The Class War In Our Kitchens

Healthy eating isn’t about counting the nutrients in your food or showing off with your diet.

- Jennifer Bowden

Question:

I enjoyed your advice to go ahead and enjoy eating chocolate (Nutrition, May 19). Do you think some people are too obsessed with healthy eating?

Answer:

Is food the sum of its individual nutrient parts? Vitamins, plus minerals, plus carbohydrates equals food. Now eat it.

If you ask me (and you did), this nutrient-centric view of our diet-obsessed world is due for an overhaul.

I never thought Life writer Bill Ralston and I would be on the same page when it comes to healthy eating advice. What with his self-confessed “lifelong diet of fags, booze and inactivity”, we were seemingly at opposite ends of the spectrum. But from comments in many of his columns, I think we both agree that nutritionism creates an unhealthy relationship with food.

Nutritionism is an ideology that assumes it is the scientifically identified nutrients in foods that determine their value in our diet.

But as Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, explained to author Michael Pollan, there’s a catch: “The problem with nutrient-by-nutrient nutrition science is that it takes the nutrient out of the context of food, the food out of the context of diet, and the diet out of the context of lifestyle.”

Clearly, then, food is about more than nutrients. Is it simply the taste enjoyment of food we’re overlooking then? Yes and no. It’s more than that, says former Master Chef judge Ray McVinnie, who was also a gastronomy lecturer at AUT University.

“Food is not just about eating; it’s used for all sorts of things: sending messages, celebrating, for drawing attention to yourself. Basically, it’s really seen as a reflection of not only your culture, but your character. People have a lot of baggage when it comes to food.”