#WhyCookseries/MyHealth/1 #CSM1

This post is part of the Why Cook? Series: 6 Reasons to be a Lifestyle Cook, a discourse on the pillars of The Cooking Subversive Manifesto (CSM). Providing great reasons to cook are powerful motivators to make cooking a lifestyle choice especially when we understand how forces have conspired to make us choose otherwise.

America’s obesity rate is 42.4%.

The United States may lay dubious claim to being democracy’s chief champion of late, but when it comes to obesity, it is without a doubt the leader, and has been so for nearly 2 decades among countries tracked by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). That’s not exactly something to be proud of.

We’re inured to this data point because we’ve sat with this fact for far too long and it’s only becoming worse. We’ve vilified the subjects—overweight people, because in the back of our minds, we’ve been taught to associate being fat with gluttony, poor self-control, laziness and other reprehensible traits we like to think we’re absolved of. Because we’ve appropriated blame to the wrong culprits, we’ve missed the real offenders, and they’ve been able to hide in plain sight. Before we point fingers, let’s first understand the magnitude of the problem.

Why the US Covid-19 death toll is so high

We’ve just reached the grim milestone of 800 thousand deaths in the United States, with no real end in sight. From the onset, the huge American death toll, disproportionately higher than in other developed countries, begged the question: why so high?

In a John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center tally of global deaths attributed to coronavirus, the US has 239.43 deaths/100,000 people. It is the 6th highest in the world, preceded by Brazil, Romania, Czechia, Hungary and Bulgaria; and the highest among wealthy nations. While we can debate on the ramifications of polarized attitudes towards masks and vaccines (we don’t have the monopoly on anti vaxxers and conspiracy theories), the data is clear on the primary causes of American deaths. According to a study published by The Lancet.

Consistent with reported COVID-19 outcome data from Europe, the United States, and China, higher caseloads and overall mortality were associated with comorbidities such as obesity, and advanced population age.

Let’s unpack the comorbities part. Comorbidy, the simultaneous presence of two or more diseases, entered our lexicon when covid-19 exploded. Comorbidity is a bulls-eye target for coronavirus; the chances of getting very sick or death is much higher. But what diseases are strongly associated with covid deaths?

In this screenshot of Covid-19 deaths with contributing conditions released by the CDC for 2020 and 2021, I circled 9 diseases linked to obesity. That’s half of the top 18 (see note) diseases associated with covid-19 deaths that can be linked to obesity, which is directly associated with poor diet and unhealthy lifestyles.

Even without Covid-19, 3 of the top 7 leading causes of death in the US, heart disease, stroke and diabetes, are linked to obesity. A recent report by the New York Times suggests that covid 19 lives in fat cells. If proven conclusively, that will be the most direct link yet of Covid-19 to a poor diet.

Covid-19 exacerbated what we’ve known all along: Americans are unhealthy and unless we make lifestyle changes, we are literally going to pay for it with our lives.

When I was a child, my mom told me her father had diabetes. She said that they would find ants gathered near the toilet, because his urine was so sweet. To an 8-year old, that was the sort of outrageous, fun and slightly gross family factoid to brag about to friends. As an adult, the implications were serious. Though my mom didn’t have diabetes, both her parents did; my father had it too, and two of my siblings are on medication for it. The CDC says I am highly predisposed to diabetes if it runs in the family (check) and if I’m Asian American (check). Add to the melee, heart disease is also a familial companion.

You would think this less-than-glorious health history was enough incentive to get me cooking. It was not. In Manila, we had household help who cooked for us, I frequently dined out, and frankly had no interest in it. I turned to cooking in my 30’s out of necessity: I downshifted from a corporate career in Manila and moved to the US as a music student. I simply couldn’t afford to keep eating out. But I also had not understood the pernicious actions of big corporations, particularly the food industry, nor their sustained influence on lifestyle and culture, which diminished cooking life skills in our eyes. I didn’t know then what I know now. So despite a lifetime eschewing junk and processed foods, I became prediabetic. That’s a red flag for me to be vigilant about diet and lifestyle so I never cross over to diabetes. I have no ailments, am not on any medication and I want to keep it that way. So though my cooking journey began with economic reasons (the fifth tenet of the manifesto, I Cook To Save Money), it’s now sustained by others, primarily, that I Cook to Reclaim My Health.

To Solve a Problem, Understand What Caused It

There’s nothing like statistics on death and disease to put a damper on holiday celebrations. I admit, the timing may not be the best as we look forward to celebrating with feasts and abundance. A snapshot of America’s health today, however dire, is not without use. 2022 is around the corner, and what better way to counter a grim trend than to make new year’s resolutions that benefit you and your family?

But resolutions are only resolute if you can counter forces that undermine. So we need to understand how we got into this predicament in the first place.

Why are we Fat?

There are really just 2 big reasons:

1. We eat too much. (overconsumption)

2. We eat unhealthy stuff.

Easy, peasy, right?

Well, not exactly. This is one of those Matryoshka-esque problems where an issue opens up to another and then another, and sometimes is intertwined with others. As an example:

Overconsumption can be traced to reduced cooking and preparation times which has its genesis in mass food production and consequent growth in prepackaged foods; but it’s also related to sugar addiction which fails to satiate hunger. And if you think sugar is just that white table stuff, think again, because sugar has over 60 names and comes in many forms most don’t even recognize. The general public’s confusion on understanding exactly what is healthy and what’s not is a product of the machinations of greedy, unethical corporations, poor science, complicit government actions and a culture that makes us too busy to figure things out for ourselves. Confounded yet? Exactly! It’s a lot to unpack and why we haven’t been able to solve this decades-old problem. And because it’ll take me a few passes to paint the general picture, I’ll start with how we started to spend less time cooking.

When did we start spending less time in the kitchen?

In his book, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, author Michael Pollan traces the fascinating history of cooking from when man first learned to make fire to where we are today. As a starting point for my discussion, I will jump to post World War II in the United States where Pollan recounts:

…the food industry labored mightily to sell Americans—and American women in particular—on the processed-food wonders it had invented to feed the troops: canned meals, freeze-dried foods, dehydrated potatoes, powdered orange juice and coffee, instant and superconvenient everything.”

Post war America was a different world. Women, who were the traditional cooks, had entered the workforce; a proliferation of cars gave rise to suburbs where cooking became an isolated chore when once it was a communal activity; technological advances in the food industry were making packaged foods cheaper and more palatable every day and labor saving kitchen devices like the microwave oven were proving to be indispensable appliances.

The combination of changing societal and technological norms of postwar America, increased wealth, the burgeoning idea the food industry peddled that women should be “liberated” from the kitchen and most especially the prevalence of ready-made food that could be picked up or delivered all conspired to convince Americans to spend less time in the kitchen. In 1965 it was 146 minutes a day. By 2019, it was 36 minutes.

*2019 data from US Bureau of Labor Statistics

In a 2003 study titled, Why Have Americans Become More Obese? , researchers Cutler and his colleagues linked increased caloric consumption, primarily from snacks, directly to the rise of obesity. Data collected (1977-78 vs 1994-96) showed that men and women consumed 268 and 143 more calories per day than they did 14 years before. The question was, what was making Americans eat more? They’re conclusion: Less cooking.

Binge America

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