The Journey
A newsletter for chapter advisors, chapter officers, and regional officers.

Exploring the Honors Study Topic
Carbs vs. Fat: The $33 Billion Lie
By Jody Spooner and Jennifer Brodie

A recent Time magazine cover depicts a befuddled woman holding a plate of pasta in one hand and an enormous steak in the other. The single caption underlying the photograph typifies the re-imaging of an old debate that has been waged for decades in doctors’ offices, nutrition seminars, on television talk shows and at family dining room tables across the country. A debate where solutions are elusive and platitudes reign supreme.

The roughly 168 million Americans who meet the medical definition of overweight want to know: “What really makes us fat?”

The following foods cause weight-gain and obesity, could be dangerous to your health and, subsequently, should not be consumed: bananas, carrots, cranberries, cherries, green apples, apple juice, orange juice, pasta, bagels, bread, cereal, popcorn, rice, potatoes, lima beans, skim milk, cheese, yogurt, butter, red meat, pork, fatty fish, cake, cookies, ice cream, candy, chocolate. . . come to think of it, in our “expert opinion,” better add any food you can think of to this list.

Why has the simple question of what should we eat become so complicated? In the early 1990s, diet gurus, such as Susan Powter, singled out fat as the mortal enemy. Low-fat, high carbohydrate solutions incited a frenzied campaign against red meat, eggs, fried foods, butter, and oils, and the diet and food industries responded accordingly, packaging “fat-free” as the nutritional panacea of tomorrow: “Eat as much as you want, whenever you want, as long as it has no fat.”

Of course, America’s current fixation with fat is a reaction to the abject failure of the fat-free lifestyle. Not because carbohydrates, in actuality, make a person fat and are inherently evil, but because in our collective quest for the perfect body, the American diet industry has taught us that food is the enemy to slay and they are the heroes who can save us.

The reality of what causes the vast majority of people to gain weight is much simpler and much less insidious than the diet industry would have you believe. It is certainly much less profitable for those who use this dichotomy to perpetuate a conflict that creates a $33 billion dollar industry by encouraging us to believe food is an enemy we can conquer by purchasing the right advice.

With apologies to the gun-control campaign, food doesn’t make people fat; people make people fat. And those people include the diet industry soothsayers and they include us, the Americans who embrace a culture of excess and who have lost contact with our most primal instincts.

The most frustrating aspect of our culture’s current obsession with the carb vs. fat debate is that we tend to lose sight of what matters most: balance. The “either/or” mentality distracts us from what should be our primary concern: supporting our health with a sensible diet. Rather than feeling as though we must choose sides, we need to rely on our own common sense and stick to the ideals of balance, moderation and health.

Food, by nature, cannot have a moral value. Food can have a flavor that is appealing or disgusting, a temperature that is hot or cold, an odor that is fresh or rotten, a condition that is whole or processed. Food can have aesthetic value or nutritional value, but it cannot, outside the scope of certain religious beliefs, have moral value. Our willingness to stigmatize food as “good” and “bad” has a dangerous cumulative effect on how we view eating, not as a pure act of consuming energy to perpetuate life, but as a metaphysical conundrum that places us at odds with our bodies and the foods that fuel them.

People who shed pounds on high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets, or any dietary program that stigmatizes particular foods, do so because they are eating fewer calories. A Harvard University Health Letter explains that the American Dietetic Association recommends that a 154-pound active male consume approximately 2,600 calories per day to stay healthy and fit. According to Barry Sears’ Zone diet, a person who fit that physical description and followed his plan would eat approximately 900 calories daily. One need not be a Phi Theta Kappa member to understand a simple change in caloric intake, not a magical “zone” where the body burns fat more efficiently, would be responsible for any devotee’s success.

The history of American dieting is a legacy of magical formulas and miraculous discoveries based on the evidence of irrefutable “experts” who often use personal experience, not clinical trials or rigorous research, to validate their work as scientific fact. Their guarantees of eternal happiness through thinness and cultural acceptance often leave a trail of broken promises in their wake and heart-sick, self-defeating converts who feel guiltier about their physical conditions. Ironically, they are even more desperate to believe a real and permanent solution is sure to be found in the next diet plan developed by “experts” and marketed directly to an audience willing to pay for a cure with their wallets and their dignity.

Carbs, fat, sugar, food, in general, are not the enemy, and neither are we. However, as long as we embrace our culture of excess and refuse to accept that, as individuals, we share responsibility for our personal and national weight epidemic and are capable of empowering ourselves to change, we stand idle, like the driver who unknowingly overfuels his car, waiting for a spark and disaster.

Jody Spooner is a Phi Theta Kappa advisor at Chipola Junior College in Marianna, Florida. He is a member of the Society’s Honors Committee, which develops the Honors Study Topic, and served as a Faculty Scholar at the 2002 International Honors Institute.

Jennifer Brodie, a graduate of Columbia University, teaches a health and wellness workshop for women. She is the author of the soon-to-be-published Real Solutions for Real Women: A Common Sense Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Dieting Forever.

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This page last modified -- Friday, 14-Nov-2003 11:00:24 CST (cwe)