In the 1980s, health-conscious North Americans would start their days with grapefruit and cottage cheese with black coffee, tossing their permed hair and turning a cold —and often padded—shoulder to foods not hyped as miracle fat-burners.
In the 1990s, health-conscious people would start their days with yogurt and fruit, brushing crumbs of nonfat granola off their Calvin Klein T-shirts and oversized jeans, praising themselves for bringing their fat intake as close to zero as possible.
Now, health-conscious people pile their breakfast plates high with bacon and eggs, hiding their eyes behind a curtain of flat-ironed hair and newsboy hats, lest they catch a glimpse of muffins or starchy fruits. The trend here? We know that as a whole, the continent isn’t getting thinner or healthier, and there are stacks of shameful statistics on obesity, heart disease and diabetes to prove it.
The Canadian government recently placed a ban on the labeling of foods as “low-carb,” since no universal method of counting carbs exists, and sneaky marketers can use this loophole to hawk their wares with the low-carb promise, knowing the diet-frenzied masses will buy them. This is a smart move by the government to protect consumers who aren’t cynical enough to believe that food retailers are scheming and deceptive.
However, I’d like to imagine people can use their own discretion enough to note when a food is good or harmful for them, without blindly following the preaching of the Atkins craze.
Ten years ago nobody had heard of cutting carbohydrates, and yet in the ’90s we thought ourselves to be pretty nutrition-savvy. Who’s to say that in 10 more years, a new trend will make all this carb-cutting look downright laughable?
The pinnacle of low-carb foolishness came to me this summer in , where I sat at a cafe and watched from of the corner of my eye as three American girls tucked into their large salads-as-meals, insisting to the patient waiter they didn’t want baguette with their food, and not noticing his look of helpless confusion. In — nation of good food and shockingly low rates of heart disease —bread is the sustenance of a meal.
Until just a few years ago, this was the policy on our side of the ocean as well. I would have pointed out this scene of humorous culture-clash to my travelmate, but my mouth was full of pastry, and it was too delicious to swallow in haste. And between our bungling attempts at speaking the French language and our willingness to dive into the pastry-and-espresso French lifestyle, the waiter loved us.
I’m not writing this as a scolding of people’s trend-obsessions—I’m hardly in a place to judgement on the flawed or credible eating habits of others.
I’d just like to address the fact that food obsession is an issue, albeit a shake-your-head funny one if you ask me.
When one decade’s taboo is another decade’s sustenance, it should be fairly obvious that an entire continent will not get healthier through a Russian roulette of diet trends, eliminating food group by food group in hopes of finding the cure-all diet. There’s a humourous futility in mapping the fads as they come and go, knowing that three decades later we are none the wiser, more crazed by diets than by health itself.
So what happens with these hopeful dieters over the ages? Did a generation of low-fat crusaders succumb to the claims of Dr. Atkins and his low-carb gospel? Or do the two camps co-exist in bitter rivalry? I can picture each diet group meeting in some sort of time-warped breakfast together, where the people from the 90’s would snatch up fruit and toast, leaving the ham and sausages for the hungry new millenium crowd.
The 1980s group would hoard the grapefruit juice, throwing in supplements and wheatgrass just for kicks, while the gang from our time would look on in horror and amazement at the sucrose-filled, low-fibre drinks.
A riot would break out at the granola bin, where it is revealed the ’90s group had picked out all the protein-rich almonds because of their fat content, and thrown them into the garbage. The tray of lean turkey slices would be fought over and divided as though it were the Rhineland, and the yogurt and cottage cheese section would spark such a debate that a permanent tribunal would have to be established, as the issue couldn’t conceivably come to a close anytime before lunch. Somewhere in the picture a rogue late-’90s organic band would scold everyone on the health risks of aspartame and pesticides, and proceed to dish out herbal teas to each table like Halloween candy.
And where do the rest of us fit in? Hopefully, long-gone before the brawls commence. It’s only breakfast, after all.
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