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Cross-country flights, for all their mind numbing irritants, are at least good for concentrated reading time. On a business trip last week to Denver, I made the most of all that sitting and tore through two spectacular books, finishing one completely and wrapping up a novel that I had been working on for too long. I was especially grateful for the chance to read all of Tracie McMillan's The American Way of Eating. It was perfect for a long airplane trip, since I could not have put it down if I had tried, and because it was about a topic already much on my mind--see the previous post.

There is always more to the story and the more I read through McMillan's book, the worse I felt for my dismissive and naively worded post about American eating. McMillan researched her book by working alongside immigrant farm laborers in the vegetable fields of California, stocking groceries and produce in a Walmart in Michigan, and prepping meals in an Applebee's kitchen in New York. There were so many well-articulated and intriguing points in this one that the gentleman sitting beside me on the return flight finally gave in and exasperatedly asked me why I kept tearing up small bits of paper strips and sticking them in the pages. I did not have an easy answer for him and, though I generally enjoy the chance to tell people about my blog, I knew doing so would provoke a longer conversation and give me far less time to actually finish the book. A quick,  just a lot of good stuff in here, while not actually turning to look at him did the trick. And there is a lot of good stuff in here.

My previous post, while being critical of the American way of eating in general, failed to address the larger and more important issue of class when it comes to the American diet, and McMillan fully delves into and makes completely clear the absolute centrality of the matter. There is simply far more to American eating than ignorance or a lack of awareness about calories, and I am regretful that I implied otherwise. McMillan made clear for me that food is very much a social activity in our culture. It is shared as a sign of love and hospitality, as a celebration of milestones and important events, as a signal of intimacy, and in ways elemental to who we are as human beings. We all care about food and we all need food--good food and healthy food. Lack of awareness or perspective on how we consume it, while still a large part of the issues at play here, is not all that keeps people from eating well and eating smartly.

McMillan's book is worth the read alone for the opportunity to learn about the astoundingly vast logistical network we have created for cultivating and distributing food in our country. She discusses the evolution of this system and the social and cultural shifts that brought it about. While it is impressive and ingenious, for sure, once you understand a little about how it works and how concentrated is the control of it, you will not in any way be able to think of the food you buy in your grocery store in the same way again.

There is actually nothing natural about this system. To walk through Walmart's cavernous aisles is to walk through a landscape created by a century's worth of decisions America has made about its food. We prized agricultural bounty; we valorized mass marketing; we made transportation and distribution into a science. We've built a massive infrastructure capable of taking whatever we grow and delivering it wherever we choose, on a scale heretofore unseen; this much is true. And yet I'm reminded, in a small way, of what John Steinbeck wrote when he visited migrant labor camps not far from where I picked grapes: There is a failure here that topples all our successes. It is far easier to eat well in America than in most of the world, but we've done little to ensure that fresh and healthy food is available to everyone.
 

I was prompted as well to consider the implications of the added stress and required decision-making that planning and cooking meals entails. Interestingly enough, I have seen and read a bit of late about how we make decisions as humans. Our brains, over the course of a day, actually develop decision-making fatigue, to the point that we eventually give up and guess or make the easier choice as the decisions, even the seemingly smallest ones, pile up and overwhelm us. This is intuitive, sure, but it plays an important role in the decisions we make daily about our health and our eating. Couple that fatigue with the stresses of making ends meet or working long hours or worrying about one's own physical safety and it becomes obvious that eating well is either a choice too wearisome to make or simply not a choice at all for many Americans. Which means, then, that one of the points I made in the previous post still stands: that the nutritional value of public school lunches is incredibly important. If a school lunch is the only real food choice provided in a child's day, it is all the more important that it be a good one.

The key to getting people to eat better isn't that they should spend money, or even that they should spend more time. It's making the actual cooking of a meal into an easy choice, the obvious answer. And that only happens when people are as comfortable and confident in the kitchen as they are taking care of the other endless chores that come with running a modern family--paying bills, cleaning house, washing the car.
Because, really, that's what I'm helping with back here amid the grease and the steam and the clang of tongs on metal: Coordinating a basic household task. There will be days for every person, every family, where it is worth paying four times more for the service. That's fine. But the longer I'm at Applebee's, the more I think everyone should be making that choice from equal footing: with easy access to fresh ingredients, and a solid ability to cook. Our health, as that of our ancestors, depends on it.
 

There are many, many reasons for the woeful state of our nation's eating habits and I glossed over this all too easily last week, but McMillan makes strongly the point that this issue is an economic one at its core.

Geography and the minute variations between the lowest rungs of our economy might change the details, but the healthiest route through the American foodscape is a steep and arduous path most easily ascended by joining its top income bracket. So far as I can tell, changing what's on our plates simply isn't feasible without changing far more. Wages, health care, work hours, and kitchen literacy are just as critical to changing our diets as the agriculture we practice or the places at which we shop.
 

This idea of kitchen literacy struck a chord with me, especially when she linked its importance with another issue that is of utmost importance to this blog, basic literacy in general.

If we managed to incorporate cooking into public education, we'd make sure the next generation could prepare healthy meals . . . leaving those skills to chance strikes me as shortsighted. Just as we have an interest in having kids who can read, we have a very strong public interest in having healthy kids. We recognize that the former is too important a skill to leave to parents alone, and therefore teach it in school; given the links between a healthy diet and knowing how to cook meals from scratch, we might want to try doing the same with cooking.
 

Even if you do not find yourself agreeing with McMillan's conclusions and the solutions she offers, her book is one that digs deeply into things that affect each of us every single day. Having a better sense of where our food comes from, how it is handled and delivered to us, and how this system is controlled is something that should be of interest to every American. These are things that are simply far too important for us to ignore.