The study of preschoolers by St. Michael’s Hospital doctor
Navrinda Persaud and his team set out to determine if the levels of bad cholesterol
(HDL) were affected not by what you eat, but how you eat it. Elevated levels of HDL in preschoolers is a
key indicator of health issues like cardiovascular problems in later life. The study determined that kids who eat in
front of the TV or computer monitor have higher levels of this dangerous
cholesterol. In fact, Dr. Persaud
actually made the point that there was a stronger correlation between eating
behaviour and high cholesterol than between what was eaten and high
cholesterol.
While this may be counter-intuitive on the surface, the
study team points out that kids who eat while watching TV are not paying
attention to what they eat, and tend to ignore the cues that tell them they’ve
had enough. “They’re just kind of
shoveling it in,” says Dr. Persaud. The
study concludes that “evidence suggests promoting responsive feeding, where
adults provide appropriate access to healthy foods and children use internal
cues (not parent directed cues or cues from the television) to determine the
timing, pace, and amount they consume.”
In other words, sit down and eat a family meal without the distractions
of TV, smart phone, computer, or iPod and set an example of healthy, convivial
mealtimes.
Michael Polen is the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a call to eat locally produced foods
wherever possible that was a bestseller when it came out in 2006. His new book is called Cooked: a Natural History of Transformation and he is on the book
circuit to promote it. His conversation
with Gomeshi touched on many aspects of our food culture, but centred on the
question of “who’s doing the cooking?”
When we eat food produced by corporations, whether it’s prepackaged
pizza or canned soup or frozen dinners, we are eating food made from cheap,
industrially produced ingredients that include large amounts of salt (to make
the crappy ingredients taste better), sugar, fat, and chemicals that make it
last a long, long time so it can be shipped from afar and sit on a shelf until
purchased. When you eat industrial food,
Polen pointed out, you are supporting industrial agriculture.
When Gomeshi mentioned our current fascination with star
chefs and televised cooking programmes, Polen explained what he calls the
cooking paradox: “We're spending more time watching other people cook food on
television than we are cooking ourselves.
I think on some level we understand how important cooking is and we miss
it in our lives.”
The Slow Food Movement is all about good, healthy, local
ingredients prepared at home by people who care about what they eat, and
consumed in a convivial, social setting.
Dr. Persaud and Michael Polen seem to be on exactly the same page.
