Hope's Edge_ The Next Diet for a Small Planet - Frances Moore Lappe [71]
WHY SO LITTLE FIBER IN OUR DIETS?
Whole cereals, fruits, vegetables, and legumes (peas, beans, lentils) are good fiber sources. But we are eating less of many of these fiber foods and more of foods without fiber. For example, we eat less than half the flour and cereals our grandparents ate in 1910,37 and the refined cereal products we do eat have been stripped of their fiber. A slice of white bread has only one-eighth the fiber of a slice of whole wheat bread. (See Figure 6.) Since 1930 we have cut our fresh fruit consumption by one-third.38 The amount of dried beans in our diets has dropped by a third since its peak in the 1930s. One of the few fiber foods whose consumption is not declining is fresh vegetables.
As with fat, the real reasons for lack of fiber in the American diet are the increase in animal foods (which have no fiber to begin with) and the increase in processed foods (which have theirs removed).
Figure 6. Fiber in 4 Slices of Bread and Other Foods
Dangerous Change No. 6: Too Much Alcohol
Ever since Prohibition, Americans have been drinking more alcohol. They drank the equivalent of 2.69 gallons of pure alcohol per person in 1975, 24 percent more than during the 1961–65 period. Of course, this figure is misleading, because while many people drink little or no alcohol, others drink far more than their share.39 The biggest increases have come in wine, with 490 million gallons sold in 1979, and beer, up from 82 million barrels in 1950 to 175 million barrels in 1979.40 (Some 25 percent of the cereal grains directly consumed in the United States are used to make alcoholic beverages.41)
Alcoholic beverages offer us few nutrients but lots of calories—210 calories per day in the average adult diet in 1975. (Again, this is misleading: since many Americans drink no alcohol, others must get 500 or even 1,000 calories a day from alcoholic drinks.42)
THE RISKS
Alcohol leads to cirrhosis of the liver, the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. It can also cause birth defects and mouth cancer. Even more deadly is alcohol’s effect in traffic accidents: half of all traffic deaths involve a drinking driver. Moreover, alcoholism destroys—only more slowly—the lives of millions of Americans every year.
Despite these undisputed dangers, sales of alcoholic beverages amount to more than $45 billion a year. Anheuser Busch, which controls 26 percent of the beer market, spends $120 million a year on advertising, and the alcohol industries have enormous political power.43
Dangerous Change No. 7: More Additives, Antibiotic Residues, and Pesticides
FOOD ADDITIVES
“It is impossible to know exactly how many pounds of artificial colors, flavors and preservatives we ingest annually” is the sober assessment of Letitia Brewster and Michael Jacobson. In The Changing American Diet, these authors note that the only accurate records made public are the amounts of coal-tar-based colors certified each year by the Food and Drug Administration. But Brewster and Jacobson suggest that the increase in the use of food coloring is probably a pretty good indicator of the increase in other additives. The use of certified food coloring has increased about elevenfold since 1940.44
THE RISKS
The debate over the risks of food additives continues. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, co-founded by Jacobson, has spent ten years looking into these risks. Jacobson’s first book, Eater’s Digest (Doubleday, 1972), is a valuable encyclopedia of food additives and their risks.
“But there are hundreds of common additives,” I said to Michael Jacobson in a recent phone conversation. “What do you tell people to do?” He answered with a list of five additives about which he believes there is enough evidence to warrant concern.
Read labels and avoid these additives, Michael suggests. “But it’s not so difficult,” he says.