The Evolved Eater

by Nick Taranto

  14  Moss, Salt Sugar Fat, locations 2883–8.

  6: The Cacophony of Confusion

  1  Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, “What’s a Food Industry to Do?” YouTube presentation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BdFkK-HufU

  2  Michael Pollan, “Altered State,” New York Times, May 3, 2015.

  3  Bruce Bradley, “My Story,” Bruce Bradley’s website, http://brucebradley.com/my-story/.

  4  Bruce Bradley, e-mail correspondence with author, September 12, 2016.

  5  Bruce Bradley, “Marketing to Kids: Collateral Damage in Big Food’s Profit Hunt,” Bruce Bradley’s website, http://brucebradley.com/food/marketing-to-kids-collateral-damage-in-big-foods-profit-hunt/.

  6  Brook Barnes and Brian Stetler, “Nickelodeon Resists Critics of Food Ads,” New York Times, June 19, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/business/media/nickelodeon-resists-critics-of-food-ads.html?_r =0.

  7  Committee on Food Marketing and the Diets of Children and Youth, Food Marketing to Children and Youth: Threat or Opportunity (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2006).

  8  Institute of Medicine, Food Marketing to Children: Threat or Opportunity? (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2006).

  9  “Food Marketing to Kids,” Public Health Law Center, http://publichealthlawcenter.org/topics/healthy-eating/food-marketing-kids.

  10  “Food Marketing: Presentations for Download,” UCONN Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, http://www.uconnruddcenter.org/food-marketing-presentations-for-download.

  11  Jennifer L. Harris et al., Evaluating the Nutrition Quality and Marketing of Children’s Cereals (New Haven, CT: Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, 2009).

  12  “Cereal FACTS 2012: A Spoonful of Progress in a Bowl Full of Unhealthy Marketing to Kids,” Yale News, June 22, 2012, http://news.yale.edu/2012/06/22/cereal-facts-2012-spoonful-progress-bowl-full-unhealthy-marketing-kids.

  13  Emily York, “McDonald’s to Kids: Eat Fruit, Drink Milk, Visit Arches,” Chicago Tribune, March 5, 2012.

  14  “Advertising Spending,” Cereal FACTS.

  15  Elaine Wong, “Frito-Lay Names CMO,” Adweek, October 5, 2009, http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/frito-lay-names-cmo-100547.

  16  Michael Mudd, “How to Force Ethics on the Food Industry,” New York Times, March 13, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/opinion/sunday/how-to-force-ethics-on-the-food-industry.html?_r=0.

  17  Eric Lipton, “Rival Industries Sweet-Talk the Public,” New York Times, February 12, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/12/business/rival-industries-sweet-talk-the-public.html?_r=0.

  18  Mark Morgan Ford, “The Food Pyramid Turned Upside-Down,” Early to Rise, http://www.earlytorise.com/the-food-pyramid-turned-upside-down/.

  19  Ibid.

  20  “A Fatally Flawed Food Guide,” Luise Light, Whale, http://whale.to/a/light.html.

  21  Carole Davis and Etta Saltos, “Dietary Recommendations and How They Have Changed Over Time” in America’s Eating Habits: Changes and Consequences, edited by Elizabeth Frazão (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, 1999), 35, http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aib-agricultural-information-bulletin/aib750.aspx.

  22  “Harvard School of Public Health: Food Pyramids,” Matzner Clinic, http://www.matznerclinic.com/PDFs/HarvardPyramids.pdf.

  23  Gary Taubes, Good Calories, Bad Calories (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2007), Kindle edition, locations 207–11.

  24  Davis and Saltos, “Dietary Recommendations,” 36.

  25  David Perlmutter, Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar—Your Brain’s Silent Killers (Boston: Little, Brown, 2013), Kindle edition, 82.

  26  Ibid., 82–3.

  27  Ibid.

  28  Ibid., 83.

  29  Jill Carroll, “The Government’s Food Pyramid Correlates to Obesity, Critics Say,” Wall Street Journal, June 13, 2002; “A Fatally Flawed Food Guide,” Light.

  30  “A Fatally Flawed Food Guide,” Light.

  31  Ibid.

  7: When Food Becomes Nutrition

    1  Institute for Integrative Nutrition, e-mail to the author, April 29, 2016.

    2  “Unscientific Beliefs about Scientific Topics in Nutrition” held April 27, 2014, at the ASN Scientific Sessions and Annual Meeting at Experimental Biology 2014 in San Diego, California. The symposium was sponsored by the American Society for Nutrition (ASN) and the ASN Nutritional Sciences Council.

    3  Andrew Brown, “Let Industry Fund Science,” Slate, September 21, 2016, http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2016/09/should_researchers_have_to_disclose_funding.html.

    4  M. B. Cope and D. B. Allison, “White Hat Bias: Examples of its Presence in Obesity Research and a Call for Renewed Commitment to Faithfulness in Research Reporting,” International Journal of Obesity 34, no. 1 (2010): 84–88, http://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2009.239.

    5  Gary Taubes, “Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy?” New York Times Magazine, September 16, 2007.

    6  At the center of the Big Fat About-Face is the science of epidemiology itself. “Establishing the dangers of cholesterol in our blood and the benefits of low-fat diets has always been portrayed as a struggle between science and corporate interests,” writes Gary Taubes in Good Calories, Bad Calories. “And although it’s true that corporate interests have been potent forces in the public debates over the definition of a healthy diet, the essence of the diet-heart controversy has always been scientific.”

    7  Jonathan D. Schoenfeld and John P. A. Ioannidis, “Is Everything We Eat Associated with Cancer? A Systematic Cookbook Review,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 97, no. 1 (2013): 127–34, http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/97/1/127.long.

    8  Taubes, “Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy?”

    9  S. Claiborne Johnston et al., “Effect of a US National Institutes of Health programme of Clinical Trials on Public Health and Costs,” Lancet 367, no. 9519 (2006): 1319–27.

  10  Taubes, “Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy?”

  11  Nina Teicholz, The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 3.

  12  Mark Bowden, “The Measured Man,” Atlantic, July/August 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/the-measured-man/309018/.

  13  Larry Smarr, phone interview with the author, June 17, 2016.

  14  L. Smarr, “Quantifying Your Body: A How-To Guide from a Systems Biology Perspective,” Biotechnology Journal 7, no. 8 (2012): 980–91.

  15  Bowden, “The Measured Man.”

  16  “Orthorexia Nervosa,” Karin Kratina, NEDA, https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/orthorexia-nervosa.

  17  “Frankly, I’d rather go river rafting,” says Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice and the author of Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health. “Data is not information. Information is not knowledge. And knowledge is certainly not wisdom.” Welch believes that individuals who monitor themselves too closely are pretty much guaranteed to find something “wrong.” “It brings to mind the fad a few years ago with getting full-body CT scans,” Welch says. “Something like 80 percent of those who did it found something abnormal about themselves. The essence of life is variability. Constant monitoring is a recipe for all of us to be judged ‘sick.’ Judging ourselves sick, we seek intervention.” Welch rails against current forms of intervention, which today normally starts with drugs or surgery and is rarely risk-free. As Welch sees it, “Arming ourselves with more data is guaranteed to unleash a lot of intervention” on people who are basically healthy. Until “intervention” starts with nutrition instead of pills or the scalpel, quantification may lead to
more harm than good.

  9: The Future of Food

    1  To read Matt’s open letter to the CEO of McDonald’s, please go here: https://www.freshii.com/static/pdf/Open_Letter_to_McDonalds.pdf

  10: Cook Your Way to Happiness

    1  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008).

    2  Frank T. McAndrew, “It’s Healthier to Be Sad Sometimes Than Happy All the Time,” Quartz, October 12, 2016, http://qz.com/760582/we-arent-meant-to-be-happy-all-the-time-and-thats-a-good-thing/.

    3  Jennifer Hecht writes on this concept at length in her book The Happiness Myth, http://www.jennifermichaelhecht.com/the-happiness-myth/.

    4  Joe Pinsker, “Why So Many Smart People Aren’t Happy,” Atlantic, April 26, 2016, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/why-so-many-smart-people-arent-happy/479832/.

    5  McAndrew, “It’s Healthier to Be Sad.”

    6  “Hedonic Treadmill,” Shane Frederick, Yale University, http://faculty.som.yale.edu/ShaneFrederick/HedonicTreadmill.pdf.

    7  “Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative?” Philip Brickman, Dan Coates, and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, UC–San Diego, http://pages.ucsd.edu/~nchristenfeld/Happiness_Readings_files/Class%203%20-%20Brickman%201978.pdf.

    8  Derrick Carpenter, “The Science Behind Gratitude (and How It Can Change Your Life),” Happify Daily, http://www.happify.com/hd/the-science-behind-gratitude/.

    9  Robert Emmons, “Why Gratitude is Good,” Greater Good, November 16, 2010, http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_gratitude_is_good/.

  10  Barber, The Third Plate, 16.

  11  Ibid.

  12  Ibid., 16–17.

  13  Sarah Bowen, Sinikka Elliott, and Joslyn Brenton, “The Joy of Cooking?” Contexts 13, no. 3 (Summer 2014): 20–25.

  14  Sarah Kliff, “The Problem with Home-Cooked Meals,” Vox, February 11, 2015, http://www.vox.com/2014/9/26/6849169/the-problem-with-home-cooked-meals.

  15  “Table 2: Trends in Time Spent Cooking for US adults from 1965–1966 to 2007–2008,” National Center for Biotechnology Information, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3639863/table/T2/.

  16  Joanne Guthrie, Biing-Hwan Lin, Abigail Okrent, and Richard Volpe, “Americans’ Food Choices at Home and Away: How Do They Compare with Recommendations?” US Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, February 21, 2013, https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2013/february/americans-food-choices-at-home-and-away/.

  17  “Do Fast Food Restaurants Contribute to Obesity?” National Bureau of Economic Research, http://www.nber.org/bah/2009no1/w14721.html.

  18  Cynthia L. Ogden and Margaret D. Carroll, “Prevalence of Overweight, Obesity, and Extreme Obesity Among Adults: United States, Trends 1960–1962 through 2007–2008,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_adult_07_08/obesity_adult_07_08.htm.

  19  Amanda Marcotte, “Let’s Stop Idealizing the Home-Cooked Family Dinner,” Slate, September 3, 2014, http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/09/03/home_cooked_family_dinners_a_major_burden_for_working_mothers.html.

  20  Michael Pollan, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (New York: Penguin, 2013).

  21  Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, “Home Cooking a Main Ingredient in Healthier Diet, Study Shows,” ScienceDaily, November 17, 2014.

  22  Kiera Butler, “Weeknight Dinner 2.0,” Natural Resources Defense Council, April 21, 2015, https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/weeknight-dinner-20.

  23  Mark Bittman, “The Truth about Home Cooking,” Time, October 9, 2014, http://time.com/3483888/the-truth-about-home-cooking/.

  24  J. Lu, C. Huet, and L. Dubé, “Emotional Reinforcement as a Protective Factor for Healthy Eating in Home Settings,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 94, no. 1 (2011): 254–61.

  25  Ibid.

  26  “American Time Use Survey,” Bureau of Labor Statistics, December 20, 2016, http://www.bls.gov/TUS/CHARTS/HOUSEHOLD.HTM.

  27  Thanks to Max Anderson for the Louis C.K., Velveteen Rabbit, and stone-smoothing analogies!

  Conclusion

    1  “Invasion of the Bottle Snatchers: Smaller Rivals Are Assaulting the World’s Biggest Brands,” Economist, July 9, 2016, http://www.economist.com/news/business/21701798-smaller-rivals-are-assaulting-worlds-biggest-brands-invasion-bottle-snatchers.

    2  Hank Cardello, phone interview with the author, September 8, 2016.

    3  Marion Nestle, phone interview with the author, April 14, 2015.

    4  Michael Moss, phone interview with the author, September 7, 2016.

    5  In his book The Third Plate, chef Dan Barber explores in much more detail how the farm-to-table movement came to be and what his philosophy and approach are for making food more sustainable.

    6  Dan Wesser and Sean Naughton, “Another Grocery Store Headwind? Sizing Up the Meal Kit Market,” Piper Jaffray Industry Note, June 13, 2016, https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiesola/2016/06/07/meal-kit-services-are-taking-a-bite-out-of-high-end-grocery-sales/.

    7  Katie Sola, “Meal Kit Services Are Taking a Bite Out of High-End Grocery Sales,” Forbes.com, June 7, 2016.

    8  Alli Condra, “Why Fruits, Vegetables Are Excluded from Farm Subsidies,” Food Safety News, November 9, 2011.

    9  “Bitter Fruits,” Economist.

  10  This anecdote comes from a recent article on food inequality in “Bitter Fruits,” Economist.

  11  Julie A. Caswell and Ann L. Yaktine, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Examining the Evidence to Define Benefit Adequacy (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2013).

  12  Vanessa Wong, “McDonald’s Will Shift to Cage-Free Eggs by 2025,” BuzzFeed, September 9, 2015.

  13  Farmer and food activist Joel Salatin writes and speaks about “foodie elitism” from the farmer’s perspective. You can read more about him and his farm at http://www.polyfacefarms.com/.

  About the Author

  Nick Taranto was born in New York to a Turkish dad and a mom from Minnesota. After earning his MBA at Harvard Business School, Nick was commissioned as an infantry officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. After active duty, Nick spent six months on Wall Street before leaving to cofound Plated, a technology-driven food company whose mission is to create a world where healthy, affordable, and delicious food is available to everyone. Nick is married and is the “cofounder” of two young daughters.

  Visit him at www.TheEvolvedEater.com, or sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  Introduction: Toward a Better Food Future

  Appetizer: My Journey from Junk-Food Junkie to Evolved Eater

  FIRST COURSE

  The Story of Humans and Food:

  How We Got to This Place Where Food Is a Problem Instead of a Solution

  1. Our Food Is Killing Us

  2. Eating Evolution, Part 1: Cooking Made Us Human

  3. Eating Evolution, Part 2: The Birth of Big Food

  SECOND COURSE

  The Plated Mission:

  Why a New Form of Food Production and Distribution Is Necessary If We Are Going to Reconnect with Our Food

  4.
“City Boy Goes Country”—Farming and Food Production

  5. The CRAP Trap

  6. The Cacophony of Confusion

  7. When Food Becomes Nutrition

  THIRD COURSE

  How to Feed Ten Billion People

  8. Don’t Live on Empty Calories or an Empty Mission

  9. The Future of Food

  10. Cook Your Way to Happiness

  Conclusion: New Food Ideas Require New Food Companies

  Afterword

  Notes

  About the Author

  Copyright

  THE EVOLVED EATER. Copyright © 2018 by Nick Taranto. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.