Vegetables are what food eats

It’s been a long while since I’ve had occasion to write a good knock-down, drag-out “people are stupid about being healthy” post here. Fortunately, that drought (or should I say deficiency) has come to an end.

• Starving toddlers mistaken for “healthy eating” (Junkfood Science)
• Toddlers and bunnies (Junkfood Science)

(This is perhaps the first “won’t someone please think of the children?” post on Blunt Object. Sorry about that!)

The two articles linked above present a familiar theme: people don’t know shit about what it means to eat a healthy diet, and substitute feel-good bullshit (“it’s organic, it must be healthy”), slickly-marketed pap (“the ad says it’s good for you, and has people with visible abs and lots of plants on it”), and inscrutable superstition (“fiber is good for you, fat is bad for you”) instead. The problem, as those link titles will tell you, is that rather than simply fuck themselves up with their poorly-researched food foolishness, these people are inflicting what are essentially starvation diets upon children in their care. They’re feeding toddlers calorie- and nutrient-sparse rabbit food in an attempt to “cure childhood obesity”.

Let me be clear: this isn’t a cheap attempt at emotional manipulation based on evolved tendencies to protect children. It’s not the “people are fucking up children” part that offends me, it’s the “people are fucking up other people in their care” part. Morally speaking, things would be the same if people were feeding adults ill-considered diets under the aegis of “healthy.”

Eating a healthy diet basically means eating what your body needs to function, and not eating so much of any given thing that it becomes a problem. This isn’t a constant thing — your body’s needs change over time — and it isn’t obvious either, but if you look at food as a way to fuel your metabolism rather than… well, whatever people are thinking when they go to McDonalds, it loses its mystery and starts to seem almost straightforward. (Diet is much like economics in that the inscrutable becomes obvious when you do some research and start knowing what the hell you’re talking about.)

Consider, for example, this passage from the first article:

[P]re-school children have a high energy and nutrient requirement. Because they have a small stomach and a relatively under-developed gut, they cannot consume large quantities of food at a time but need frequent small meals and snacks throughout the day.

High energy requirements and small-capacity digestive systems would suggest that toddlers could benefit from energy-dense foods, like fatty meats.  Considering also that toddlers are growing (in body and mind — rather, in muscle and brain mass), they might just need protein and EFAs.  These little yard monsters need pork chops and prawn rings, not broccoli.

Of course, you’re not going to hear any of this through the usual channels.  Endocrinology and developmental physiology aren’t sufficiently accessible to find their way onto the talk-show circuit.  You have to seek it out.