A review of Weighing In (Julie Guthman, UC Press, 2011)

As anyone in the food movement can tell you, obesity has become the singular issue of the movement. In her new book Weighing In, geographer Julie Guthman of the University of California, Santa Cruz, sets her sights squarely on the singularity of this issue, arguing that "Those who want to redress the problem [of obesity] put a great deal of effort into educating people to make better choices rather than into reforming the policies that allow bad food to be produced or mitigating the consequences for those harmed."

She does not stop there.  She goes on to lambast BMI (body mass index) as a blunt instrument and to skewer obesity alleviation programs that focus too much on individual choice.  Guthman argues that something called "healthism" - the attachment of a moral or ethical component to decisions made regarding health, and especially food - has turned the food movement into a sort of evangelical effort to influence the lifestyle of individuals.  That lifestyle, Guthman argues, will have very little effect on obesity, because the most likely culprit for the increase in obesity is not overeating and lack of exercise, but obesogens - environmental toxins and other substances thought to cause obesity by disrupting the endocrine system and stimulating estrogen production.

Her arguments hold together thus far; it is convincing that individual choice is much too central in the food movement today, particularly with the dearth of policy oriented work, and her arguments for environmental obesogens are backed by convincing evidence.  However, her assertion that the creation of alternative food institutions should be abandoned in favor of policy and anti-capitalist work rings of the ivory tower, a quality unfortunate in much Marxist critique.

While Guthman is correct to attempt to move the food movement away from individual choice and towards more traditional social movement interventions, she fails to see the wisdom in creating the alternative institutions necessary to replace capitalist agriculture.  Both anti-capitalist and policy work need to be a central focus of the food movement, because the institutional context in which food is produced creates obesogens and other types of toxic food.  Guthman gets this right.  However, it is also necessary to create an alternative institutional context that can eventually replace the existing ones.  Together, these are the creation and destruction of social change.

Guthman's book is a necessary read for anyone in the food movement.  It tackles the cutting edge questions of the day, undermines much of the institutionalization (and probably co-optation) of the local food movement, and provides a strong anti-capitalist vision for the future of the movement.  Hers is a timely and profound voice calling the movement back to its justice-oriented roots. Listen to her.

Bittman Misses the Mark

New York Times columnist Mark Bittman unfortunately misses the point when he argues that healthy food is in fact less expensive the unhealthy food. His solution, that all that needs to change is the consumer culture surrounding food, privileges consumer activism over more substantial interventions such as changing production systems or the farm bill.  Bittman is arguing, like most bourgeoisie, that all we need for food outcomes to change is for the poor to adopt the culture of the middle class and wealthy.  This disavows bearers of this "legitimate culture" from any responsibility for food systems change, placing the onus squarely on the shoulders of the poor.

Bourdieu has shown that the poor and working people develop a taste for necessity. The most basic foods that are high in salt, sugars, and fats are the easiest to prepare and the most readily accessible; therefore, working class food culture emerges around the consumption and preparation of this sort of food.  This culture is a function of the social position of the bearer of working class culture.

The best and most lasting way to change the food practices associated with working class culture is to change the social position of the bearer of that culture.  In other words, wealth and prestige are far more important in transforming unhealthy food practices than somehow getting the poor to change their culture.  Culture does not change in the manner that Bittman proposes - it changes in concert with changes in the social structure; also, it is quite patronizing to tell poor and working people how to eat.

What should be the focus instead is the creation of an urban food system in so-called food deserts that will increase incomes and remove the stigma of poor and working people.  People's culture will then change as a result, becoming congruent with a food system that produces both good jobs and healthy food.

Obesity as Violence

This post is inspired by Live Real's Food and Freedom Rides that I was fortunate enough to participate in this weekend.  Live Real's mission is to change the food system and they characterize the food system as perpetuating violence through obesity and other diet related illnesses.  I find this to be a profoundly important approach to obesity, and I want to use this post to meditate on the ideas of violence and obesity that Live Real's fellows addressed during their event at the Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham.

Part of Live Real's idea is, obviously, to connect the struggle for food justice to the struggle against segregation in the 1960s.  The Civil Rights Movement was met with overt violence in the form of beatings, murders, dogs, and fire hoses, but Live Real asserts that obesity and diabetes are also forms of violence.  At first this seems like an odd comparison.  The perpetrators of the violence during the Civil Rights Movement were obvious - Bull Connor, the Ku Klux Klan, and the police, while the perpetrators of obesity are less obvious and less easy to identify.  However, upon further examination, the two forms of violence are not so different; in fact, they are quite similar.

I tend to shy away from individualistic solutions to complex problems.  It can certainly be said that Bull Connor, the Klan, and the police were products of their environment.  For these perpetrators, white supremacy was as normal as the sun rising in the east, and those violating white supremacy were the actual perpetrators.  This does not excuse Connor's, the Klan's or other's behavior, but it merely points out that the true perpetrator of the violence, or at least the beliefs underpinning that violence, was white supremacy which still exists today.

Likewise, the food system that makes us obese and unhealthy is underpinned by a belief that greed will allocate food resources equitably.  The food system is founded on the assumption that corporations acting with the sole interest of making profit will somehow produce high quality food for the most disadvantaged people.  In other words, like white supremacy, the logic of the for-profit food system harms or causes violence to the poor and people of color through its normal operation, and, indeed, those who claim the right to food can be seen as violating the norms of food markets.  What is clear is that the murder of Civil Rights workers and the obesity "epidemic," while different, are the violent consequences of unjust systems - white supremacy and the food system, respectively.

Finally, I do not want to minimize the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement.  Murder is not really something that modern activists in the US face on a daily basis, though, apparently police repression is still very real and very racialized.  Still, we don't face the same risks as our elders faced.  Even the nature of the violence is less overt and more covert and insidious.  Obesity, as an embodied form of injustice, kills over the long term while murder kills immediately.  Nowadays, injustice is less visible and in some ways more difficult to address, but it doesn't carry with it the dangers that battling injustices of the past carried.

Downtown Stadium is a Strikeout

It has been interesting to watch news people, politicians, and the business community salivate over the proposed $50 million dollar baseball park adjacent to Railroad Park.  Without fail, proponents cite the positive economic impact and the redevelopment of properties between UAB and 1st Ave North, and without fail there are no dissenters among the voices.

Well, count me among the dissenters.  The academic research on sports stadiums shows that these stadiums benefit investors, owners, and players and no one else.  Some highlights of the research follow:

• According to Calvin Jones in the Journal of Environmenal Planning A, sports stadiums contribute to uneven development between and within cities (think spatial injustice from previous post).
• According to Robert Baade and Richard Dye in Growth and Change: A Journal of Urban and Regional Policy, "the presence of a new or renovated stadium has an uncertain impact on the levels of personal income and possibly a negative impact on local development relative to the region. These results should serve as a caution to those who assume or assert a large positive stadium impact."
• Baade again argues in the Journal of Urban Affairs that "(t)o attract or retain a team, cities are offering staggering financial support and rationalize their largesse on economic grounds. Do professional sports increase income and create jobs in amounts that justify the behavior of cities? The evidence detailed in this paper fails to support such a rationale. The primary beneficiaries of subsidies are the owners and players, not the taxpaying public."
• Adam Zaretsky argues in the April 2001 issue of the Regional Economist, a publication of the Federal Reserve of St. Louis, that "the use of public funds to lure or keep teams begs several questions, the foremost of which is, 'Are these good investments for cities?' The short answer to this question is 'No.' When studying this issue, almost all economists and development specialists (at least those who work independently and not for a chamber of commerce or similar organization) conclude that the rate of return a city or metropolitan area receives for its investment is generally below that of alternative projects. In addition, evidence suggests that cities and metro areas that have invested heavily in sports stadiums and arenas have, on average, experienced slower income growth than those that have not."

Clearly, stadiums do not benefit the majority of the taxpayers and under some circumstances may actually harm them.  Those that benefit from the subsidy are those that seek to gain the most from the development: real estate magnates benefiting from rising land values, investors in businesses in the surrounding entertainment district, and politicians with more money for their projects.  No cities build baseball stadiums with public money anymore, specifically because there are few public benefits and legions of private sector benefits.

If Birmingham Barons owner Don Logan wants to move the Barons back to Birmingham, he should assemble his own investors. God forbid that he put his own cash up for the stadium [/sarcasm].  It is understandable that Birmingham wants to follow the lead of many cities in turning downtown into a playground for the rich, but careful attention to the research reveals that the benefits from such redevelopment never actually trickle down.

Birmingham needs a municipal economics built on service to the least fortunate, not the most fortunate.  Parkside stadium strikes out in this regard.

Race in Birmingham

Reinventing Our Community: Can Metro Birmingham Move Beyond Race?

This is a pretty good analysis by the Birmingham News.  My only complaint is that the attention to black flight is misleading.  While suburbs in metro Birmingham may be more diverse than in recent years, Birmingham is still the most segregated metro area in the South and 15th most segregated in the nation.  Stay tuned, we have research on race and the local food movement in Birmingham coming out in the next year.

Food access is not the answer

Today's LA Times article on food access and obesity confirms what I have been suggesting throughout this entire blog.

Eating healthy is a question of having money, not of having access to food outlets. Poor folks are going to buy the cheapest food even if a conventional grocery store with healthier options exists. The quickest way to improve people's diet is to increase their income. 

The food movement up to this point has centered on technical fixes to obesity - namely, increasing access to healthy food - but what is needed are interventions that combine community economic development with increased food access. Main Street Birmingham and Project Hopewell are developing public markets in Southwest Birmingham for precisely this reason, but this project is only one piece of the solution.

Birmingham needs comprehensive community economic development beginning with food production through urban farms and possibly aquaponics cooperatives, proceeding to value-added products such as cakes, breads, and jams, and ending with the public markets that are being created.  Comprehensive projects like these will increase access to healthy food, raise incomes, provide employment, and integrate food within every aspect of community life.

These projects are inherently political in the sense that they challenge dominant economic development paradigms that center on financial power, instead devolving control to individual entrepreneurs and in ideal cases, worker-owners of a cooperative.  This stands in stark contrast to the ill-conceived and ineffective focus on access.

The pieces are in place to do real community economic development around food, and the time is now to shift the movement from technical fixes to revolutionary projects.

Why Health is Really a Stand-in for Class

Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu reveals in his seminal text Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste that lifestyle is a function of an individual's position in society.  In "America's Fittest Cities," Atlantic blogger Richard Florida shows how those lifestyles are a function of uneven economic development in the US. In the rankings of the fittest Americans, "fitness" tracts roughly onto the division of labor between American cities.

Working class, poorer cities are "unfit," while wealthy cities with heavy knowledge industries are "fit."  The lifestyle dubbed healthy by the CDC and others is the lifestyle most appropriate to the labor market best characterized as post-industrial, information-oriented, and "creative," while the least "fit" lifestyles are associated with heavy industry and manufacturing, remnants of an older economic paradigm.

Think of it this way: the assembly line nature of fast food is more congruent with vertically integrated heavy industry or Fordism, while farmer's markets are more in line with creative, flexible, knowledge-based industries.  Foodies are more or less producing the food system of neoliberalism and flexible accumulation.  In other words, the people who have the "healthiest" lifestyle are the most affluent and they use the notion of health to legitimate and generalize the culture and lifestyle associated with affluence.

Simply put, the idea of an objectively healthy lifestyle serves more to legitimate the wealthy than it does to actually address the health needs of the exploited.

As I have said in previous posts, good food is a human right, and what counts as good food or a healthy lifestyle should be determined by those living that lifestyle - not by technocrats at the Health and Human Services and the Center for Disease Control.  These organizations base the assumptions of fitness for their research on the lifestyles of the elite.

For instance, the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (creepy name), on which the AFI is based, opens the exercise section with the question "During the past month, other than your regular job, did you participate in any physical activities or exercises such as running, calisthenics, golf, gardening, or walking for exercise?"  So the activity of an auto mechanic or construction worker during their regular job doesn't count as exercise?  Obviously, the question is remarkably biased in favor of those who do sedentary work and exercise for leisure - biased in favor of the lifestyle of the wealthy.  By the very structure of the survey, a working class person cannot be as fit as an elite.

Of course, there are negative health effects to not being wealthy, such as lack of adequate food and stress, but food activists should connect these to the unevenness associated with economic development and not try to generalize one, elitist culture of health and fitness for everyone.  At its root, food injustice is economic injustice.  This should be the starting point.