One of these things is not like the other…Anna Wintour – Vogue magazine’s editrix-in-chief – made headlines earlier this month in an interview where she said, “I’d just been on a trip to Minnesota, where I can only kindly describe most of the people I saw as little houses.” In an bit of irony that says God loves Vogue as much as I do, Minneapolis/St. Paul was just named the second healthiest city in the nation, after Washington D.C. All jokes about The Devil Wears Cornbread aside, Ms. Wintour brings up an interesting point: the variability of food cultures, even within the same country. There is a huge coastal food divide in the US that nobody ever talks about.
California exports health & fitness advice like China exports lead-covered baby toys. And, most of the time, said advice is generalizable to the public at large. However, I sometimes think that all the personal trainers and health gurus forget that many of us don’t live in the land of eternal sunshine (A.K.A. the place where food actually grows on trees).
It’s not just that the tanned & toned ignore our inability to run outside in a -35 windstorm or the fact that the local grocery store thinks
purslane is a new line of designer handbags made just for Target. It’s that they overlook the differences in the entire food culture.
The family that blowdrys together, stays together.Coastal Culture vs. Midwest McDonalds
I moved to the Midwest from Seattle – a place where you can get organic produce at the farmer’s market year round and salmon right off the boat. (Oh and that nonsense about it raining all the time? Lies to keep all the rest of you from moving there. New York gets more rain than Seattle.) I never knew how good I had it until I moved out here and discovered tiny shrivelled apples on “sale” for $1.49/lb.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love it here. People on the street actually meet your eyes and say hi. And not even just tin-foil hatted homeless crazies! Normal people will talk to you in the check out lane. Teenagers hold doors open for grandmas. There’s a playground on every corner. And the local honeycrisp apples, when they are in season, are the closest thing to Apple Heaven I’ve ever come (even if they do still sell for $2.49/lb). But. If I were to follow the current food craze to “eat local”, it’d be snow cones and sausage six months out of the year.
In addition to the physical limitations, there is also a prevailing food culture here. I hesitate to bring it up lest I conjure perverse images of Fargo or America’s Next Top Model and thus blaspheme against my new and much-loved home but it is the simple truth. The PTA here opens the year with a beer-n-brat tent. Almost every birthday party my children are invited to is in a fast food establishment. All fish comes fried. HOTDISH (read: casserole based around Campbell’s Cream-o-whatever) is the regional delicacy and shows up at every function. The schools hand out Pizza Hut certificates for reading, McDonald’s Happy Meals for math, and Culver’s Custard (ice cream) for playing sports. And we have one of the highest rates of drunk driving in the country.
As much as we like to believe in a TV-homogenized America, there simply is a difference between the way people on the coasts and people in the middle think about food. Disclaimer: the one place I’ve never lived is in the South, so I can’t speak to their food culture but I have been told that it is very distinct and about as far from the Cali-sushi-veg aesthetic as you can get and still stay in our borders.
Why is it that we can accept that the French have their own way of eating and the Italians and the Swedes and yet fail to see and appreciate the differences in their own country? I expect that some of you will answer (or at least think) “Well, it’s because the Europeans are trim and healthy whereas somebody better put you Americans out to pasture before milking time.”
And yet, Minneapolis is the second healthiest city in the nation for the 4th year in a row! That’s right, somehow it all balances out – the vicious weather, the McDonald’s birthdays, the freaking hotdish. We exercise indoors. We take vitamin D tablets. We eat a lot of frozen fruits and veggies. (Bonus: you don’t even need an extra freezer here! Just throw it out your back door.) We make it work but it ain’t the California way.
Is Dad a clergyman? Or a postal worker?? And what does Junior have against Mom?
What To Do?
Now that my rant is over, what’s a produce-loving girl to do? Well for starters there is
Local Harvest – a nation-wide community that puts consumers into direct contact with the local food providers. It may not get me strawberries in February but it definitely opened my eyes to what is available (homemade grass-fed goat cheese anyone?).
Try a
CSA (community supported agriculture). I just signed up with one and I think I’m in love. The way it works is you buy a share of a local farmer’s crop before the season starts. The farmer then delivers a bushel basket full of picked-that-day seasonal produce to you every week. True you don’t get to pick what ends up in your basket but, hey, you needed a reason to branch out past broccoli and carrots, right? It can also be affordable.
My experience with my CSA last year wasn’t great but I haven’t given up all hope yet!
Grow your own. Even in our 1000-sq ft condo in Seattle, we grew tomatoes and strawberries in large pots. Gardening is the new black! I know you think you have a black thumb – I do too – but you really can’t mess up radishes, spinach and squash. Plus, it’s good exercise. My husband and I just planted our garden for this year and while we planted lots of fun stuff (6 different varieties of tomatoes!), I’m keeping my expectations low. I consider our garden a raging success if we get a handful of cherry tomatoes and cucumber the size of a pickle.
Anyone else noticed this difference in food cultures? What makes your local food special? What challenges do you have to overcome?
For more painfully yet hilariously awkward family photos, check out AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com.
One of these things is not like the other…
The family that blowdrys together, stays together.
Gosh Charlotte, I feel your pain. I live in Canada, and I would love to eat locally, but it’s essentially impossible about 8 months of the year or so. Asparagus is finally in season here, and summer is just around the corner, I’m quite excited, but in the winter it’s brutal. It’s pretty depressing when you’re one person, and you’re paying over $40 a week for fresh produce. I suppose I could give up the fresh berries, which would save about $15 of the $40+, but cereal just isn’t the same without them.
I also planted a vegetable garden this summer, and some fruit too, though my parents (I’m home for the summer from university) have warned me that the watermelon might take over part of the garden- we shall see! My more exotic vegetables include purple carrots, purple potatoes, purple sweet peppers, and a variety of heirloom tomatoes. Let us know how your vegetable garden turns out!! Perhaps include some pictures 🙂
I wish every trainer, nutritionist, foodie, etc. (basically anyone who espouses local, clean, organic food ONLY) could read this!
I happen to live in California, so we have fresh produce year round. But we are only a small portion of the country! It reminds me of a poster I saw when I lived in new York. it said “A New Yorker’s View of the World,” and it was a map of NYC followed by the pacific ocean, a vague land mass that said “Europe,” then the Atlantic and back to New York.
We are a very diverse nation. Diversity is a GOOD thing!
I’m developing a fanatical obsession with eating as locally as possible. It’s good for the body and the environment. On the other hand, in this climate I can eat fresh foods most of the year. The rest of the time it’s winter squash and home-sprouted mung beans. (Hey, don’t look at me like that — I’m from California. I can eat mung beans.)
What would Laura Ingalls do? Didn’t her family can and preserve food so that they could eat veggies all winter?
I’m doing the CSA thing this year and Im so excited about it. We had a great time last year and we got a good deal to (especially compared to buying the exact same items at his own Farmers market) Im also doing a square foot garden- I should send you pics. 🙂
But for you, I think the frozen veggies aren’t that bad and you do have farmers market for like 3 months right?
That is SO funny that you posted those pictures from awkwardfamilyphotos.com because just earlier today my dad emailed me the picture of the people in the Hawaiian shirts, because my brothers and I used to go to the woman’s in-home daycare, haha. Her son was the one that sent in the picture, and my dad just happened to stumble upon it today. I ended up looking through a lot of the pictures, it was like a train wreck – I just couldn’t look away, lol. Love reading your blog!
Living just north of Seattle I too am blessed by seafood caught that morning, farm fresh eggs, apples, pumpkins, daffodiles, and squash. I love the cheap produce available at the farmer market and even the locally made gourmet cheese. Mmmmm.
Living in several different parts of the country, I noticed what you described in this blog – and I noticed that Minnesota is by far the “healthiest” place I ever lived. The most stark contrast was when I moved from Arkansas to Minnesota. In the place I lived in AR, there were 3 parks with playgrounds in a 10 mile radius and 3 more if you were willing to travel 15+ miles. And no one used them; we were almost always there alone. My city in MN has more than 30 parks and they always have other kids when we go.
Eating habits were different, too. At a potluck in MN, people take 1-2 plates of food and then get a small plate with 1-4 small desserts on them. In AR and in TX, people filled plates multiple times, and even the kids would get dinner plates piled high with as many as a dozen different desserts, then go back for a second round. I once had to purchase hamburgers and hotdogs for a large group event in TX. I had to send someone to the store during the event twice because we ran out. The final tally was an average of 3 hamburgers and hotdogs per person! And most of the people there were children. The school lunches were worse, too, if that is possible. If the menu said “fresh fruit,” what was served was a combo of 1/4 grapes and 3/4 mini marshmallows.
The difference in habits takes it’s toll. The first thing I noticed when I moved to MN was how skinny everyone was compared to the south, especially kids. In AR especially, about 1/2 the young children had significant weight problems and by the time they were teens, in was the minority who didn’t have a noticable problem. In MN, the children with the serious weight problems are still the minority.
I loved living in the south and I loved the people there, too. I enjoyed the time I had there. There was just a very different lifestyle when it came to food and exercise.
HOTDISH? Never heard of it and, having a bunch of family in Mpls, thought Id heard it ALL.
and thats my comment 🙂
I need to work to be more like merry.
Im the person to whom azusmom refers in her first sentence.
I am an avowed farmers market shopper NOW and for all the wrong reasons (kills a lot of time on the weekend mornings when the Toddler has been awake since 5) but need to print this out and slap on my fridge (not to mention submit some family shots to awkwardfamilyphoto.com :))
When we’ve traveled across country, we notice not only the huge difference between coastal/middle, but also a big difference from town to town in terms of eating habits and activity levels.
Big hip urban areas and college/artsy towns–you can generally find healthy food (even if imported from elsewhere), sidewalks, bike paths, and slimmer folks. Low income suburbs, manufacturing-based towns, poor rural areas, not so much. I think there’s a class thing going on with food/exercise culture as well as a regional one.
Living in the SF bay area most of my life, I had access to the healthiest food around–yet go to some of the lower income suburbs in the same region and everyone was buying Twinkies and eating at McDonalds.
Don’t know what we do about regional/class differences, but I think these definitely affect health.
I agree about the food culture. BK and I live in a lower middle class area (the rent’s cheap and I’m going to grad school soon), and in the grocery store, the baking/junk food aisle always has more people than the produce and frozen veggie areas combined.
I think where one lives can make a big difference in our lives. I’m sure some individuals can live well and prosper anywhere. Living in the northeast for medical school, I felt how limiting the area was. Living in my area of the south, with it’s great weather and diversity ,seems to make it easier for people to reach a fuller potential in their lives.
Just my opinion on your thoughtful post.
Charlotte – good luck with your garden – I hope you have a huge abundance of produce.
Living even further north than you, I know exactly how difficult it is to eat local food for the entire year.
Back in the day (before electricity, refrigeration, etc.), you grew a garden, then canned and preserved a lot of your harvest. And in the winter you ate a lot of veggies that kept well – potatoes, onions, turnips, carrots, etc.
Hung a deer outside the back door and hacked off a frozen chunk for a meal.
(well, okay, not EVERYONE did that, but lots of people did!)
And people survived. Even thrived. Of course, they worked a whole helluva lot harder in those days, too. Just surviving the winters meant gathering firewood, chopping it, carrying it in to the house, etc. and that was only a small part of it. Life in grandma’s day was much more physical than it is now.
…end of crazy lady’s lecture
I hear you. I grew up (and lived there until I was 25) in the U.P. of MI. Now? I live in the “plains” (aka near desert) so there’s not a lot of options in the stores.
I just *love* it when people talk about eating healthy and getting fresh produce like it’s the easiest thing in the world. I heard one famous tv person talk about it, and they were basically looking down on people that think it’s difficult! That being said, there are ways around it…like you’ve found!
I’m in Pittsburgh, so we only have local produce less than half the year as well. Plus people are relatively poor in this area, so I think it’s easier to buy cheaper junky food… I do try to buy at the farmer’s market during the summer, but even a lot of produce in the grocery store is produced locally at that point. We go strawberry picking in the summer 🙂 I wish I could eat fresh produce year-round, but the CSA doesn’t provide much other than lettuce and onions once September rolls around…
Ah, Crabby started to make my point.
Growing up in the great lakes region, I knew locally grown fresh veggies and fruits. And for those who wonder about eating local in places with hard winters, yes you freeze, use roots cellars, dry, and can when it’s in season.
Anyway.. that vision of the natural/local/veggie/sushi californian is really the (mostly white) middle class, educated person.
I live in the poorest region of the SF bay. Yes, people still frequent the farmer’s markets, but their diet is still mainly fried foods, much fast food. We have a high rate of obesity and type II diabetes.
I think much of the eating local thing is a class thing. And should be recognized as such.
I know what you mean. I once worked with an online nutritionist who just didn’t get that you couldn’t buy a variety of fresh fruit in New Mexico in February. It’s not that it was too expensive or it didn’t look good, it just didn’t exist! It was crazy to me, too, because I’d grown up in Florida where everything is always in season.
I’m now in the Midwest and there’s considerably more variety here- especially local stuff- than in NM. And yeah, there’s beer and brats and cheese and everything is fried, but there’s a lot of healthy stuff, too.
It is interesting that in Italy (which is a little bigger than the state of Arizona) there are considered to be 20 regions and each have their own dishes and wines unique to that place. The idea of a general "italian cuisine" is a foreign concept to most Italians. Instead each area has "specialties" like cheese and beef in Piemonte or seafood and herbs in Liguria.
In America everything is "mass" focused. The media gives information and advice (such as: everyone should eat organic fresh food) without caring about local differences or personal differences (ie: the one diet everyone should be on). And they do it (generally) because they are trying to sell you something. And selling "the thing" that will make everyone's life better, brighter, faster, thinner, doesn't work if you acknowledge people & places are different.
I live in GA and I have for my whole life so I've got your sourthern perspective here: While living in close proximity to a city like Atlanta gives us as many options as we could possible want, 9 out of 10 people still prefer the Paula Dean style of food/cooking even though most of us are educated enough to know it's bad for us! (An aside, I can't stand Paula Dean & how every single one of her recipes starts with melting a whole damn stick of butter!)
We here in the deep south, CHOOSE to make bad choices and there is no excuse for it. We have great farmers markets, tons of local farms, organice/ vegetarian/healthy restaurants but that's not what we want! It is customary, if not even expected, to over eat at family events & community functions, and we're not talking about over eating on veggies- unless they are covered in cheese of course!
Our "southern cuisine" is sadly portrayed exactly as it is: fried, covered in cheese, over salted & lacking in any nutrients.
Seriously though, it makes me sick to see so many over weight & out of shape people here who are only that way because of the choice they make to not break from tradition and live a healthier life. We have no weather or situational related excuses (unless you are allergic to humidity) to eat unhealthy or not exercise. In fact, we have all the resources you could probably need to live a happy, healthy, active lifestyle but because that would involve changing from tradition we hesitate!
*End mini-rant* I hope I cleared that up!
Economics definitely has an impact on health!
A lot of people live in neighborhoods that not only don’t have farmers’ markets, they don’t even have grocery stores. When the only options available are 7-11s and McDonald’s, it’s a lot harder to get your 5 a day.
I remember some years ago telling a friend that we should require visas to enter other states because it’s like going to another country! I love the regional differences. It’s what makes traveling interesting. What fun would it be if every place and everyone was the same? Although I heard a story recently about people complaining about their vaction because everybody was speaking Spanish– and they were vacationing in Spain. Go figure.
I do live in Southern California, so fresh and organic produce is relatively easy to find. Expensive, but easy to find. And we do have several farmer’s markets, so you can pretty much go every week if you want and get a variety of fresh produce. Our family tends to split between the military commissary (that’s grocery store in Navy speak) because it’s a really great deal on staple stuff, and the local Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods for specialty items. The commissary has been better lately about having some organic choices and health food items, although I’m usually the only person in that aisle. Military folk aren’t really known for being super health aware… at least not in my experience.
We do tend to be extremists here in Southern California. Either it’s yoga-vegan-organic food only or McDonald’s-eating, soda drinking, exercise is for hippies. Middle ground is hard to find although we do exist. It’s kind of a middle-ground underground. I think we’re kind of seen as wishy-washy because we can’t commit to the “one great only way to do things”. I can’t help it… I like variety.
And I envy you the smiles on the street… I smile at strangers and they look at me like I am the tinfoil hat wearing crazy lady.
I don’t wear tinfoil hats.
You cab also check out your area to see if someone started a food “co-op.” We have one here in Brooklyn that has been going for 35 years, but I have seen them way up in Maine other far reaching places.
A food coop is a place where local produce, organic produce etc is sold. Sometimes you have to be a member there to shop sometimes not. Essentially a few people get together to start one and then as people join they become members of the co-op “community”.
The one I belong to actually requires us to work there once every 4 weeks for a shift that lasts 2 hours and 45 minutes. However the prices are only about 15%- 20% above wholesale and everything is always very fresh.
I love awkward family photos! 🙂
I dunno – California made me fat. Simply because the corporate mentality was workworkwork PLAYHARD workworkwork. There was no free time, and the free time you had was spent with coworkers partying it up. The majority of the years I lived there that I didn’t work at least 50+ hours a week as my normal schedule. And, most of that OT just went into paying our living expenses to live in So Cal (or when we got to be salaried, it was just expected).
Once I got to Austin, the studios embraced more of a balanced lifestyle – quite a few of us are training off and on for triathlons and races and such here at work (or at least go be active or hit the gym). No one looks at me funny if I ask for an hour off to go do a race.
That tangent – I’d say all things being equal you have access to more healthy stuff in CA – but I didn’t find it very conducive to my health. Oddly enough, I’ve been the healthiest when I lived in the middle of the country, and less healthy near the west coast. Then again, I am a constant walking anomaly, so take it as you will! 🙂
Two instances come immediately to mind; both involving green beans.
I had started selling my lovely, tender, organically grown green beans at the little farmers’ market in my newly adopted small town in southern Viginia and was told:
1- They’re too small.
2- I’d love some beans, but I don’t have any meat to boil with ’em.
I told the meat lady that I never use meat with my beans just steam or boil until just tender and then maybe add a smidge of butter. She replied,”What do they taste like?”
“Beans!” I say. Geesh.
Regarding city vs suburbs and regional/class differences, in most of the surrounding suburbs of Bay Area, there are ethnic groceries a plenty that carry cheap produce, bulk rice and beans and spices, etc. Even here in the Mission, where you can’t walk two blocks without hitting a cheap produce market, there are many who eat McDonalds and Church’s Chicken every day. There are trucks that drive up and give out boxes of free produce, no notice but still gone in 10 minutes. What I guess I’m trying to say, is that even if healthy eating isn’t necessarily more expensive, it doesn’t mean that everyone knows how, or wants to bother, or even realizes that it might be a good thing. I don’t know if it’s culture, education, motivation, or what, but it’s more than a question of affordability.
Wow Such a nicely made blog. I cant wait for mines to look as nice. Much Success. http://www.Fitness-Diet-Info.blogspot.com
The title of your next post scared me a bit, so I went back and read all the comments on this post instead. Very interesting.
I have to say that I don’t agree that people in harsh climates can’t get /some/ fresh greens in winter. However, you’d have to live a bit “weird” to achieve that goal.
For example, the Frugal Zealot wrote about growing vegetable in Maine in winter, using a cold frame:
http://www.doityourself.com/stry/oldwindowuses
Granted, if you live in an apartment that doesn’t have a balcony, then there’s more of a challenge. You could still sprout beans in your kitchen and eat fresh sprouts when it’s freezing outside.
Sorry — the link doesn’t take you to a Frugal Zealot site; she merely mentioned cold frames in The Tightwad Gazette.
Frozen custard – that is something we do not have down South…thank God. They’d have to roll me around town if we did. LOVE that stuff!
Thankfully, we do have some great local farms around Nashville. Great greens and winter squash in the fall, winter, and spring and amazing produce in the summer. I love buying their grass fed finished meats, and I cannot wait for peach season!
Might I add that the most amazing Honeycrisp apple I ever had was in Seattle. I still dream about it sometimes. 🙂
I love that we live in the 2nd fittest US city (what up DC in first?) Anyway, I too, anxiously await the bounty from my CSA. Which one did you sign with Charlotte?
I love that you mention “hotdish!” I learned the recipe for “Tater Tot Hotdish” from a Wisconsin guy. Hamburger, cheddar cheese, cream of something soup, mixed in a casserole and topped with Tater Tots. It’s unreasonably delicious. But I was horrified when I realized that he didn’t drain the hamburger first, he just put it right in the casserole and let everything cook in all the grease. He said: “But that’s why it’s good!”
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