SWEETNESS AND
POWER
One out of 10 meals
purchased from a restaurant this year will be consumed in a car. When snacks from convenience stores are
included, the incidence of eating-while-driving may be as high as one in six
meals, according to a marketing survey reported in the Wall Street Journal.
"Consumers are very proud when they use time more
efficiently," says consultant Gary Steibel of Westport, Conn. Burger King is testing "a new
pocket-like sandwich wrapper that is easier to pick up and put down -- a
benefit in stop-and-go traffic..." Steve Barnett, an anthropologist and
principal with Global Business Network, which tracks consumer behavior (and
former director of product planning for Nissan North America) says some people
today get upset if their commute is too short because it's the only time they
have to themselves. “Work is hectic, home is hectic, but the car is always
quiet.” he says.
Some behavioral experts
say the urge to eat in the car may run even deeper. People need to balance their sensory stimulation, says Michael T.
Marsden, a dean at Northern Michigan University who has done extensive research
on car culture in America... “Some industry experts think the car companies
will eventually come around to equipping cars for mealtime." Drive through windows now account for 55% of
the business in restaurants where they’re available. "French fries are eminently eatable in the car," says a
McDonald's spokesperson. Guess he
doesn't use much ketchup.
In Sweetness and Power,
Sidney Mintz shows how capitalism has undermined the social quality of eating
as well as the nutritional content of what we eat. The diet of Scottish working people (who, until the mid-18th
century were mainly agricultural workers), was based on porridge and milk. When the workers were driven off the land,
they switched to bread with butter and tea with sugar. "The jute industry provided
opportunities for female labour, so that many housewives went out to work in
Dundee. When the mother is at work
there is not time to prepare porridge or broth..."
Mintz adds,
"Sweetened preserves (more than 50% sugar), which could be left standing
indefinitely without spoiling ;and without refrigeration, which were cheap and
appealing to children, and which tasted better than more costly butter with
store-purchased bread, outstripped or replaced porridge, much as tea had
replaced milk and home-brewed beer. In
practice, the convenience foods freed the wage-earning wife from one or even
two meal preparations per day, meanwhile providing large numbers of calories to
all her family. Hot tea (with sugar)
often replaced hot meals for children off the job, as well as for adults on the
job." At the start of the 19th
century, sugar accounted for 2 percent of the total calories in Scottish
workers' diet. By the end of the
century it was more than 14 percent.
The trend continues
worldwide, with simple carbohydrates (sucrose) replacing complex carbohydrate
(starches) wherever workers have been driven off the land (everywhere).
"Together with the sugar increases come remarkable increase in the
consumption of fats," according to Mintz.
In the US the consumption of sugar as a proportion of carbohydrates has
doubled in this century. The total
daily average per capita consumption of complex carbohydrates fell from about
350 grams to about 180 grams between 1910 and 1970, while the consumption of
fat increased by 25 percent. With
further increase in recent years, the typical American is now consuming
three-quarters of a pound of fat and sugar per day.
The way we live now is characterized by "desocialized eating," says Mintz. "Choices to be made about eating -- when, where, what, how much, how quickly -- are now made with less reference to fellow eaters, and within ranges predetermined, on the one hand, by food technology and, on the other, by what are perceived as time constraints. The experience of time in modern society is often one of an insoluble shortage, and the perception may be essential to the smooth functioning of an economic system based on the principle of ever-expanding consumption." Mintz's brilliant
study provides data that
debunks the myth of progress and the myth that capitalism promotes "family
values."
-- Fred Gardner
reprinted from the Anderson
Valley Advertiser
(POB 459,Boonville, CA 95415)
