One Pill Makes You Strong:undoing 50 years of PHN

It’s a Thursday afternoon, circa 1958 in a New York working class neighborhood, I and my fellow female Junior High classmates, starched and pressed aprons on, are dutifully listening to Mrs. Laughter in Home Ec (Economics – such a perfect post WW II phrase) explaining how to shop for salad greens that will last at least a week in the fridge. Then she reviews options for creating nutritious salads for a family. 

No matter at 13 I had no real role in shopping and meal prep in a Greek American family of 5 kids.  But to this day I can recall lessons about handling raw chicken, why apples were one of the compact gifts of nature and that strange mingling of the smell of Ajax and the sweet butteriness of some baked good our demonstration kitchen always had. 

It was only much later, in grad school,  that I came to understand that Home Ec was part of the start of PHN - Public Health Nutrition that started in the 1950s in the US.  

You could look much further back to the “great sanitary awakening” of the mid to late 1800s  to discover that food safety and nutrition were included in the missions of philanthropic and charitable initiatives.  Back then agricultural chemists were doing early research on the role of calories in measuring the efficiency of a diet and the role of proportional eating.  ( I particularly like this Blog  https://www.healthy-eating-politics.com/usda-food-pyramid.html)

And the first Food and Drug Act (1906) addressed food production, sales and labeling.  In 1917, the first USDA food guide appeared - How to Select Foods and was written by Caroline Hunt, a nutritionist for the USDA. 

By  1972, the WIC pilot program began  ( Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and reports such as  Dietary Goals for the United States (1977) and The Surgeon General’s Report on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention in 1979 presaged  the Healthy People initiatives kicked off in 2020.

And there've been many iterations of the Food Pyramid and Plate Planners that I and countless others have used over the decades with individuals to help develop greater health literacy and nutritional l literacy. 

Today we have powerful and growing scientific understanding of the role nutrition plays in chronic diseases (For a quick review of the history of nutrition in the US I’d suggest - “Introduction to Public Health Nutrition” 

For sure, there’s been a long and sometimes nasty battle played out in well funded advertising and promotional campaigns by the food and dietary supplements industries.  Some of you must remember Vitamin Donuts!

But since the earliest Food Pyramids, there’s been a constant and growing emphasis on the benefits of eating good nutritious food.  Good food, good exercise has been a tried and true recipe for better health. 

So it another Thursday, this time 2022, and I'm sitting on an under-air conditioned subway captive to the narrow images and messages advertisers subject us to . Maybe it was that subway sweaty feeling, or distinctive aroma of summer in underground NYC but there is was - entering my mind like a hat pin.  OUCH!!

Solaray's  FOOD IS NOT ENOUGH Campaign

Solary includes whole essays on  Food Is Not Enough—Here’s Why & What Can Be Done About It

Why eat (30) oranges when you can take 1 pill?

The endless world of Why Eats? is staggering.  You're lead to believe that Food will soon become that neanderthal novelty that overstayed its welcome. 

And then a friend sent me a new episode on the demise of children's breakfast in South Africa

"Parents of picky eaters substituting vegetables with dietary supplements. Doctors warn there are risks."

Never mind that the clear recommendations for kids is to eat a nutrient dense diet with limited sugar and fat - The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said about 1/3  of children and adolescents take dietary supplements.

Not that they teach Home Ec much any more, but I know schools are working hard on teaching about growing food, healthy foods, healthy eating, health lives.  I wonder what Mrs. Laughter would say?