Rethos

This is a picture of some radishes I saw at a market in New Delhi, India last year.

They look delicious, weird - like something out of a David Lynch movie - and their abundance would warm the hearts and pans of all foodies.

But is fawning appreciation of abundance in food culture actually killing us? Is the explosion of popular interest in food, supported in part by thoughtful, conscious 'early adopter' foodies actually making us all fat?

An article in a journal recently published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services makes a compelling case that Eating is an Automatic Behavior.

Rather than being naturally abstemious and stopping eating when we've had enough, the article draws attention to recent scientific studies that suggest that

People served larger portions simply eat more food.

The natural trajectory is for eating to continue. So much so that in a clever experiment carried out by the Director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab

researchers secretly refilled bowls of soup while people ate from them and found that people ate 73% more soup when this occurred.

If eating is an automatic behavior, influenced more by how much we eat rather than what's on offer, should those who worry about the 'obesity epidemic' be arguing for reducing cues that encourage eating in general and stop having a go at convenience foods - or fat people?

Should health Czars and mini-Czarinas cruising the heaving aisles of Whole Foods Market be cast as villains rather than idols?

At the moment, English and American culture is full of food.

Thousands of hours of TV are devoted to the stuff. Farmers across the world are failing to meet demand. Of the two Gordons, Gordon Ramsey commands more column inches. And magazines are full of alluring and complex dishes involving hand-reared authentic lamb and cheese produced in a particular Dingley Dell.

For sure it matters what we eat.

But for starters, take statistics on obesity.

For entrees, weigh it up against the overpowering number of foodie fads.

And what might be on the menu for afters...more illness and more dead people?

	MAR 07, 2008 Mary Martin
	What appears to be missing from this equation is mindfulness. If we attend to what we eat, when we eat and where we eat, gorging becomes virtually impossible. And if we choose food that feeds the mind and body: organic fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds, we save money, do less damage to the environment, AND create less of a possibility for diseases and obesity.

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