Woman; 127; Food for Thought

A. Then the great women with. Good evening and welcome to woman. We have all heard and read a great deal about the role of food in our lives. We hear that we often eat unwisely even when we eat. Well. That soon the world food supply may be exhausted. That we may be taking our food from the sea. Or chewing pills instead of steak. And that our present eating

habits are dangerous to our health. We will hear more on this from my guest this evening. With me is now Rupa Fernandez currently working in communications doing nutrition commercials for public education. Also with me is Dr. Elinor Williams a nutritionist currently teaching at State University College of Buffalo. Welcome to women. Are we running out of food in the world. Well actually we we are in the sense that we're 3.7 billion people today and we're going to be in the next year four billion and thirty five years we should double our population. Certainly we hope that our population. Does get some sort of control but in the meantime there is only one acre of variable land per person in the world today and we don't have that much more land to increase our food production. And. And when you actually look at the way people are fed the

case is that two thirds of the earth's population now is poorly fed. Only one third of the URLs of the world's population is well fed. And of course I think in the United States we don't realize that so much because we have so much it's very hard for us to realize that most of the earth is not well fed. What are the contributing factors what are the reasons. One of the reasons is the fact that in the developed parts of the world by which I mean Europe and the United States and Canada New Zealand Australia. And a few other countries. These are the countries that have the resources. These are the countries that have the energy required to produce food and have the land to produce the food and the other poorly developed countries are very markedly lacking in resources and as Marcus said they're lacking in land as well. So that that's what

the poor distribution of resources amongst the two thirds of the world's population is one big problem. But then it's also how we use our land. Is so much of our land goes into cattle production into meat production. And it's a very the cattle is a very poor conversion factory in order to feed a cow to get one pound of protein you have to feed the cow 21 pounds of protein. And in this respect. The more affluent societies. Have priority placed on the stake and so it's a very unfair. Sort of market because we keep consuming all this steak. The more affluent a society becomes more steak we consume the more protein vegetable protein we're consuming. A prime example was in 1968 here in the U.S. we fed our cattle for slaughter two hundred million tons of protein and this was plant protein milk products and fish products. So in essence

we're taking from the mouths of the poor we're taking like to the fish crop from the Latin American countries and feeding it to our cows so that we can eat our state. And I think another point we should make too is that. We're we're actually feeding our our cattle grain and soybeans which people themselves could consume instead. You know cattle are very efficient conversion converters off grass to protein and in fact that's that's a very economical use of the raising of cattle because they are then using a source of food that man cannot use man cannot convert grasses and certain kinds of plants to food at all but. But cattle can therefore when they're used as grazing animals that is really very efficient conversion of that kind of resource to animal protein products such as milk. Or even of beef but to feed them grain and soybeans as we do now

and fish meal as a saying is extremely extremely expensive. All of the earth's resources and its taking away from people what what they could be using for their own protein. Is education a factor. Lack of education. Perhaps to some extent but I do think the real problem is economic. Most countries that are poorly developed many of them are selling coffee and tobacco they're using their land to cultivate coffee and tobacco and they're shipping it to us to the wealthy countries to get cash to get money. And historically it's interesting about how that developed it developed because Europeans explored these countries and settled in these countries and exploited them in the sense that they had them to develop what they wanted. They wanted the coffee they wanted bananas they wanted sugar they wanted all of those things so these countries didn't

just. Produce those products and sell them to the developed countries the Western countries and certain other countries and therefore their land is not used to feed their people. And now this is the world's population has gotten so large that that's an incredible problem you know. I think it's also a matter of miseducation so far as the people in the developed countries because we lightly go around eating a 10 ounce steak you know at one sitting on the average and that's equivalent to 17 days worth of vegetarian you know meals and two thirds of the world's population of have been able to eat vegetarian meals and get by and there's an infinite infinite variety of vegetarian meals. And yet we're sort of hooked on this idea that without the steak on the plate you know we were not eating right before we get into protein too heavily here. What is any one doing about this what about the future I mean you read about things like algae Sue and certain kinds of plants that are found and on hillsides in Chile

and they have a protein equivalent of meat and eggs and things. While you certainly do hear a lot now about the possibility that in the future science is going to solve this problem and they're going to do it by growing things on petroleum for example well of course we're all aware now that there's a shortage of petroleum and the in the earth and therefore the idea of growing things on petroleum is not such a great idea. But for example the idea about growing algae and having man use the protein from algae. Again though the thing that we haven't really looked at is the energy cost of doing that it does cost a lot of energy to get the algae into a form that man can consume and digest. In other words they do have to remove from the algae indigestible portions and get it into a form that man can digest. That's one problem with algae is the huge amount of energy consumption it takes to do that now the rich countries can afford to do that. But you see what we're proposing to do is to make a food out of algae which we're

not used to consuming and we wouldn't dream of consuming and shipping it off to other countries and letting them get used to eating at what we're saying is we don't have to change our food habits you have to change your food habits. Well that's asking an awful lot of people it seems to me. And furthermore we haven't really any idea that they will actually accept it. So that. Where we have solve that problem and all by. Bad It's an idea but I just can't cannot see that. In the near future. We need this problem solved within by the year 2000. That's only 25 years from now. Do we know enough now to keep people alive with synthetic food. Oh no. Absolutely not. No. There are many trace elements that are required by the human body that we know practically nothing about. We don't know how much the body needs and and therefore we cannot based on our present knowledge feed man with a purely synthetic diet. We cannot. And we also don't know how many toxic substances might develop in those kinds of products such as

algae and many other kinds of things we would need years and years and years really to develop that kind of thing. And right what we have experience with now in the way of food is a natural diet on which we have had millions of thousands and thousands of years of experience in developing and developing it for man. You see so that not the natural diet is still by far the better choice for men. Every once in a while we read about a World Food Bank it's anything like that happening. Well they're definitely trying to put this together there's a U.N. conference called this December. Hopefully. We will. As a world get together to have a World Food Bank. But it's. Again a matter of politics and economics. As long as we hold the world food resources. In fact there's a new USDA. They call it food for crude. You know we want the crude oil and we've got the food. So I don't know

you know that's something that we'll just have to wait and see. Let's get more specific and talk about the United States and you know what are some of the contributing factors here and I know one that you're very angry about sometimes is are. Our obsession with protein. Yes. The recommended dietary allowance for protein in the United States is point eight grams per kilogram of body weight so that means that one hundred twenty five pound woman as it is recommended that she get only 45 grams of protein per day. Now a 10 ounce steak gives 60 grams of protein. And most people in this country. Will consume at least twice the recommended allowance of protein. That is up to 90 grams many many people consume at least that much and that's extremely extremely wasteful. One of the best ways that we could help contribute to this whole program a problem in the world is to reduce our intake of

protein just down to the recommended dietary allowance which is a liberal allowance really. So that would be one thing that could be done in this country. And protein is not something you store in the body for future use. What happens to it. No it's protein is important in the diet for its amino acid content. The body breaks the protein that you eat down to amino acids and then absorbs it as amino acids and then builds it back up into protein in the body. The body makes different proteins from it. Then the protein one eats for example. Now the body only has a certain need for protein and any excess beyond that either is used to build up fat. Or well any excess beyond. Well if if the total calories are too many it will be used to build up fat. But at about the excess is broken down and excrete it as. As you Rhea and therefore it's a loss of the nitrogen in the protein so therefore one needs not you know we have too many people eating too

much protein really and I think one of the points we should clarify here is that when people think of protein they usually think of me and we have tremendous amount of protein resources from nuts and seeds and vegetables and lagoons and grains and. Milk products and and. It's. It's just amazing I mean if you're talking about the 10 ounce steak also in that same meal you maybe. Eating a tremendous amount of other proteins too. So it's a tremendous amount of waste a minute. Another point we should make clear is that. Many sources of animal protein such as eggs and milk are much much cheaper to produce than beef is. Beef is the most expensive source of protein to produce from the standpoint of the amount of food it takes to produce that so that a diet that it's very easy to get 45 grams of protein by combining a small amount of animal protein such as milk. And eggs or milk and. Maybe a little bit of cheese and then using vegetable

proteins for the rest like beans and rice or beans and other grains such as wheat and so on. What about a medical overview of what's happening to us because of what we're eating. It's a very good point. I think what Eleanor was referring to right now is partially the idea of eating lower on the food chain. You know the higher the you know the cow eats a lot of things along the way. You know and there's a build up of residue. Pesticides and all of the things that we have in our environment anyway. And also the the way that we produce our cows at this point in time with the hormone injections and nightlights and antibiotics. We tend to be getting more more and more pesticide residue and whatnot in the. Higher up on the food chain. Meats. And so partially it's good to eat low on the food chain. So for example chicken or fish because you have you know a lesser amount of this accumulation.

Is as well as it being more ecologically feasible in this present day. And from the standpoint of health to medicine. Our diet which is high in animal protein turns out not only to be high in protein but it's also very high end in fat. And the fact that our diet is such a refined diet so highly processed means that it's very high in sugar and very low in crude fiber. That is when I say fiber I mean there is no bran and it from cereals and there is very little fiber in it from fruits and vegetables our intake of fruit vegetables is quite low in this country. So therefore medical problems that come out from the consuming of such a diet for one thing is obesity obesity is a huge problem in this country. The other kind of thing that we're concerned about is the high incidence of coronary heart disease in this country and we think that's has some connection with there are our high saturated fat high cholesterol diet high cholesterol. Right. And there's a lot of interest now in the fact

that. Our very low fiber diet may be connected with high incidence of cancer of the colon and the rectum in this country. And this this comes back to your earlier question can we live off of synthetic foods and this is obviously a reason why we can't. You know all of these. You know we're getting into an era of eating more and more synthetic foods and these are the problems that are arising. Right so we abuse protein and we are not. Using our food in the best possible way. What exactly do you mean by eating lower on the food chain. I would mention that two or three times I think we should explain it perhaps. Well what we mean by eating lower on the food chain is that when you have a large ocean fish for example like tuna fish subsist by eating smaller fish. And if you as you go down the food chain if you think about just ocean animals

the larger fish are eating the smaller fish and till finally you get down to the very small fish who are consuming the plankton and the green plants in the bottom of the ocean so that actually the guys on the food chain you might say are the very small fish that are just eating the plants. Now if you look at land animals beef. Animals and other meat animals that we have. Are fed as we said grains and and soybeans and this kind of thing. And. Then the fish in the milk products they're right and Titian milk products so that that makes them very high on the food chain. If we if we were to eat as low on the food chain as we could we would be eating just grains and legumes as our sources of protein. And and things higher on the food chain would be any kind of animal products. So that what we talk about are primary calories and we by which we mean calories that come from plants. And the American diet is very expensive to produce because

it takes it takes six of those plant calories to produce one calorie of the kind of diet that we eat and that's a very expensive diet. People who are eating mostly plants rather than eating very much animal food would be getting something more a closer to 2 calories of input for each calorie they eat. Or maybe one calorie input for each calorie thing. What chance is there that will change our eating habits and eat lower on the food chain. Well I think it would take an awful lot of consciousness raising in this country to do that. I really think so too I think as long as we hold the economic you know as long as we're up there. And have the food supply we don't have to worry we can actually watch all those millions of people starve. You know in the past two years a quarter of a million people have starved in this sub Sahara desert area and. We really don't have to to think about it you know if we don't want to we can just continue to be high on the food chain eat the steak in the. END.

But there may come a time when because of the population problems and the fact that the world doesn't have. That and an expandable source of energy and. We may find out that we will be forced to take this and it's also a matter of the prices of meat going up due to this. Too. It's it's a difficult question to ask how all of our food habits changed in this country I mean obviously we didn't start out this way. You know well sense of 9100 the way in which our food consumption has changed has been that we have started to consume since that time we're consuming much more sugar. We consume one hundred twelve pounds of sugar per person per year. That comes to two thirds of a cup of sugar per day per person. And that's a horrendous amount of sugar but I think the way that this is come about. You know the food technology that was developed during World War 2 began you know this change about with the food industry

and then advertising and television came into being about 20 years ago and. Our advertising is just well in the past 20 years we've doubled the amount of items on the supermarket shelves. I don't know you know you can make all that food but it's food and a lot of synthetic fabricated whatnot you know that has come about. But they call them I think it's in our plastic bend. Fun and convenience foods that's mostly what it is. In other words the profit motive in the industry has has made them always look for something that will sell and and therefore in children cereals for example. Well since Second the since the Second World War we've got this fantastic phenomenon where there are cereals that are marketed to children and then there are cereals that are marketed to adults. And it's interesting to look at that the ones marketed to children are the sweet and yucky

ones. And. And and and they're they're plastic fun. I mean there's plastic toys in the boxes and all that kind of thing. And furthermore the industry markets it saying with things like if little Johnny won't eat will entice his appetite with this kind of cereal which is ridiculous. I mean again we're getting so far away from nature the natural situation is that a child is naturally hungry and a hungry child will eat. You do not have to entice a child with gimmicky food to get the child to eat. I think the mother is you know sort of enticed with gimmicky advertising too because she's told right on the package that this is nutritious and in many cases maybe it's vitamin fortified you know through some fabrication but it's predominantly in most cases sugar and carbohydrates and. Well let's look at what they've done to that kind of thing like a serial. They've taken a good natural serial that has all the lots of good nutrients and it already

and then they've made a concoction out of it that's completely unrecognizable. And they've added a lot of sugar so that on the box you see that the first ingredient is sugar that means there is more sugar in that cereal than there is cereal. And other words then there is wheat or corn or anything of that sort. Furthermore there is a process of manufacture has with has destroyed a lot of the vitamins and minerals and so what do they do they add it back which is a fantastic thing of this is very expensive from the standpoint of the energy the electricity the all kinds of energy input that goes into doing that. And if we did not have so many of these so-called convenience foods and and gadgety and finicky fun and fun and frolic kinds of foods we would we would have much less expenditure of energy to produce our food. So that's extremely expensive. I mean besides being expensive are they dangerous to think. Well they could be. They might be. I think they definitely are I think. You know our main nutritional problem here

in the United States is obesity. We're getting a lot of empty calories you know over nourish. You know over fed under-nourished people. I think one of the ways is that this is been done. And as I was alluding to before the television coming into to its own and children watch an amazing amount of television in fact it's been said that the average American will watch nine years of television and between the age of two and. And 65 you know that's an amazing amount of time and when they get you so young the little kid on. Saturday morning children's television they will show anywheres up to 85 percent of their commercials are for edible. Items. Now when you break that down it's not really food I mean it's it's these fabricated things again and they don't even talk about milk except to say that they have something that will sweeten it up and make it palatable some chocolate syrup they do that. You know if

this is education for our children it's just way off the bat you know with it what do you feel that the real message that kids are getting about food from TV is. I think the message is that they're getting is that if you if it's good it's sweet and I really do think that children's television has corrupted children's appetites it's made them think that. And in fact I know many many children who do not like natural orange juice they only like the engineer and orange flavored drinks that have nothing natural in them. They're completely synthetic and children prefer them because they've been taught to prefer the sweet and the the jazzed up flavored drinks and foods. Can the housewife who goes into a supermarket to buy food assume that because it's there it's safe. Well I think it's very hard to define say for what you know I say. Good for her child.

But this is this is a major problem a wonder many times of a mother has a choice you know her. Child seen these products and you know it's really. You know the in thing to get them and really wants them. And you know he goes into the market with his his mother and he's going to throw a tantrum and since that he has this and I think it it's probably a terribly difficult thing for a mother to to discriminate against you know what are good foods and water. Well it seems to me that mothers have ways of dealing with children though. In other words when a mother realizes that maybe they aren't good for her child. Maybe it's just that most mothers have not even thought about it. If women would start becoming conscious of it then I think they could they could easily divert the child into choosing something that's a better choice. Do you think people make the connection between good health and the food they eat. I think a lot of people in this country don't make the connection and some more people

nowadays are beginning to I think. But a lot of people don't. Move. Can you tell me a story that I'd love you to repeat. The tomato story do you recall there's a book out called hard tomatoes hard times. That. Was an exposé on what what is actually happened to our tomato industry here. They asked that the land grant colleges. I think it was UC Davis in particular devise a tomato picking machine. And so they worked and worked and made a tomato picking machine. And they couldn't quite modify the machine to pick the tomatoes without squishing them so they modified the tomatoes. They now pick the tomatoes while they're still grain and hard and they take them not to you know ripening houses but to do greening houses they've isolated the chemical that will cause them to go red so they spray the chemical on the tomatoes of tomatoes turn red and then they're shipped all over the country and they are actually genetically

changed tomatoes they have tougher. Skins and more seeds and you know I really don't know what the implications are except the. Nutritionally speaking because they don't go through the sun process. They don't have the vitamin A in the vitamin C that nutritionists have always told people to eat their tomatoes to get. Better without that. They're doing somewhat of a similar process on the cantaloupe right now. I'm going to interrupt you because we have 30 seconds and I want to know if you have any reading to recommend for our audience in case they would like to know more on the subject either of you. I think I salute. Francis has a beautiful book called Small Planet. It really is informative as to. Our protein problem and the world perspective then Recipes for a small planet. You all was a follow up. I'm sorry we've run out of time I thank you both for being here. Goodnight from women see you

next week. Iraq.

Can a society where stake is a status symbol and where the plastic fantastic foods are staples be taught to change its eating habits. Many Americans often eat well but do they also eat wisely. And what about those people who don't have a choice of food or even enough to eat. Are we responsible to them. I'm Sandra L. kind of woman. Join Maruca Fernandez Elinor Williams and myself when we discuss nutrition and the world food situation on woman. OK.