Choking on the Sun

20th April, 2019

C. Lockley

Evidence-based Nutrition science is communicated to the public through the Australian Dietary Guidelines, The Dieticians Association of Australia, and qualified Nutritionists. Despite this, the Australian population is getting steadily fatter and sicker (https://bit.ly/2Jwzezq). What if it’s not what we’re communicating, but how?

One-quarter of children and adolescents, and nearly two-thirds of adults in Australia are overweight or obese, and the numbers continue to rise (https://bit.ly/2Jwzezq). Those in regional and remote areas show even greater rates of obesity and diet-related illness (https://bit.ly/2Jwzezq). Improving Australian food habits and increasing public compliance with the Australian Dietary Guidelines would reduce both financial pressure on Government health expenditure, and the risk of diet-related premature disease and death.

IS IT A LACK OF UNDERSTANDING?

With 51% of adults not eating the recommended fruit intake, and 66% not eating enough vegetables (https://bit.ly/2nJ59wc), it is easy to jump to the conclusion that the public is not understanding the science. However recent research (https://bit.ly/2HCZKoW) from the Australian National University on regional Australian adult consumers has found that understanding is not the problem –engagement and trust are.

People find current food and nutrition communication convoluted, complex and inconsistent, impersonal, and devoid of emotional engagement and pleasure (https://bit.ly/2HyKrxE). The ‘medicalization’ of food consumption and the avoidance of pleasure or ‘hedonism’ in meals holds very little appeal (https://bit.ly/2HANVjb). Food reduced to a measurable set of ‘nutrient’ and ‘health’ parameters that ignores flavour, pleasure, story, environment and embedded memory/tradition makes people anxious…even angry (https://bit.ly/2HCZKoW) .

Ignoring or down-playing emotional and pleasure narratives in food and health is just bad communication (https://bit.ly/2Yg7ZMz). Even worse, it results in people ‘throwing the baby out with the bath-water’ and ignoring the science completely in favour of a more relatable personal narrative (https://bit.ly/2HCZKoW) . This in turn makes them ‘sitting ducks’ for pseudo-science, fad diets, and the cleverly woven emotional marketing of unhealthy foods (https://bit.ly/2unXj0K) .

So, if not nutrition science, who and what do consumers value and prioritize when they’re deciding what to eat?

NUTRITION AND GASTRONOMY

The same meal –one that conforms to the Australian Dietary Guidelines and the famed Mediterranean Diet model –consumed under different narratives, has vastly different effects on both the amount of food consumed and the consumer’s emotional state (https://bit.ly/2HCZKoW) .

The story makes a difference, and not just emotionally. Foods that our mind tags as ‘healthy’ or ‘hedonic’ change our hormonal biochemistry. If we believe our meal to be ‘indulgent’ we reach satiety faster. If we focus on it being ‘healthy’, our hunger hormone –ghrelin –doesn’t fall (https://bit.ly/2qgpqwo) . Language and story alone change not just what we choose to eat (https://bit.ly/2HQPSaB) but how our bodies react to it.

Consumers may be ignoring or outright rejecting Nutrition communication, but they love Gastronomy! Our frustration with ‘nutrition’ is only matched by our obsession with food. We’re tuning out of science and tuning in to celebrity chefs and competitive cooking shows in our millions (https://bit.ly/2qwLsu7) . Where we’ll appreciate but largely ignore the macro and micronutrient analysis of the Mediterranean diet and its health benefits, we’ll gobble up Nigella Lawson sashaying about a comforting kitchen and flirting with both us, and her ingredients. No real wonder –it’s a better watch. It’s a comforting, enticing, sexy story this ‘Gastronomy’. It’s familiar. It speaks to either our actual experience, or even more importantly, the one we wish to have.

Nutrition and Gastronomy as entirely separate disciplines is utterly insane (https://bit.ly/2ukBUWb)... They’re both FOOD.

TELL A BETTER STORY SCIENCE

Research shows that Nutrition communication isn’t working, and yet we trot out the same methods, the same yawningly awful Dietary Guidelines and charts year after year. We scrupulously train our dietary ‘experts’ and widen the gap between those that are allowed to know about food, and those that are forever the ‘laity’. At the same time we wring our hands and wail that the public somehow doesn’t ‘understand’ (https://bit.ly/2Wau7WQ) , and that we must try harder…

 There’s a popular definition of insanity as ‘doing the same thing and expecting a different result’.

The public is perfectly capable of understanding, they just don’t buy the story. It’s high time we started listening to them. Expert voices fluent in ‘science-ese’ preaching about nutrients from ivory towers and artificially separated disciplines may continue to to-and-fro amongst themselves, but if it’s public engagement we’re after, it’s time to do away with “Oh but Nutrition is science, and Gastronomy is….not”, and start telling a better story. Listen carefully to the boredom, the frustration and the anger (https://bit.ly/2HCZKoW) , and focus on replacing it with our most basic and hard-wired motivator –pleasure. It’s not a dirty word.

First Preview for 'Scrumptious Science' coming to Youtube April 1st 2019, 8pm (EST)
I'd be ever so grateful if you gave it a watch and a thumbs up!

Second Preview too? Oh, alright...if you're going to be demanding...

And because everyone knows me better than that -here's an extra blooper reel for your amusement. It's amazing hard to remember your own script...:-)

So, you know how it all works -like, share, subscribe, COMMENT and please -all suggestions are more than welcome! I'm no expert :-)

My latest science communication effort is premiering April 1, 2019 (8pm EST). Hope you can join me for a cornucopia of food, science, art, history and a few saucy quips :)
Scrumptious Science S01 E01

When Lunchtime Tastes of Sunshine...

Bruschetta. It's not as di moda as it once was.
Australian cafes had a love-affair with all things Italian for a decade or so, but then they got bored and decided de-constructed something-or-other with smashed avocado (always with smashed avocado) was tante meglio, meglio cosi (so much the better). I clearly remember the gastronomical snobbery of the 'bruschetta' pronounciation days. It was right up there with the correct preparation of affogato. Hint: 'ch' is a hard sound, so it's 'Broo-sketta'. Apologies if I just ruined your millenium. Anyway...

It's fair enough too. Like so many things, the true heart of excellent Italian food isn't the recipe (although the centuries old flavour combos are pretty stonkingly amazing) -it's the produce. Bruschetta should be a riot of flavour. It should be all the sultry heat of summer soaking into a crusty piatto (plate/trencher) that is itself toothsome, tangy, and something your teeth can rip into voraciously.

Perhaps this beloved Italian summer staple fell from popular cafe favour because it was...well, a little disappointing most of the time? Supermarket tomatoes, commercial white bread, packaged parmesan, basil grown en masse, indoors, that had never even glimpsed the baking summer sun...there's a recipe for yawn right there.
I know I bang on about this, but the joy, the relish and the ultimate satiety/satisfaction doesn't actually come from the produce or recipe alone. It comes from consuming a story. it's the reason Andy Bowdy's cakes became a crazy sensation. The clever bugger made awesome, beautiful cakes -sure...but he gave each one a story and a name. Love me a good visionary :-)

The story of the Broo-sketta

In the dead of winter, a woman sits at her computer, swathed in multiple layers and scarves. She's perusing seed-catalogues and dreaming. In front of her -hundreds of enticing heirloom tomatoes whisper enticingly. Some are a thrill of unusual colour, some a perfect combination of ugly-beautiful shapes, some come with testimonials of flavour. The woman is greedy and would like them all, but she settles on 5 or 6 new options and waits by the mail-box hopefully.
When the packets arrive, even her small son is enchanted. "Can I take these to school for news Mummy?". Mummy is pleased, and allows her precious seeds to be shoved into a backpack. She sets aside a vaguely unsettled feeling.

That afternoon, a very hang-dog 6yr old comes through the back door - a scruffy harbinger of doom. Daddy looks stormy too...because he already knows. Mummy reads all the signals and steels herself.  For reasons known only to the logic of a kindergarten student, he has opened and emptied out the packets on the bus. Apparently he was "showing" people the seeds and they just kinda "fell out". She tries not to cry and fails.
Weeping complete, she peers into the packets mournfully -their bright pictures of promise holding nothing now...wait...what's that? In the tight envelope corners a few survivors! Four to be exact. 2 in each corner.They are whisked into seed-raising pots with the urgency and care of a delicate ER operation.

A few weeks later, with imperfect germination -she has two plants. TWO! They are babied and molly-coddled with that strange gardener's combination of gentleness and steely determination. The 6 yr old watches the process with some trepidation. It is lovingly dressed with wood-ash, egg-shells, sifted manures, and even decorated stones (6yr old's version of helping/penance). It is nurtured through a terrible heat-wave, and hand-watered daily. The stones are gaudy, but sweet. Mummy is reminded that he may be irresponsible, but he does try so hard to fix things when they're broken.

Finally, it is time to harvest. She plucks any fruits starting to colour and ripens them on a sunny windowsill to avoid the possibility of splitting due to intense heat and storms. These much-anticipated Brad's atomic grapes blush slowly next to volunteer cherries and the firm-fleshed Sungrape. The anticipation so much part of the coming delight.

One uncomfortably warm morning, they're ready. Brilliantly coloured and with just a tiny amount of 'give' when gently squeezed. Home-made sourdough is sliced thinly, fragrant basil is plucked from amongst sister tomato plantings, garlic pulled gently from the twisted braid. The pantry offers a local chilli & lime olive oil and a caramelised balsamic from Mudgee. A sharp parmesan from Orange is grated finely. Every ingredient has a story. Everything on this plate has been created or nurtured with passion and care. Every producer has been chatted with, laughed with. We have shared our stories.

Today, all of our tales are woven into my lunch :-) It is simplicity itself, but as rich flavour and story fire up all my neural pleasure and reward pathways, biochemical magic twinkles. Quantity is not necessary. Satiety is not signalled by the stomach's stretch receptors, but by ghrelin levels falling fast and leptin levels surging. Neurogastronomy at its finest. The story of the flavours, the pleasure, the hedonism of my immense enjoyment ensure that a small energy offering is enough...well enough. Over-eating would be...I dunno, somehow wrong. This is not to be gobbled, but savoured. This is the pleasure of the gardener.

Digging for Buried treasure

STARKERS WITH A CABBAGE...

STARKERS WITH A CABBAGE

So, I did something quite out-of-character this week: allowed myself to be photographed naked…with a cabbage. This may seem an odd life choice, but let me explain:

I was inspired. The.Naked.Farmer campaign came to my attention. The catch-cry of this organisation is ‘it takes just as much guts to take your gear off as it does to talk about mental health’. Through calendars, social media campaigns and farm-visits –The Naked Farmer raises funds and awareness for rural mental health. Their website and Facebook page is adorned with farmers of all shapes, sizes and genders tastefully ‘in the buff’, and it’s absolutely charming.

These non-sexualised images hide a dark reality though – rural and semi-rural mental health is in trouble. Traditional hegemonic masculine roles, drought-related stress, isolation and financial hardship exact a heavy toll on our farmers and miners. In Lithgow alone – self-harm rates are double the NSW rate.

In addition, ironically enough –our food production locales are often simultaneously ‘food deserts’, or areas that have very poor food security. Our farmers may be growing our food, but what are they actually eating? Again, in the semi-rural Lithgow area (more mining than farming), hospitalisation due to diet-related disease is also double the state average. Poor food choices; high energy/low nutritional content in meals is highly correlated with psychiatric distress andviolent behaviour. Takeaway food, confectionary and heavy red meat consumption result in both internal andexternal manifestations of depression in adolescents. When this is paired with a dearth of mental health services, high unemployment and a struggling coal industry –you get what the media calls a suicide crisis.

So, how does one regional woman getting her kit off help? Well, for starters –we pay attention to nakedness. It even changes our psychologicalreactions to the person in question, making them seem less powerful/controlling, and more sensitive to basic human commonalities like hunger, emotion and desire –in short, a more relatable frame of reference. It can be the same person, same facial expression, same descriptors but a hint of body changes perception entirely.

Is this just ‘sexualising’ an issue for attention? That depends entirely on you. Is nudity always sexual? Are you automatically non-sexual when clothed and then hot-to-trot when de-robed? Is having a shower sexual? Are women ‘asking for it’ when they expose some skin? What if there’s a cabbage involved? –fetishes aside, surely there are few items less sexy than a cabbage…

I’m also a Nutrition scientist, foodie and gardener, and current research is solidly behind the fact that gardening is beneficial for physical, psychological and social health. Growing and eating your own food ticks so many boxes on the positive mental-health list it’s ridiculous.

So, this week I took off my clothes and sat down with a cabbage I nurtured from seed. I allowed myself to be exposed, real, and armourless. Lest you imagine that exhibitionism is an intrinsic characteristic here…it was HARD! I really did have to confront an awful lot of my own ingrained body-issues and perceptions of ‘beauty’. I was/am frightened that some slightly pudgy white chick with a cabbage is just not at all an effective awareness tool.

 However, I live in Lithgow and young people are taking their own lives, self-harming, and increasingly embracing violent behaviour. I hope this little endeavour helps to bring awareness to an enormous and multi-tiered problem. I also hope that it makes people think –even for a moment –about the relationship between food, gardening and rural mental health. If you’re interested in supporting this initiative financially, head to The Naked Farmer’s website and purchase a delightful calendar that will make you smile in spite of yourself. Yep, it’s The Calendar Girls but with a rural Aussie twist J