Are You What You Eat?
On the Hidden Messages of the Health Food Industry
Finding out why you have cancer is a can of worms, a worm hole, a slippery pursuit. Potential reasons proliferate in the absence of provable reasons. Products and remedies prey on uncertainty, fear, and the quest to avoid recurrence. I’m trying to get a handle on why I had breast cancer twice. The doctor ticks off common risk factors: age, family history, genetic mutations, reproductive history, exercise, hormones, reproductive history, too much alcohol. I’m a “No” on all of these. She tells me that some people get cancer without these risk factors. I’m left without reasons, except the vague possibility of outside factors, the environment and the food supply. Controlling these factors is like the overused idiom of finding a needle in a haystack, but it’s more like finding a biting midge invisible to the eye.
I’ve been into health foods for a long time, and I’ve doubled down on supplements more recently, so my critiques are not detached. During the summer months when my boys opened the refrigerator or cupboard—every hour, so it seemed—they used to moan, “There’s no food in the house!” They wanted sugary cereals with colorful marshmallows and tasty foods that jumped out of the refrigerator ready-made. (As adults, they now eat healthy food.) When I first had cancer in 2002, organic foods were mostly wilted vegetables in small sections of select grocery stores or overpriced grass-fed meats from New Zealand hidden in obscure freezers. Now health food and its messages fill our lives and the coffers of the industry.
The cunning messages tap into people’s felt needs, the desire for happiness and peace being a top layer. Examples abound in stores, medical offices, books, and the internet. Here are a few from the places I frequent:
· An employee at a health food store wears a green tee shirt that says:
“Good food.
Good people.”
First off, verbless phrases parading as sentences with cute periods bug me. Second, applying “good” to food and people is an unbridgeable gap, unless they mean people will be kinder because they don’t have bad digestion or more generous because the foods offer a longer life. Maybe they mean that people who buy good food—people who can spend high sums on subsistence—are good, and, of course, who doesn’t want to be seen as virtuous?
· A smoothie bar, which has unfortunately gone out of business since COVID 19, dispensed the ancient wisdom of Virgil:
“Health is the greatest wealth.”
Does this mean if you don’t have health, you’re poor? Or are they trying to broaden the definition of health? Maybe they’re trying to sell universal health care? No, they just want to sell their product.
· A vegan café’s message is:
“Peace starts with plants on your plate.”
I have no idea what that one means, but I suspect there’s a circuitous lecture behind it. I don’t want to ask the owner. I just want to get my GF cinnamon roll and eat in peace. Maybe that’s what it means.
· Another cheerful and grammatically challenged restaurant take out bag with nifty handles instructs (or states?):
“Eat Happy”
Good; there’s no frivolous period, but if happy is an adverb here, it should be happily. Does this mean you should eat in a happy manner and that somehow the nutrition is more effective if you do? Is it the direct object of the command to eat, meaning we should eat a creature called “Happy?” Maybe it’s an intentional change in word order where happy is an adjective meaning “have a happy eat/dinner.” Or maybe it’s a causal statement with ellipses stating, “When I eat; then I’m happy,” which might be difficult for dieters. Which is it? Does anyone besides me care? Customers leave the restaurant with their bags happily bouncing on their way to the car. They have bought happiness, at least for the moment.
Touching the surface layer of felt needs taps into a deeper, more sinister layer, that food offers control over illness. The back cover of a book on anti-inflammatory foods states: “So much in life is beyond our control. Your diet doesn’t have to be.” Controlling your diet is a way to control your life. As discussed in the previous post, purveying foods to avoid a cancer recurrence or the more sinister conclusion that cancer is your fault because you didn’t avoid the foods you loved or the stress you put yourself under belies an opportunistic motive. Many companies peddle their products and viewpoints with a force more definite than scientists whose conclusions are based on lifetimes of research and treatment. This logic of control—undoubtedly true in some cases—leads to blame and defeat. Without knowing it, this logic harms those suffering from chronic ailments who can’t find their way to control.
The health food craze is just a symptom of our addiction to control. “Control is a drug, and we are all hooked” Kate Bowler claims as she faces a Stage IV colon cancer diagnosis at age 35. As people gather around her after the bombshell news, she reflects:
“I can barely admit to myself that I have almost no choice but to surrender, but neither can those around me. I can hear it in my sister-in-law’s voice as she tells me to keep fighting. I can see in my academic friends, who do what researchers do and google the hell out of my problem. ‘When did the symptoms start?’ they ask. ‘Is this hereditary?’ Buried in all their concern is the unspoken question: Do I have any control?” (Bowler, 84).
We are so hooked on control that we don’t even realize the pressure we put on those who suffer.* Control is a posture of pride and pretense. It has to do with position: putting myself in a position over life’s fearful circumstances.
Dealing with circumstances we can’t control—one of the most challenging experiences we face as humans—is a tricky balance of giving up certainty but resisting fear. People pounce on instant answers, binary choices, conspiracy theories, anything to avoid the discomfort of not having control. They end up inadvertently blaming and hurting themselves and others. Grabbing simple solutions based on thin truths is easy and convenient, but life—and health—don’t always conform to simple solutions. Why does the mind and heart fight so hard to accept a dearth of answers? Do we really believe finding reasons helps us cope better or is it to control the uncontrollable? Giving up control seems scary at first, but it turns out to be the most effective way of subduing fear.
I return to two practices for giving up control: make peace with reason-deficits and polish off the ancient virtues of humility and patience. Sometimes it’s best to say, “I don’t know.” There’s freedom in those words—and a proper period. Humility and patience are sorely missing in our posturing and fractious world, but they deepen us as modern humans addicted to control. They create space and permission for people with chronic problems to not get better or have solutions. Do you remember the last time someone just listened to your complaints without interjecting, “At least you don’t have…” or “Have you tried…?” You felt the fresh breeze of just telling your story without apology or the pressure to fix yourself. That’s a gift of inestimable value. Not everything is in our control. Not everything is solvable. Reasons may come in time, but if not, humility and patience offer rich rewards. They restore peace and poise without costing a dime.
*For more click https://lifeafterwhy.com/blog/dont-let-a-cancer-diagnosis-or-life-disrupter-define-you
Source cited:
Bowler, Kate. Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved. New York: Random House, 2018.