
In a shifting sea of experts and studies, sheâs probably one of the most trustworthy authorities on what is and isnât good for you, so I jumped at the chance to pick her brain. While it wasnât exactly a Moses on Mount Sinai experience, with ten neat rules for healthy eating handed down on tablets, that was actually her point: As much as weâd like to believe thereâs a magic formula for healthy eating, there ainât. Also, public health is super important and has major implications for social justice, which is something we could all stand to remind ourselves of more often.
Obviously youâre not here to shill for a soda tax in Seattle, but we actually had an attempt at it here. Why does something like that fail in an ultra progressive city like Seattle?
I donât think they did their community organizing work well enough. I donât know about the Seattle one at all, but the elements that have caused the successful soda tax initiatives were done with a fabulous amount of community organizing. Door to door canvassing, talking to people, getting out the vote. Making people understand that this is an issue that concerns them personally.
The soda industry argument against it is that itâs a regressive tax thatâs going to hurt the poor. It is a regressive tax. Thereâs no question itâs a regressive tax, but so is type 2 diabetes. Itâs a regressive disease because itâs hitting people who are poor more than itâs hitting people who are wealthy.
And insulin is really expensive.
Just bringing it to public attention in the way that these taxes do has been responsible for a lot of public education. You donât want people drinking all this sugar. Itâs just really a bad way to get it. Itâs even worse than having it in candy.
Iâm a type 1 diabetic so I know that itâs the fastest way to deliver sugar to your system when you need it.
You could carry a little vial of soda around with youâa better option would be orange juice. It used to be orange juice. I donât know what they tell you now, do you carry pills?
Skittles. Theyâre basically the same as the glucose pills.
Fun! They taste a little better. But you donât want to deliver large amounts of sugar, and the amounts of sugar in these drinks are just staggering. You donât want people doing that, itâs really bad for health. If they are going to be drinking sodas, they should be drinking small ones and not very often. You see these kids carrying around these big liter bottles. Thatâs maybe not a good idea.
So on the other side of that I wanted to ask, is there a place for soda? How do you have a soda tax that allows for artisan soda makers to thrive?
It depends on what the cut points are. Usually the taxes are on beverages that have some cut point. They usually exclude juicesâwhich have just as much sugarâbut people donât drink that much juice. Iâd prefer to leave juices alone. But cities make their own decision about whatâs in and whatâs out.
So could they theoretically exempt soda at bars?
Itâs an interesting question. I was told for my Barrow talk that I should not talk about sodas because they have a lot of alcoholics in Barrow. Theyâre drinking soda instead of alcohol and you donât want to encourage them to drink alcohol. And I also shouldnât talk about sodas because Coca-Cola ships a lot of Coca-Cola to Barrow and they can piggyback milk and other kinds of beverages along with that. So donât say anything bad about soda.
I have a friend who is a recovering alcoholic and he drinks a case of Mountain Dew every two days.
It would probably be better if he didnât. Thatâs exchanging one poison for another.
Which is how a lot of people beat addiction, ironically. That actually brings up another line of questioning on the everyday things that people can do for their health, and how overwhelming it can be to know whatâs best. I wanted to ask you about some of those things. Like, in Seattle we have tons and tons of gluten-free places opening. Is the gluten-free thing real?
Thereâs now been pretty reasonable research that the prevalence of real gluten intolerance in the population has not changed. But the prevalence of people who are consuming gluten-free diets has increased dramatically. Those are two different things. People tell me they feel better when they donât eat a lot of wheat. One thing is that theyâre not eating as many calories, because wheat is in a lot of things with lots of calories. They donât need wheat, itâs not essential to the human diet. So thereâs nothing wrong with being gluten-free and the fact that there are all these restaurants and places that are doing gluten-free make it wonderful for celiacs!
What about soy and some of the other things that people make into bogeymen?
Well as far as I can tell from the research on soy, itâs a food and whenever you see research that shows that soy is wonderful and soy is terrible, itâs probably just a food. Everything in moderation.
So what about meat? Michale Pollan would say to eat your little credit-card sized portion once a week, but people eat tons and tons of it. Is that something we need to reduce?
People would be healthier if they ate more plants. But I donât know where the cut point is.
The local and organic thing is something that people in Seattle are absolutely obsessed with, but it can be difficult to navigate. I saw on your website you were breaking down those priorities. Can you describe that a bit?
It depends on which one matters more. It depends on whether you care about environmental issues or whether you care about local farmers. People have different preferences. Organics are about production, how foods are produced. Local is about who is doing the producing. So it just depends. I prefer both, but not everybody can do both. I like to know my farmer.
So the main point Iâm getting at is that it can be extremely overwhelming for someone to try and eat healthy.
But it shouldnât be! Michael Pollan did it: âEat food, not too much, mostly plants.â
Just live by that?
Yeah! I mean that covers an astonishing amount of advice, boiled down to something really simple. Also, food is one of lifeâs greatest pleasures and you should eat what you like!