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.
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 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.
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 Midwesterners out to pasture before milking time.” Minneapolis is the second healthiest city in the nation. 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.
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’s also very affordable. I worked out the weekly amount of our share and it is less than I am currently spending.
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! (Okay, it’s not but it’s still really cool. Because I said so.) 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:)
Photo Credit: Intellectually Stimulating
Interesting rant … we are in farm country, so when there’s stuff to be gotten, it is good … I think it is easier when you’re in the heart of the metro, not in small towns or suburbia!
When I’m looking for something beyond McDonald’s and hotdish, I venture north of the river to some of the more urban, independent eateries that do the seasonal and fresh ingredients … or I visit the coops (there’s a great one not far from the Y, which I’m guessing you’ve discovered) … and there is a Trader Joe’s now …
We visited Seattle and the Pacific Northwest last July, and there was a slightly different food mindset … perhaps not so much different as more easily found. I spent a couple years writing about food and restaurants, so I know that same spirit can be found here … there’s just a lot of people who really love those old classic hotdishes!
Glad you found the CSA–a friend tried one of those and really liked it … I think she even had enough to share—even though she was feeding five people!
Shoveling your car out six times a day is GREAT exercise!
I moved from western Massachusetts to San Diego 14 years ago, and talk about culture shock! Then we moved to L.A. (oy!), and finally to the San Francisco area, so I’m spoiled. Fresh fruit and veggies year-round, no snow unless we decide to drive to Tahoe, and great walking/running/biking trails as far as the eye can see.
Yeah. Spoiled. And a weather wuss.
I moved to Portland from Iowa, so your post brought back memories of frustrating trips to the tiny, cramped, and barely stocked food co-op in the college town where I lived. I still remember the day I first shopped in Portland’s Wild Oats (now owned by Whole Foods). And the co-ops here are positively dreamy … Oh, I could have cried. Heaven! And then to visit the Portland Farmer’s Market — bliss! Not that we lacked delicious (and fresh) farm produce in Iowa … It was just much more limited, and like you say, the food culture was more casserole-and-bratwurst …
Valid points. People write what they know best and what is close to them. If one has never traveled to or lived in the middle of the US, how can we know what it’s like? Not bashing just offering another perspective of why points of view could be limited, and that we (general west coasters) are not being exclusive on purpose or intentionally.
To your point, how could some of us Californians then write to better take in consideration food styles in other parts of the country?
Like Stephanie, i too am a californian (born and raised)and not just that, la nonethless land the superficial mecca. I must say i am glad that i get strawberries (from local farmers) almost year round because we lack real “seasons” in Southern Ca. Big cities like San Fran and LA have a diverse lot, you’ve got your health junkies and the sadly poverty stricken rising obesity class (which really ticks me off, it sucks that to eat healthier these days, you need to be wealthier too). In la (maybe unlike San Fran), no one really goes outside to work out, no one walk, your car/escalator/segway is your means of getting places and that kinda stinks. Wheni went to college in Santa Barbara, everyone biked (and not just to burn calories like some might in la), farmers were VERY local, and healthy resturants were abundant (only three Micky D’s in the whole city!). Mind you, its a very wealthy area which again highlights the fact tht wealthier communities also tend to be healthier ones.
Stephanie – you ask a good question. Rest assured I was not talking about your blog – you are always informative & dipomatic. The best recommendation I can think of in general is to be patient. A lot of fitness people have this attitude like “You’re NOT eating organic fruit? WHY aren’t you eating organic fruit?? I’ve TOLD you a MILLION times that ONLY organic fruit will do. How stupid ARE you? Don’t want to be HEALTHY??” Which isn’t to say that organic fruit isn’t good for you. It’s just that you Californians are usually so ahead on the trends that you have to wait for the rest of us to catch up with you. It helps if you are patient.
Sarah – thanks for the tips! I am quite sure that good, healthy, progressive food can be found here – I was mostly speaking to the overarching culture. You know – what our neighbors bring to the potluck, what the moms send for a soccer snack, what shows up at the church brunch… that kind of thing. YAY for Trader Joe’s! I make a monthly trip.
Ha, I don’t have to move to another state to feel like the fitness experts don’t understand my cultural food constraints. When they ask, “Why don’t you buy organic?” I have to answer that my 3 year old likes to take one bite out of every apple and then hide them around the house and I’m not going to pay organic prices for rotting fruit under my couch. I want to be a vegetarian but half my family will not eat tofu or beans or spinach (among many other things). Unless I want to cook two meals at every dinner I kind of have to go with what works. (don’t worry, I’m using all the sneaky tricks and we do eat as healthy as we can, just not to my ideal yet)
Char,
Coming from the south, it is more corn and mcdonald’s and fried everything, except we didn’t eat squash (never made it until we moved to Minnesota.) I lived in Annapolis, MD for a while and we would get the seafood straight from the bay that day. LOVED it!!
If anyone could get all the produce to grow during the Minnesota weather it would be you Charlotte!!
-Ice cream diary-
I wanted to go vegitarian also, but my family is not so for it. The middle ground that we came to was to make meat a side dish and veggies the main course and I just skip the meat. It seems to work and since grass-fed meat is more, I use less and it evens out.
Hope it helps!
Candice
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