By Jane Zheng
“As more of us indulge our passion for local,
organic delicacies, a growing number of Americans don’t have enough nutritious
food to eat. How we can bridge the gap?” Lisa Miller asks in “ Divided We Eat”.
In “Divided We Eat”, Miller talks about the reasons of
why the gap of food between the rich and the poor become larger and what could
we do to reduce the negative effects of this issue. Miller describes the meals
of three different types of families around her neighborhood (within 5 miles).
The first type is foodies like Miller, her neighbor Alexandra Ferguson and
their friends, who live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, a community with plentiful
foodies. She starts with her family’s breakfast with high quality exotic food.
However, Alexandra concerns more about food than Miller does. She spends hours
on food everyday and approximately 20 percent of family income on food. Furthermore,
she is a disciple of Michael Pollan, who believes her right choice of every
bite is not only means eating healthily but also contributes to “the
existential happiness of farm animals and farmers” and to “the survival of the
planet”(Miller). On the other hand, when these foodies take expensive food with
high quality as their daily pursuits, the children live just 5 miles away
sometimes do not have enough food to eat, and most of them live on fast food.
To emphasize the gap, Miller mentions the argument between
Alexandra and her mother about food. The contradiction of eating expensive food
with high quality and food waste problem takes place.
Before the description of the second meal of
a single-mother family, Miller provides some backgrounds of food insecure
households. The data shows the surge in food these years and the single mother
families are the largest part of food insecure families. These conditions
caused Miller’s thoughts of the reasons of how the gap of food becomes larger
between the rich and the poor. First is the high price of healthy food, Miller
states that in today’s America, “what you eat for dinner has become the
definitive marker od social status; as the distance between rich and poor
continues to grow, the freshest, most nutritious foods have become luxury good
that only some can afford”(Miller). Because of the high price of healthy food,
low-income families’ rights of choosing high quality and nutritious food are
deprived. On the other word they can only afford unhealthy food, which are high
caloric mass-produced. Nevertheless, this also explains the condition: “obesity
has risen as the income gap has widened”(Miller). In addition, the words and works
of Adam Drewnowski reflect the main point of “Divide We Eat”: “Americans’ food
choices correlate to social class”(Miller). Ultimately，Americans’ food choices have a strong connection with
family income and food price. Second, Miller regards the nutritional education
as another reason of this issue. Lower income families choose cheap and tasty
fast food with no concern of their health because they lack nutritional
education. Last but not least, the episode of Christmas catalog from Barneys
shows that using luxury food has become fashionable among the rich.
The second meal is in Tiffiney Davis’s home.
As a single-mother raises two children, she has only $100 a week on food. She
does not have time to cook at home everyday and could not afford fresh food,
although she has tried her best to supply good food for her children. Davis
tells a story happened in her building. A 9-year old boy with obesity died of
an asthma attack right in front of his mother, because the mother ignores her
son’s obesity kept feeding him junk.
The story told by Davis is the
primers of the discussion of what should we do to reduce the food gap between
the rich and poor and how could we do to help the low-income families eat
healthier. Miller states three main ways. First, Americans should treat food as
a shared resource like the French do. We should see eating as a social activity
rather than a matter of personal freedom, an inalienable right. In this way ,
as French sociologist Claude Fischler says “ Americans can fight both obesity
and food insecurity”. Second, government and some food institutions should take
efforts. Some incentive programs give food-stamp recipients extra credit if
they buy food at farmers’ markets, which encourages the low-income families to
eat healthier. Last but not least, the food industry also plays an important
role of solving this problem. Take Walmart’s recent announcement as an example.
The big retailers are looking to sell fresh produce in a scalable way. Anyway,
it is a pleasing thing for the public.
At the end of this article, Miller records
her experience at Jabir Suluki’s house. Suluki and his mother are diabetic ,
and have very low income. But he refuses to
drink soda, buys fresh food in farmer market, cooks everyday for families with
limited budget on food. And he also tries his best to help the families like
his in his community. Miller uses the experience of Suluki drawing a conclusion
of “Divided We Eat”, which tells us that with a little money we could also eat
in a healthy way.
When it comes to the topic of the causes of common
obesity in American, most of us will agree that obesity is caused by bad eating
habits, lack of physical exercise, and Western diet model. Where this agreement
usually ends, however, is on the question of why obesity and some other health
issues like diabetes are much more acute among low- income families than the
people in higher socio-economic groups. According to Marx's "base determines superstructure", we need to focus on the economical
realities to find out the main reason why the gap of health conditions between
rich and poor increases these years. In “ Divided We Eat”, there are two kinds
of people. One likes the author and her neighbor Alexandra who are called as food
snob and health nut “idulge their passion for local, organic delicacies”. The
other one like Tiffany Davis and Jabir Suluki, who are on
food stamps, hardly have enough nutritious food to eat. This compared
description raises for me three questions. What causes this kind huge difference
on diet between rich and poor? Why is this issue acute in America other than
European countries and developing countries? How can we bridge the food divide,
and what can we learn from other countries to diminish the gap?
We saw how industrial food and fast- food system
run in film “ Food, Inc.” It is easy to understand why processed food is cheap,
but lacks nutrients. For the low- income families with limited budget on food,
the lower price is the most effective factor when they making a choice. It is
really easy to understand, if I only have 5 dollars to spend on food per day, it
also means I am a person without leisure time, because I have to use every
minute to earn money. In this situation, fast- food becomes my best choice, it
is not only cheap, but also fast and can provide high calories for large amount
of physical exertion.
There are rich and poor in every country, so why
is this issue so serious in US? Compared with Europe, take France as an
example. In France, most students take lunchboxes to school because it costs
more money to buy a hamburger or pizza as lunch. And most families are used to
cooking at home, they only eat outside on weekends or they have social
activities. In Europe, fast- food is not as popular as it in America. On the
other hand, in some developing country the situation is quite different. As the
country with the largest population in world, which is one of fifth of the
world’s population, China has a vast working poor class. They earn low salary,
which could only ensure their basic life needs. Meanwhile, processing food
industry is not developed in China, also because of the large amount of
laborers, which leads to cheap labor. Consequently, the level of mechanization is
limited. High level of mechanization means high unemployment in China. So the
machinery and equipment only be used in the areas, which require advanced
science. However, eating at home is a good choice for Chinese, it helps save
the fee of labor and service. What’s more, mechanization can only be used on
growing wheat, corn, and soybeans, which are not the main staple food in China.
Because of the unique cultivation of rice, it is hard to make it mechanization.
Vegetables and fruits are almost planted by small farmers in China, the
commercial chain is short with only a few middlemen between the farmers and
consumers, some times there are even no middleman, the farmers sell their
products directly in the market near their home. Here the answer of the problem
already rose to surface gradually. The over developed
industrial food system is the main problem. The dominance of fast food and processed
food industry effect Americans eating habits, while people themselves have no
notification. But the health consequences are exposed in these years, after the
advanced processed food system.
Except the problems caused by the processed food
companies and advertisement companies, people who have health issues have to
pay attention on themselves.
Low-
income families who think eating cheap food is saving money should change their
mind. Please do not eat junk food for saving money. It just leads you spending
much more money. The people on food stamps rely on sodas, fast- food and high
sweetened and calorie food to eschew hunger is quite usual
in America. The low-income families have to worry whether they will be hungry
tomorrow. For these poor families with limited budget of food, some concepts
like nutrition, organics and healthy are too far from their lives. The only
time they pay attention on their health is when obesity or diabetes threat to
their health. Then they have to spend a lot of money on the medicines while
still have junk food every day to save money. Obviously it adds up to a vicious
cycle of destruction: eating junk food in order to save money, when leads to high incidence of health issue (such as obesity and
diabetes). The diseases force these families to spend more money. Taken as a
whole the families just save money for a short period, in the long term they
spend much more money than planned. The cost of overcoming obesity and the
diseases caused by obesity is not only a large number for a family, but also
for our nation. From a report of CNN “ Obesity is growing faster than
any previous public health issue our nation has faced. If current trends
continue, 103 million American adults will be considered obese by 2018. The U.S. is expected to spend $344 billion on
health care costs attributable to obesity in 2018 if rates continue to increase
at their current levels. Obesity‐related direct expenditures are
expected to account for more than 21 percent of the nation’s direct health care
spending in 2018” (Anderson Cooper).
Compared the conditions of
European and developing countries, it is time for American to rethink whether
it is necessary to have such s high level of mechanization in food industry and
such a large number of fast- food restaurants. As we all know the processed
food is harmful for our health. For our government, it is time to control the
development of food industry with adding tax on processed food and to use the
money from the tax of processed food to supply the farmers who work on organic
and local food. Happily, we see “Laws Promoting Healthy
Diets See Some Result” these years. “Cities
and counties across the U.S. are approving ordinances aimed at tackling obesity
and associated health problems. In 2008, New York started to require that
restaurants post nutrition information of food on menus, and several other
local governments approved similar laws until Congress passed a law in 2010
requiring restaurants with 20 or more outlets to post calorie counts on menus.
A New York health department survey of 1,600 people in 2009 revealed that 25
percent felt that the nutrition information posted impacted on what they
purchased”(Martin).
For low- income families, the experience of Suluki
discussed in Miller’s article “ Divided We Eat” is a good example for us.
Suluki refuses to drink soda, buys fresh food in farmer market and cooks
everyday for families with limited budget on food. And he also tries his best
to help the families like his in his community. From the experience of Suluki
we happily see that with little money we can still eat fresh and healthy food.
Start from ourselves, it is not hard to eat healthily.
Works Cited
Martin, Anne. "Laws Promoting Healthy Diets See Some
Result." web.ebscohost.com. American City & County; January
2011, Vol. 126 Issue 1, Jan. 2011. Web.
Miller, Lisa. "Divided We Eat." The Daily Beast.
Newsweek/Daily Beast, 22 Nov. 2010.Web.21 Feb. 2012.
"Report: The Future Costs of Obesity." –
Anderson Cooper 360. Web. 22 Feb. 2012.
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