(Note 7/21/09: Oops, didn't realize Diigo was going to stick these "highlights" into my blog. Anyways...they are my favorite parts of my favorite writer's "fat" article. Oh, and a bonus quote from Ian Frazier's "Shouts and Murmurs.")
Why are Americans fat? : The New Yorker
- Undeniably, the fat—the authors of “The Reader” are adamant advocates for the “f” word—are subject to prejudice and even cruelty. A 2008 report by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, at Yale, noted that teachers consistently hold lower expectations of overweight children
- To claim that some people are just meant to be fat is not quite the same as arguing that some people are just meant to be poor, but it comes uncomfortably close.
- it’s those living just above the poverty level who appear to be gaining weight most rapidly.
- in the new world order, it is possible to be overweight and malnourished at the same time
- Collecting the maximum number of calories with the least amount of effort is, after all, the dream of every creature, including those too primitive to dream.
Why are Americans fat? : The New Yorker
- The movement known variously as “size acceptance,” “fat acceptance,” “fat liberation,” and “fat power” has been around for more than four decades; in 1967, at a “fat-in” staged in Central Park, participants vilified Twiggy, burned diet books, and handed out candy. More recently, fat studies has emerged as a field of scholarly inquiry; four years ago, the Popular Culture Association/American Cultural Association added a fat-studies component to its national conferences, and in 2006 Smith College hosted a three-day seminar titled “Fat and the Academy.”
- Today, soft drinks account for about seven per cent of all the calories ingested in the United States, making them “the number one food consumed in the American diet.”
- Kessler spends a lot of time meeting with (often anonymous) consultants who describe how they are trying to fashion products that offer what’s become known in the food industry as “eatertainment.” Fat, sugar, and salt turn out to be the crucial elements in this quest: different “eatertaining” items mix these ingredients in different but invariably highly caloric combinations. A food scientist for Frito-Lay relates how the company is seeking to create “a lot of fun in your mouth” with products like Nacho Cheese Doritos, which meld “three different cheese notes” with lots of salt and oil. Another product-development expert talks about how she is trying to “unlock the code of craveability,” and a third about the effort to “cram as much hedonics as you can in one dish.”
Shouts & Murmurs: The Temperature of Hell: A Colloquium : The New Yorker
- So when you look at your kids asleep in their beds after you return to your homes this evening, I want you to ask yourselves, “What kind of Hell am I leaving for them, and for my grandchildren?”
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
