There are a few new mobile apps that scan the barcodes on food products and automatically tally calories and nutrients and make pretty little graphs.
Which sounds amazing and convenient and health-conscious, until you realize that for this to be useful, you have to eat food with barcodes.
If what you’re eating has a barcode, it’s not food. It’s a food product.
So, yes, you registered for a website and installed an app on your iPhone, but you’re still eating processed crap. The only difference is, now you think it’s ok. Now you think you’ve finally started to get that whole nutrition thing under control.
Jamie Oliver gave a talk at TED that’s been going around recently. He showed a clip from his TV show when he brought various vegetables around an elementary school classroom, and the little kids couldn’t recognize tomatoes, potatoes, beets, etc.
Humans have cultivated food and changed food for thousands of years. And that’s ok. But we have to distinguish between the good food inventions and the bad ones. They’re not all good.
Domesticated corn: good.
South Beach Living Chocolate Meal Replacement Bars: not so much.
You know what’s a nutritious way to satisfy hunger? Food!
As a little reminder, here is what food looks like:
And for the meat eaters (not me but I don’t hold it against you):
Posted on 15 March 2010
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A few weeks back I asked question on Twitter asking if people remembered when was the last time they have eaten a whole natural fruit (as I just devoured one), none of them remembered and that was sad.
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Good reminder that counting calories is less important than making good choices in the first place (hard as that may sometimes be – http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/mar/13/obesity-salt-fat-sugar-kessler explains why I still crave that junk sometimes even though I make the majority of my food from fresh ingredients).
Fernando – I had a tangerine and some dates with lunch, and will probably have a banana after dinner…gotta get that 2 fruit/3 veg a day minimum!
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Awesome post, Natty. Agree completely.
“If what you’re eating has a barcode, it’s not food. It’s a food product. So, yes, you registered for a website and installed an app on your iPhone, but you’re still eating processed crap. The only difference is, now you think it’s ok.”
Well said.
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i think most city kids will recognize beats, especially phat ones.
beets, however… well, maybe if their grandmother is eastern european…
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Oops
Thanks, fixed.
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That application makes me sad. Counting calories doesn’t equal health, in fact, it actually further removes us from the body’s natural ability to regulate hunger & satiety. When we count calories, we rely on external, intellectual measures to determine something that is a totally internal and physical experience. Listen to your body. Eat when you’re hungry. And yes, eat real food!
I blogged about something relevant recently: http://www.peachfriedman.com/2010/02/24/from-nprs-marketplace/
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“When we count calories, we rely on external, intellectual measures to determine something that is a totally internal and physical experience. Listen to your body. Eat when you’re hungry.”
Good thing nobody has a feedback system that is broken! You’d be condemning those people to continued expansion.
Back when we were all hunter-gatherers, people with crummy eyesight probably didn’t live very long. It’s hard to throw a spear when you can’t even see the end of your arm. Along comes technology and zap!!!: eyeglasses fixed that problem once and for all. No reason to act superior when the same can be done with weight tracking and calorie counting.
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There is also the option of actually fixing the feedback system, instead of replacing it with something that is external and not as good.
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I just got done reading “In Defense of Food” in which the author distinguishes between “food” and “food like substances”. His advice was to eat “food”, mostly vegetables, eat less. Most people get confused on what exactly is real food these days. It is pretty hard since even something as simple as chicken broth, even those marked as “organic” can be processed to the point that the nutritional value is almost nil. Further, while food shows mostly are shown to use and promote fresh ingredients with a few exceptions they hardly ever comment on the negative effects of processed foods. This is because processed food is where they get a large portion of their advertising dollars from. Same goes for the iPhone app you talk about. They can’t scan a tomato so they much rather you be buying processed foods so that the consumer goes through them when trying to eat “healthy”. It all leads to massive consumer confusion.
As a last note on consumer confusion between food and food like substances, your picture of a cow eating grass is in fact food but most meat found in super markets can’t be categorized as such. Since meat is as nutritious as what it was fed when alive, any animal fed with processed foods will itself lack the normal nutrients found when animal is fed its natural diet. Not to mention the things they do to extend shelf life, make the meat more moist and hormones they use to make the animal grow faster and bigger.
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Great post – I watched that clip a few weeks ago, very interesting
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That’s one of the best perks at our company… a real cook who makes real meals and a fresh salad bar to go with it. -
Yeah, I’m going to echo John’s comment with some language from Pollan: don’t eat imitation food. (Why does processed food get to be called food and non-imitation food need the adjective? Makes me crazy.)
Also, I will pimp the hell out of my series on food which includes some great stuff from Pollan and others:
http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/category/food/
Lots of long-attention span stuff in there, but certainly worth watching.
I’ll have to add the Jamie Oliver talk to that series. It’s quite good. I can’t imagine if I like it more or less given he’s so much of a showman. Probably more.
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> (Why does processed food get to be called food and non-imitation food need the adjective? Makes me crazy.)
Short answer – the food lobbies.
At one point they did have to mark processed food as “imitation” but then the lobbies got the national debate to start revolving around nutrients instead of whole foods. At that point the FDA changed its labeling rules to not require the “imitation” label if the food contained the equivalent nutrients of its unprocessed name sake. This is where we get all the additives from. The problem is there is a lot of evidence that processed nutrients are not as effective or in some cases not effective at all when compared to nutrients from whole foods. Nutritionists may be able to identify useful nutrients but to this day do not fully understand the complex interactions between the nutrients, the foods themselves and the way they are ingested, that make them effective.
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I also recommend the latest food talk on TED website by Dan Barber talking about tasty fish.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with_a_fish.html
I guess we’ll have to wait a bit more until image recognition techniques can recognize any type of food.
http://petitinvention.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/future-of-mobile-search-for-diet/
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I might suggest, Even fruits are not completely natural. If you buy locally-grown fruits and vegetables, they are good. If you buy imported fruits and vegetables (or even meat) you are consuming some amount of preservatives as well. I completely agree to the listen-to-your-body-and-not-some-calorie-meter.
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I generally agree with you but I went to a supermarket today and bought (and saw) several things that had barcodes on them and still can (IMO) count as food – for example eggs, milk, nuts, (unprocessed) carrot in a bag, raisins… to name just a few. That something comes in a packing does not mean it is not food – although I acknowledge that carrots from the vegetable market are much better and yet cheaper than those from the supermarket.
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I just chatted about this presentation with some French workmates and the reaction of one of them was horror at the “solution” that Oliver proposes of teaching kids to cook at school so that they teach their parents. His point is that it’s not the job of the state or school or teachers to fill the gap left by irresponsible parenting.
Not sure where I stand on this, because as Jamie says, many of these are the 3rd generation of people who don’t know how to cook. The problem is societal, and the solution is a public health issue. And solving the problem through the kids is the easiest way to go.
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Well why should the school teach kids geography if they don’t know what a tomato is? Those French people sound like totally impractical ideologues.
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Oh, and that 2nd picture also is the source of milk! It’s amazing to me how people who should know where milk comes from get grossed out by watching someone milk a cow at the state fair.
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