dialogues of self-hate and recrimination that people utter like a mantra before and/or after each foray into eating. The guilt is palpable. We must have all been ____________ in a previous lifetime. (insert your own response.)

(one more segment to follow)

Thank you for listening, sharing, following, and supporting my writing. Please subscribe in the sidebar to receive notice of new posts. Comments and greetings always welcome.

In health, Elyn

Related Resources 2010: The end of overeating. Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite (David A. Kessler, MD); Born Round: A Story of Family, Food and a Ferocious Appetite (Frank Bruni)

I Speak for the Fat People: first part

Jan12

I speak for the fat people. Like Dr. Seuss’ Lorax who spoke for the trees, someone must speak for the fat people. Unlike the trees who needed a spokesperson because they had no tongues, you would think that the fat people would be able to speak for themselves. Of course, fat people have tongues. If they did not have that taste bud laden sensory organ, they would not be fat. Given the current weight of the world, this group should not be particularly hard to hear. However, in the huge public dialogue about weight and obesity, the fat people are merely statistics. There are no real people behind the statistics, and this is where they have lost their voice. Therefore, they are stripped of any ability to speak with authority on the topic.

I am not a statistic. Though I have had some years where I toed the chubby line, for the most part, I have done my part in tipping the scales toward societal svelteness. Besides my obligation as a citizen to keep the fat numbers down, as a nutritionist, it is my professional responsibility to pull people out of the fat pool and to keep them from falling in at all.

It is no big secret that the medical and nutritional community has not done a great job in their role as bariatric (the science of obesity) lifeguards. I myself do not have a great track record of turning people into mere shadows of their former selves. But, I have spent my career as a nutritionist hearing the stories and struggles of the fat people and observing the ways of food and eating that define this turn of the century. I am a spy in the house of girth.

The fat community does, in fact, have some spokespeople. There are magazines, journals, and websites edited by those (mainly women) who have spent one day too many in the deprived and depraved world of dieting. There are professionals and individuals who are doing incredible and poetic work about re-informing and re-educating on misconceptions about weight and health and respectful self-care. Still, many of these efforts are marginalized or featured in venues that only topic-obsessed people like myself pay attention to. Even Roseanne Barr once said, “It’s OK to be fat. So you’re fat. Just be fat and shut up about it.” For every individual or undertaking that sings the praises of fat, there are thousands of counter-voices screaming the imperative to whip it away.

Therefore, I believe I must use my credentials to speak out. I hope that the fat people can accept me, a thin person–who is often cold and prone to osteoporosis–and an ex-stress and emotional eater to be their voice. Born of thin mother and fat father, I will try to do the cause justice.

Thank you for listening, sharing, following and supporting my writing. Please subscribe in the sidebar to receive notice of new posts. Comments and greetings always welcome.

(to be continued)

In health, Elyn

Related Resources (2010): (Frances M. Berg); Intuitive Eating (Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch); Health at Every Size (Dr. Bacon); Dances with Fat(Ragen Chastain)

you ain’t necessarily misbehavin’-part 1

Dec16

Why is this question of nourishing ourselves so difficult? We all know there are some basic concepts surrounding the care and feeding of the human being, but unfortunately, we are not equipped with an owner’s manual. Therefore, as we move through our lives requiring food for both emotional and physical survival, we respond to our needs with some twist based on our own experience; and clearly, some confusion often occurs along the way.

Looking at this question might enable us to have more compassion for ourselves and others in this realm where there is so much self-loathing and self-recrimination. There is probably no other activity that we do with so much community and yet such isolation as feeding ourselves. In the emotional terrain of eating, no feeding decision is made because we are a bad, weak or disgusting person. I use those words because that is how people feel and describe themselves. Image result for mom diner sign images

As a nutritionist, I sit in small rooms hearing people’s stories about their relationship with food, eating and their bodies. These stories are spilling over into the “street buzz” of daily conversation as people are being increasingly consumed by a fear of food and shame and loathing of their bodies. In workshops, I lead an exercise asking people to write down a negative thought they have had about their body that day. I then ask them to write a good quality about themselves that is not related to body image. Reconciling the two is hard to do. Realizing that such wonderful people could be feeling so badly about themselves is enough to make anyone cry.

The power and capacity for these feelings to diminish the human experience is profound and insidious, yet we rarely consider how complicated is the source of the issues. However, such consideration provides an important perspective and may shift where we point the finger. By separating out those aspects related to self-nourishment that we have control over, from those that we don’t, we can perhaps alleviate some of this suffering and can enhance prevention efforts which may be more effective than current remedial strategies.

To understand the distinctions, and to get just a glimpse of how many factors there are, entails a look at human development. Much of our food tendencies begin while we are still pickling in the brine of our mothers’ wombs. Our chromosomal template influences not only our adult body size and shape but more subtle biological processes as well. How efficiently our metabolisms will burn, how our brains will interpret satiety, and how and where we will store fat is all rather pre-programmed on one’s personal dance card—imprinted essentially when sperm meets egg. Our ability to resist a piece of chocolate cake is apparently even coded in our DNA. Some individuals are genetically better “resisters” than others. Who knew, right?

Likewise, women have more sensitive taste buds than men. That second X chromosome can translate into a tendency for food distaste and picky eating that is formed before we are even born. Other aspects of the maternal milieu–or in other words, our intrauterine environment–including our mother’s diet, blood sugar regulation, and calorie availability also will have an effect on our own taste inclinations and feeding behaviors after we are born. Our first eating experience really happens at Mom’s Diner. Pretty crazy.

And that is just the beginning. For now, just chew on this, and in the spirit of loving ourselves, consider how such an appreciation of how we have arrived where we are through very little fault of our own, can translate into some gentle acceptance instead of the usual flagellation with figurative wet noodles–be they whole wheat, gluten-free or basic semolina.

I do not intend to suggest that we absolve ourselves of responsibility for our health and eating behaviors, or that we should just throw in the towel, but perhaps such a reflection can help us to accept ourselves more for who we are and to put a lid on the negative self speak about our bodies. Such scolding and negative reinforcements will never lead to positive change.

Let us return food to its own natural place and let us reclaim our birthright of health. Remember that there is a beautiful light that shines in all of us. Believe that it is there. Keep trying. We can create a new reality for ourselves.

Thank you for listening, sharing, following and supporting my writing. Please subscribe in the sidebar to receive notice of new posts. Comments and greetings always welcome.

In health, Elyn

Stopping Traffic

Dec7

“The public is silent when young women die.” charges Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth.

I have just returned from an annual conference that I attend on Eating Disorders. The conference, in its eleventh year, is sponsored by The Nutrition Clinic and Sol Stone (Update 2020: Upstate New York Eating Disorder Service); Clearpath Healing Arts Center; and Ophelia’s Place who work together to form a strong, sensitive and progressive treatment network in central New York.

Image by Mystic Art Design at Pixabay

Each year, near the end of the conference, a handful of individuals in the recovery stage of their eating disorder are invited up to share some part of their story. This is, of course, the most enlightening and always most emotional part of the day. The wisdom acquired in overcoming such a strong opponent is very deep and these very intelligent women articulate it beautifully.

This day, a young woman in her mid-twenties, stood before the two hundred or more attendees and shared that in the darkest days of her eating disorder, she almost walked into traffic–but only stopped herself because she felt it would be immoral to place such a horrible burden on whoever might have killed her. To witness someone so young describe such a depth of despair was both bone-chilling and deeply heart-opening.

On some level, we know that there are people who are suffering from eating disorders, but essentially they are invisible. However, when one is privy to the stories of those who have had one of these crippling conditions; and you couple that with statistics like one in 100 individuals has an eating disorder—it is imaginable that there are truly some “walking dead” amongst us.

To offer some response to this young woman who had the courage to expose her pain and vulnerability and who has found the strength to persevere and to heal, I bring to this conversation– about the realities of eaters and eating– a discussion about eating disorders. I know that it does not do justice to the topic. It is a contorted and rather incomplete version of something I have written before. But, it seems a fitting time for me to introduce this part of the story. In honor of that woman and the four others who stood before me a few days ago, please consider the following.

We may have seen or heard about someone who is nibbling on only lettuce and carrots at mealtimes; wearing heavy clothing in moderate temperatures; exhibiting extreme weight loss; exercising excessively or appearing listless at a team practice or dance class. But, to the inexperienced eye, even extreme physical changes or behaviors can be overlooked or ignored. We may have even encountered someone who we suspected was suffering from an eating disorder, but we did not know what to do or say.

Most definitely, we have all had dealings with eating disordered individuals whose behaviors escaped our radar screen. The very nature of eating disorders is secretive and manipulative. Average-weight or over-weight individuals may be suffering as much as their noticeably underweight counterparts; older persons as well as younger ones; and men as well as women. Compounding the issue is that in certain environments like high schools and college campuses—but in the larger world as well—there is a “culture of thinness”. In such environments, underweight individuals can appear almost normal looking. Responses to eating disorders can include, “Oh, I wish I had that problem”, or “Why don’t they just eat?”

Even when we are cognizant and concerned about eating disorders, it is impossible to consider or measure the loss of potential and achievement, the degree of nutrient deficiencies, the magnitude of depression and anxiety, the potential for long-term health problems, and the possibility of sudden death from complications or suicide that eating disorders engender.

Eating disorders tend to leave people feeling frustrated, confused and helpless. Despite this normal reaction, it is really important that our society and our public health policymakers begin to better acknowledge, support and treat those with these disorders. Without intervention, chances for a full recovery are slim for those with severe conditions.

I have discussed my concern about the panicked way in which we are “battling” obesity. For many, overeating is an eating disorder–as deserving of a very sensitive and holistic approach to care as does “undereating”. We have the opportunity, and perhaps the obligation, to create an environment and dialogue that challenges the attitudes that make individuals feel bad about their bodies and that feed the medium in which all eating disorders thrive.

We can only hear the wisdom of those who have confronted an eating disorder if we are very quiet. If we can move the lens away from the obesity issue and reframe the disgust we harbor about fat, we may realize there is a gentler and more important conversation to be had about feeding, eating, and nourishment.

Frances Berg writes, “Our children, our daughters, and sons, are growing up afraid to eat, afraid to gain weight, afraid to grow and mature in normal ways. They are desperate to have the right bodies, obsessed with the need to be thin and fearful they won’t be loved until they reach perfection. This is the point to which our weight-obsessed culture has brought us. Our children are innocent victims.”

Thank you for listening, sharing, following and supporting my writing. Please subscribe in the sidebar to receive notice of new posts. Comments and greetings always welcome.

In health, Elyn

the nutritionist's dilemma

a nutritionist's musings on the realities of eaters and eating

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community-based nutritionist seeking michael pollan

I Speak for the Fat People: middle part

I Speak for the Fat People: first part

you ain’t necessarily misbehavin’-part 1

Stopping Traffic