Is “Eat Real Food” Unthinkable?

In recent weeks we’ve seen a big, powerful government agency, a big, powerful person, and a big, powerful corporation telling us what to eat. Even with all this big, powerful input, we know nothing that we didn’t know last year. We do, however, have a new acronym; unfortunately, it’s not the one we need.

And a little progress. Limited kudos go to the United States Department of Agriculture, whose Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010—yes, it’s 2011, but they’re published every five years—are the best to date. We’re told to eat “less food” and more fresh foods; wise advice. But aside from salt, the agency buries mostly vague recommendations about what we should be eating less of: we’re admonished to consume “few or no” sodas—hooray for that—and “refined grains,” Solid Fats and Added Sugars. And there’s our fabulous acronym: SOFAS.

The problem, as usual, is that the agency’s nutrition experts are at odds with its other mission: to promote our bounty in whatever form its processors make it. The U.S.D.A. can succeed at its conflicting goals only by convincing us that eating manufactured food lower in SOFAS is “healthy,” thus implicitly endorsing hyper-engineered junk food with added fiber, reduced solid fats, and so on, “food” that is often unimaginably far from its origins. When it comes to eating more “good” food, the report is clear, because that can’t harm producers. When it comes to eating less of what’s “bad,” the language turns to “science,” because telling us which products to avoid—like a 3,000-calorie fast-food “meal” or a box of low-fat but chemical-laden crackers—would play badly with industry. Instead we’re told to avoid SOFAS. Where’s that SOFAS aisle?

The report might have led with Michael Pollan’s ground-breaking slogan—“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”—and then explained details in a few pages. But although the agency’s advisory committee suggested a “shift…toward a more plant-based diet,” the report itself backs “a healthy eating pattern,” and then, over 100-plus pages, is largely imprecise, probably to avoid offending meat and sugar lobbies. (The salt lobby is evidently puny.)

In its attempts to upset no one powerful, the U.S.D.A. offers a typically contorted message. The advice people need is to cook and eat more real food, at the expense of the junk served in most restaurants and take-out places. In fact, most of the mysterious SOFAS come from so-called “fast” and “convenient” food, as does most sodium. (The salt shaker is not the culprit.)

It isn’t easy to cook with the junk that makes junk food junky, but the agency spends little energy boosting cooking. There is the, “Cook and eat more meals at home…include vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fat-free or low-fat dairy products, and protein foods that provide fewer calories and more nutrients.” But it stands almost alone, and could have been far simpler and stronger. Why isn’t it? Because “protein foods that provide fewer calories” doesn’t offend the meat industry, as Pollan’s motto does.

Which brings us to the powerful person: Oprah. Ms. Winfrey, who has been on more diets than the rest of us combined, challenged her staff to “go vegan” for a week. Intriguing, except her idea of surviving without meat and dairy—no explanation given for why we should go from too much to none—is to fill your shopping cart with fake versions of both, like meatless chicken breasts and dairy-less cheese.

But the goal is not universal veganism, which is pie-in-the-sky; it’s health and sustainability. And we get there by preparing real food, vegan or not. (Remember: Coke, Tostitos, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Puffs—yum!—are all vegan.) The answer is not fake animal products, whose advocates argue that they’re transitional to a kinder-to-animal diet. Indeed, that’s good, but a real food diet is better.

Finally, our powerful corporation—Walmart—whose alliance with Michelle Obama looks pretty good, at least at first. We are promised more affordable produce, which undoubtedly means that Walmart will beat the living daylights out of produce suppliers, crushing a few thousand more small farmers. (In fact, what we need is higher-quality and probably more expensive produce, that which is less damaging to the environment, laborers, and consumers, but that gets into the “how do we afford it?” argument, which must wait for another day. Let’s leave it that we like Walmart’s goal of selling more produce.)

The real problem, again, is Walmart’s other promise: “healthier” packaged foods. And whether baked, low-salt chips are “better” than fried ones is not only arguable—the baked ones are more likely to be chemical-laden—but misses the point, which, again, is that real foods are superior in every way.

The truly healthy alternative to that chip is not a fake chip; it’s a carrot. Likewise, the alternative to sausage is not vegan sausage; it’s less sausage. This is really all pretty simple, and pretty clear. But the messages we’ve heard recently are as clear as…well, a SOFA.

You want an acronym? Let’s try ERF: Eat Real Food.

FEBRUARY 8, 2011