Obama and the Food Chain

During holiday stuffing season, healthy-eating advocates are looking forward to a trim President with good nutritional habits to inspire an obese nation.

The New York Times reports: "To advocates who have watched scattered calls for changes in food policy gather political and popular momentum, Mr. Obama looks like their kind of president.

"Not only does he seem to possess a more-sophisticated palate than some of his recent predecessors, but he will also take office in an age when organic food is mainstream, cooking competitions are among the top-rated TV shows and books calling for an overhaul in the American food system are best sellers."

Hoping for less sweets in school-lunch programs and perhaps even an organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn, food activists realize that, for the most part, a President can push the cause of good eating by example.

While Bill Clinton scarfed Big Macs, Obama has been his polar opposite. “He’s remarkably careful,” says a campaign caterer. “He doesn’t like sweets that much but fish, fish, fish, some chicken and things with spice,” like chicken pizette with fontina cheese, grilled onion and sweet and hot peppers.

Other favorites include "vegetarian beggars purses filled with wild mushrooms, artichokes and tomato; bits of sausage and artichokes on skewers; bruschetta with goat cheese, tomato and basil; baby paninis or crostini and scooped out wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano filled with knobs of the cheese on one side and olives that had been marinated in fennel and lemon and orange peels on the other."

(For those who want to keep even closer track, there is a web site, Obama Foodorama: A Daily Diary of The Obama Foodscape, One Byte At A Time.)

With his sophisticated taste in food, President Obama is poised to lead the nation in a time of belt-tightening in more ways than one.

Feeding Frenzies, Here and There

The rising threat of childhood obesity in America is in the Washington Post spotlight this weekend offering a bizarre contrast to recent headlines about worldwide hunger and starvation.

"In ways only beginning to be understood," the Post reports, "overweight at a young age appears to be far more destructive to well-being than adding excess pounds later in life...

"Doctors are seeing confirmation of this daily: boys and girls in elementary school suffering from high blood pressure, high cholesterol and painful joint conditions; a soaring incidence of type 2 diabetes, once a rarity in pediatricians' offices; even a spike in child gallstones, also once a singularly adult affliction...

"With one in three children in this country overweight or worse, the future health and productivity of an entire generation--and a nation--could be in jeopardy."

The inequality mirrored in overfed children here and starving children elsewhere is complex on both sides of the equation.

Crop failures, hoarding, corruption, manipulated food prices, even natural disasters exacerbated by political stupidity (as in Myanmar) are part of the politics of starvation that resist humanitarian and financial aid efforts.

The alarming rise in American childhood obesity has roots in a culture of sedentary pastimes, among other causes, but fast food and nutritional ignorance contribute to an epidemic that may overwhelm our health care system in generations to come, even as increasing economic disparities of the Bush years leave pockets of hunger and malnutrition here that resemble Third World suffering.

If human beings can't get their act together on something as basic as rationally providing and consuming food for the survival of the species, what hope is there for progress on the knottier problems of civilization?