If you’re like most people, you don’t think deep thoughts about nutrition. You might give it cursory attention when deciding what to serve tonight, but the complex interplay between your diet and the nutrients your body needs probably isn’t fare for dinner-table discussion.
“People spend more time looking around for cheaper gas than they spend looking for the best, most affordable, nutrient-dense foods at the grocery store,” nutrition sciences professor Susan Meacham says. That dietary short shrift has cultivated an American health crisis of epic proportion. Obesity and the roster of accompanying diseases — including heart disease, diabetes, and cancer — are now at record levels.
Nourishing our bodies is a complicated matter combining taste, emotion, culture, economics, and even evolution. While consumers maintain a disconnect between their eating habits and their vitality, nutritionists and other experts at UNLV are searching for ways to improve the relationship between people and food.
A Brief History of Food
The foundation for today’s human diet was laid eons ago, when our earliest ancestors subsisted on a wide variety of plant materials. Anthropology professor Daniel Benyshek says the emergence of the genus Homo around 2.5 million years ago forced nutritional changes that still direct what people consume.
“As the species evolved, our brains grew, and big brains have voracious appetites,” Benyshek says. “Our caloric needs shot through the roof.”
That’s when diets shifted from the gatherer fare of berries and nuts to calorie-rich meats. “There’s no way Homo sapiens would have evolved without access to animal-based foods,” Benyshek says. “They fueled our evolution, in a sense.”
By about 35,000 years ago, humans were expert hunters and gatherers, wandering far and wide in constant search of sustenance. Researchers speculate diets consisted of about 35 percent animal-based foods, with the remainder devoted to plant-based foods. Centuries went by without much change in human diets.
Cultural and economic factors in the 20th century, though, reshaped the diets that sustained us well for thousands of years. Audrey McCool, a food & beverage management professor in the William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration, traces the changes to World War II, when men went to the battlefield and women left the kitchen for the factory.
The result: Food companies began to develop convenience foods — cake mixes, canned soups, casserole starters — for time-pressed moms. The booming postwar economy kept women in the workforce, yielding the harried two-income families prevalent today — and sustaining the market for quick mealtime solutions.
Also key, says McCool, was the development in the 1950s of the nation’s interstate highway system. Mobile Americans, en route to vacation destinations and drive-in movies, hungered for handy meals; the hospitality industry satisfied that demand with fast-food restaurants. The eateries evolved into teen “hangouts,” and “we began to develop a culture of people who liked drive-throughs,” McCool says. “We became accustomed to that kind of food.”
The fast-food habit is now hard to break. McCool lists a litany of social factors that keep Americans hooked on convenience. Not only do most women work, but children now mirror their parents’ hectic lives through participation in myriad after-school sports, activities, and lessons. And though awareness of the health detriments of fast food is increasing, millions of Americans gravitate toward burgers, fries, and other packaged foods every day.
“People say, ‘We all know what the consequences are of a fast-food diet — why in the world do people eat it?’ The answer is simple: We eat it because it’s fast, it’s convenient, it’s cheap, and it tastes really good,” Benyshek says. “Those are really good reasons to eat it.”
Fast food might be cheap in the short-term, but dietitians insist Americans are paying a hefty price for their convenience chow. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates 64 percent of Americans weigh too much. Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control show the country’s rate of obesity — defined as weighing 20 percent more than one’s ideal — rose from 12 percent in 1991 to 20 percent in 2000.
“Over the last 40 years, our tastes have been shaped by the fast-food industry,” Benyshek says. “It was born in the United States on the West Coast, and now it’s being exported. We’re a fast-food nation, and that has remarkable ramifications.”
Rapid Changes, Profound Consequences
To understand the implications, hark back to those earliest humans. The need for brain-fueling, calorie-dense foods that led our species to meat millions of years ago translates today into cravings for sweet, salty, and fatty edibles, Benyshek says. The hit-or-miss nature of foraging in the Pleistocene Era encouraged gorging on calorie-rich foods in good times to prepare for lean months.
“It makes sense evolution would select for those desires,” Benyshek says. “We acquired a taste for fatty foods because they have more calories per gram, and (sweetness) is a good general signal nature gives that a product is a high-calorie food.”
But rapid changes in diets and lifestyles over the last half-century have made such nutritional cues obsolete. There is no feast-or-famine. Americans now enjoy unrestricted access to foods at the same time their bodies need fewer calories than ever. The consequences are profound.
“We really don’t have to work at all to access food,” Benyshek says. “What created a balance for our forebears was not only famine, but that they had to work hard to grow, collect, or somehow obtain food. Today, most of us sit at computers all day and drive cars everywhere. We’re not burning calories or challenging our aerobic capacity. People don’t realize how modest our caloric needs are. They still insist on three good-sized meals a day, plus two or three lattes with sugar, as well as a couple of snacks.”
In short, says Meacham, modern-day humans have “lost sight of the real purposes of food: fuel and health maintenance.”
Americans in particular seem to have a go-go culture that has disengaged people from understanding good nutrition. “In the United States, we eat on the run,” McCool says. “We don’t pay attention to what we eat. And one way to eat too much is to not pay attention to what we’re eating.”
Also a casualty of convenience foods is the social aspect of dining, says Patti Shock, chair of the tourism & convention administration department in the Harrah Hotel College. Eaters in other parts of the world tend to take their time eating and relish food as part of the social fabric, she says. And taking your time at lunch or dinner means you’ll eat more slowly — and reach satiety with less food.
Meacham also suspects Americans’ fast-paced lifestyles generate a chronic, everyday level of job and family stress that has led to subtle hormonal changes that affect weight. For example, the stress hormone cortisol has shown a propensity to boost fat storage to prepare the body for famine — useful in humans a century ago but harmful amid today’s abundance. Meacham even points to studies revealing a link between too little sleep and susceptibility to weight gain. “We don’t value a slower, more serene lifestyle,” she says. “We’re going all week and all weekend.”
Pushing Junk Food in Schools
Especially alarming are transformations in children’s lifestyles and the accompanying spike in weight gain. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 16 percent of children ages 6 to 19 were overweight in 2002, up from 11 percent in 1994. Meacham traces the increase back to the early 1980s, when computers, television, and video games supplanted outdoor activities during leisure time.
Children parked in front of the TV aren’t just missing out on fresh air and physical activity; they’re also subjected to a barrage of cartoonish ads from processed- and fast-food companies. Children as young as 2 possess basic food-brand awareness. To impressionable youngsters, a trip to the corner burger stand is packaged as a fun excursion. “Children today also significantly influence the family’s grocery store purchases, and they know the products they want — the ones they have seen in the ads on TV,” McCool says.
Numbers bear out the increased interest food companies have in capturing market share. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, marketing costs in 2000 accounted for 81 percent of total consumer food spending, compared to 76 percent in 1990. The USDA asserts marketing services are the “primary cause of higher food expenditures.” Marketing costs among food companies rose nearly 7 percent from 1999 to 2000, accounting for virtually all of the increase in domestic consumer-food spending. By contrast, the cost of farm products rose less than 1 percent in the same year.
Ever on the hunt for a greater market share, food companies haven’t merely dropped cash on more advertising. They’ve also unleashed an avalanche of new products. The country’s agriculture system is dominated by a handful of massive corporations that own processing, packaging, and distribution companies in addition to farms; such companies constantly seek new avenues of demand for their goods, McCool says. The end result? More processed foods on the table.
It’s also meant more prepackaged foods in schools. Twin developments in the 1980s — food companies’ appetites for greater market share and schools’ needs for boosted revenue — gave rise to vending machines stocked with candy bars, cookies, sodas, and chips. Some proceeds have gone to useful items, including diplomas and band uniforms, Meacham says, but the trade-off isn’t healthy for society.
“Here we are educating individuals to be productive citizens, but they’re going to put all their time and effort into paying their medical bills instead of producing to the benefit of the country,” she says. “We shouldn’t want to raise funds by increasing obesity in our children. That creates problems that society will have to deal with 30 or 40 years from now.”
Expanding the bottom line via junk food isn’t a tactic confined to schools. Food manufacturers and retailers have increased serving sizes in an effort to propel profits, says McCool. For example, she notes, the standard portion for a soft drink two decades ago was 12 ounces. Today, a small fountain soda is 20 ounces.
Connie Mobley, a professor in UNLV’s School of Dental Medicine, is especially concerned about the toll soft drinks are taking on kids. “We’re seeing in young people an excessive, continuous consumption of sugary, sweet substances,” Mobley says. “We encounter a lot of people who don’t drink water and instead consume up to two liters of sweetened beverages a day. They’re mostly sugar calories, and they’re very filling. They displace a lot of important foods. In young kids in particular, they’re displacing a lot of milk and dairy in the diet that would be very important to bone health.”
Lifting the Burden
Amid such troubling trends, nutrition experts see indications that Americans are beginning at last to get serious about dietary health.
“The burden of chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes is becoming so great that we have to change,” Benyshek says. “It’s not just a burden on families, but on the economy and our health-care system.” He cites policy recommendations from the federal government — such as revisions to food guidelines and the 10,000 Steps a Day program to promote physical activity — that “are all falling in line with what experts have been saying we should do.”
McCool hopes such efforts aren’t limited to public policymakers. Pointing to the imbalance between the marketing resources fast-food companies can marshal and the funds the government has to advance good nutrition and exercise, she says the food industry must modify its advertising.
Ultimately, though, consumers bear the responsibility. Meacham believes that regardless of humans’ innate preference for fatty, salty, and sweet treats, people can slowly reorient their taste buds toward healthier foods. And she says any successful weight-awareness program will highlight the essential equilibrium between calorie intake and expenditure.
Last summer, Meacham and McCool helped forge such a policy for the Clark County School District. The guidelines, which went into effect July 1, govern standards of foods and drinks sold in student stores, vending machines, and school-sponsored fund-raising and concession activities. Among the changes: Carbonated beverages have been banned from vending machines and exchanged for water, milk, and healthy juices, and wholesome snacks such as baked chips, yogurt, trail mix, and fresh fruits have replaced high-fat candies and savories. Even nonfood items, such as stickers and pencils, are appearing in vending machines.
“This is not a flimsy policy,” Meacham says. “We’re making a strong statement that we really care about the health and welfare of children in the district. Children are required to attend school 180 days a year. Because they’re forced into that environment, we’re responsible as caretakers and educators for making sure they have an environment that’s healthy.”
Karen Vogel, a director in the school district’s food-service department, agrees: “Just as we would not put books in our school libraries that would not be appropriate to children, we should not make inappropriate food products available to our students.”
But providing healthy options is just one component of the district’s new program. Administrators also plan nutrition instruction for all grades. “If we don’t go beyond the choices and provide education about why those choices are there, then students’ first stop after school will be for a burger and fries,” Meacham says.
The rules are already bearing fruit: Meacham says teachers and administrators have noticed a decrease in behavioral problems, a decline she attributes to students “just feeling healthier.” As for vending-machine revenue, principals who’ve checked in with Meacham say sales haven’t dropped — proving kids can adjust to healthier choices.
Meacham and McCool are working on similar guidelines for schools statewide. In addition, Meacham and other professors developed a continuing education course for school district personnel — ranging from teachers to bus drivers — who work with high-schoolers. The idea is to foster districtwide awareness of good nutrition.
“I do think nutrition and education efforts are beginning to take hold,” Meacham says. “The health crisis has forced us to connect the dots. We’ve let ourselves run amok. But when I survey students in classes about how many of them consciously think about nutrient content, more do so now than did in the ’70s and ’80s. I’m hoping we’re becoming more reasonable about taking responsibility for our food choices.”
For the dental school’s Mobley, nutrition education is an integral part of heading off health issues down the road. She’s an investigator in a National Institutes of Health study looking into school-based prevention in seven schools around the country.
“We’re testing a multiphase intervention that involves an increase in physical activity at school, improvements in offerings through school food service, and the addition of a behavioral component involving classroom activities that promote healthy eating and active lives,” Mobley says. “We’re hoping to demonstrate that by introducing such intervention, we could impact changes in body weight that are occurring in kids.”
Even nature could advance such efforts. The same prehistoric nutritional profile that conferred on us a taste for calorie-laden foods also gifted us with dietary flexibility — a strong interest in trying many new foods. UNLV’s experts believe that exposing yourself to healthy foods multiple times can help you develop a taste for them.
Our gustatory curiosity has engendered greater mainstream interest in ethnic foods, many of which can be both healthy and easy to prepare, McCool adds. Though not as quick as popping open a can, ethnic one-dish meals like stir-frys and soups feature more healthy and inexpensive vegetables and beans than mainstream American convenience foods.
Shock, of the tourism department, already sees consumers inspiring local changes. Diners are demanding fresh regional produce and pesticide-free foods. In addition, the organic food market is growing 25 percent a year. Today’s food-industry buzzwords include “fresh” and “pure,” Shock says, and restaurants are ditching harmful, hydrogenated trans-fats in favor of healthier fats such as olive oil. Some restaurant owners are even customizing handheld organizers that wait staff can use to access extensive nutritional information on menu items.
The changes might be small, but for Shock, incremental improvements are the best kind. “People may not want to be health-food nuts, but they do want to eat healthier. I don’t see people going straight from donuts to celery, but to any degree that our diets improve, that’s positive. Radical changes don’t last.”
