Despite two decades of public health initiatives, stricter government dietary guidelines, record growth of farmers’ markets and the ease of products like salad in a bag, Americans still aren’t eating enough vegetables.
This month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a comprehensive nationwide behavioral study of fruit and vegetable consumption. Only 26 percent of the nation’s adults eat vegetables three or more times a day, it concluded. (And no, that does not include French fries.)
These results fell far short of health objectives set by the federal government a decade ago. The amount of vegetables Americans eat is less than half of what public health officials had hoped. Worse, it has barely budged since 2000.
“It is disappointing,” said Dr. Jennifer Foltz, a pediatrician who helped compile the report. She, like other public health officials dedicated to improving the American diet, concedes that perhaps simply telling people to eat more vegetables isn’t working.
Figure out a way to make them actually taste good and people will beat a path to get them. I like some vegetables, but most are disgusting to me. Fortunately, I do like salad…
Find a way to make them cost-equivalent. I can order fries for a buck. I can order a small salad for a buck. But the salad won’t fill me up unless I order two of them.
Besides, Americans don’t like being told what to do. Tell me I have to use CFB’s and I will install incandescent lights in every fixture (again, price figures into it. a four pack of 60 watt bulbs is $1.25. A four pack of CFBs are $6.75). Tell me it’s a good idea to turn my lights off for an hour to protest the mythical, discredited ‘human caused climate change’, you can bet I’m going to turn on every light in the house.
Tell me I can’t eat fries — that’s what I’m going to order. Because I can afford them over veggies figures into the equation, however — big time!
Watch out, LibraryJim, the liberal control freaks in government (who know “better” than you do) will legislate huge taxes on fries, pizza, chicken fingers, ice cream, etc – so huge that they will cost more than that salad!
oh, yeah, that’s why I’m making sure to vote in NOvember.
STN, your comment parallels the battle I wage with my son. I point out that the primary purpose of food is nutrition, not taste. Yes, it’s nice if we can make our food taste good. But we must eat th foods our bodies eed regardless of its taste.
Our obsession with fried, fat, salty, and/or sugary foods is diectly linked to our national weight problem. And given that the added health costs for the overweight are estimated at $4-6,000/year, the cost savings for french fries is likely illusory.
I know what you say is true about nutrition over taste, #5. But I had to fool myself into thinking that veggies taste good, when minus a gall bladder I realized that after 5+ decades of bad eating habits, my longevity depended on eating what I should and on NOT eating what would harm me. It took a couple years to figure out that vegetables, almost any ones, either roasted, topped with a yummy healthy sauce, or prepared with excellent and interesting seasonings are so good that you want to eat them, and look forward to more. So far the best ways I have found are roasting with a brush of olive oil (try sweet potato fingers this way); Romescu (or Romesco) sauce, easily made, quantity for a week, in 20 minutes (I can provide a recipe), to dress lightly steamed or even raw veggies; and the use of capers, olives, currants and pinenuts plus or minus oregano in a little tomato sauce, with sauteed cauliflower, broccoli, etc.
Much as I don’t like anything else they do, I have to acknowledge the Obamas are right on this matter. Millions of Americans are perversely addicted to fatty and sugary foodstuffs, and the first step is to re-wire our own brains to like things that are good for us and not the opposite. There is a sophisticated and very rich food industry that has been dedicated for generations now to feeding Americans the wrong things, which render us relatively stupid, though not passive. It is the change at this step that I think hangs up most people. But God has provided a host of things in nature and culture to help us like what is good for us, and we need to seek those things out. (Many features of a Mediterranean diet are just such things, coming from older cultures that have learned by experience.) Then we have to let go of the old tastes as we get acquainted with the new ones, and that is not so difficult once we know what to fill the void with.
If I had not begun to feel like a new and different me from this experience, I would not bother posting about it.
Part of the problem, however, is in the messenger. Perhaps when HE gives up smoking, and she gets in shape and loses those extra pounds, then Americans MIGHT listen to them. But he seems to be of the “Do as I say not as I do” camp, as is the case with most of his policies.
On other matters, sure, it’s easy to say “Cost in the long run outweighs (no pun intended) short term costs, but when trying to raise a family of four (at least we eat fairly healthy at home between Weight Watchers and Rachel Ray’s cookbooks) on 30K a year, it’s crazy difficult to rationalize extra spending when every penny counts.
So, yes, I order a buck double and side salad for lunch most days, with water to drink, which sets me back a whopping (again, no pun intended) $2.15 for lunch.
Tomorrow, I will eat better, as I have a birthday coupon for a free Firehouse sub! Yahoo!
Jim