I realize what this entry will sound like. More, I realize how it will make me sound to most readers. I’ve wrestled with a way to make it more palatable, more optimistic, but I just can’t seem to get there. So, in the spirit of writing it because I think it needs to be said, buckle up. This one might sting a bit.
In the 1960s, the notion of publishing nutritional information and ingredients on food labels began to gain traction in America. It’s a pretty common-sense idea, right? Let people know what’s in their food so they can make informed decisions about what they consume. By 1973, the FDA made rules about voluntary labeling. Not required yet, but they began to devote some time to making more information available to people regarding certain nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and calorie counts. In 1980, it was getting more serious. The FDA drafted some suggested legislation about food labeling, but their ideas met with so much resistance, the notion of transparent food content labeling didn’t catch on for another decade. It wasn’t until 1990 that the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA) was signed into law. This landmark legislation mandated the inclusion of standardized nutrition labels on most packaged foods and dietary supplements. Key requirements of the NLEA included the Nutrition Facts panel, which provides information on serving size, calories, and the amounts of various nutrients per serving. It also required ingredient lists to be provided on food labels. In 1994, the NLEA regulations became effective, and the Nutrition Facts panel as we know it today began appearing on food packages. This panel includes information on nutrients like fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates, fiber, sugars, protein, vitamins, and minerals - you’ve all seen them. As it sometimes does with new discoveries, scientific consensus about what we ought to be putting into our bodies changed again and it 2016, the FDA introduced an updated Nutrition Facts label to reflect changes in dietary recommendations and consumer preferences. Notable changes included larger and bolder calorie information, the addition of added sugars, and updated daily values for some nutrients. Stay with me. I promise this is going somewhere.
From the 1960s through the 1980s, obesity rates in the United States were relatively stable. While there were certainly individuals who were overweight or obese, it was not yet considered a widespread epidemic and we didn’t see the levels widespread obesity-related diseases we see today. The 1990s marked the beginning of a significant increase in obesity rates. This decade saw a sharp rise in the prevalence of obesity across all age groups and demographics. Through the 2000s, obesity rates continued to climb. The problem became more widely recognized, and health authorities started “addressing it” as a major public health concern. More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic brought additional attention to the link between obesity and severe outcomes from the virus, underscoring the importance of addressing this health concern.
It is a common mistake to suppose that more readily available information will make people smarter. It is a mistake to think that “giving them the facts” will influence their choices or behaviors. If you line up the obesity trends in this country with the availability of information about foods and drinks to the consumer, you’ll see it plain as day. In fact, looking at those two trend lines together, you’d think it had the opposite effect. The more specific and available nutritional information became, the worse the obesity problem got. Add to that all of the information and connectivity with experts that the internet enabled and it would be understandable if you looked at obesity trends and scratched your head. What shouldn’t mystify you in the least, however, is why things are the way they are. People, despite the availability of information, will by and large do whatever the hell they were going to do anyway, not because it’s best for them, but because they want to. Do you really think that I’m sitting here with a spare tire around my middle because I can’t read a nutrition label? Or is it because I like beer and cookies?
The bottom line is, there are a lot of factors at work here. But for the purposes of this Journal, the reason it matters is this: The vast majority of people have neither the desire nor the personal discipline to bother learning anything new for the sake of improving themselves. They’re on autopilot. Sticking new information in front of them does less than no good. To them, it’s a distraction from whatever they were distracted by in the first place. Pause my TikTok reels to read something important? Invest time and intellectual calories into making myself a better, more functional, more self-reliant human being? Pfugh! WHY? Have you SEEN this cat? If it sounds like I’m talking down to a huge swath of humanity, or as if I think there is some sort of majority of people out there who are self-absorbed, unconcerned resource consumers, alive purely because the producers of our society make enough to care for and feed them, let me be clear. I am talking down to them, and that’s exactly what I think. But don’t mistake that for ill will. I don’t hold it against them. I just recognize it for what it is. American society today has made it possible for a majority of people to live their entire lives without knowing real hardship. We’ve come so far in the effort to make life a little better for our kids than we had it that a majority of our kids will grow all the way into adulthood without ever knowing whether or not they are cowards. The new generation is largely spoiled because we spoiled them, and the politicians who run things are pandering to the spoiled by promising never to make it any harder on them. Everything will be free, your loans will be forgiven, words won’t hurt anymore, and we’ll tear down any art or cultural history that offends you. Don’t worry about how we’ll finance all that - we’ll just take it from the people you hate. It’ll be great! It’s pretty astonishing, if you think about it. We’ve not only created one of the softest and least educated generations in our country’s history, we’ve built a political system incentivized to pander to it and make it worse - and we’ve managed to do it in a time when information is more readily available and accessible than ever before.
Now, if you’re the sort of person who reads these entries and thinks about them, you’re probably also the kind of person who reads other things. You probably think about the world and the events of the day. You probably indulge your curiosity in ways that extend beyond leisure and distraction. In short, I’m not really talking about you in the broad sense. I’m talking about all of us in some measure, myself included. I’m just as guilty of wanting to see my children have a better life than I have had, working toward giving that to them, and then shaking my head when I find they aren’t as self-sufficient or resourceful as I was at their age. I’m every bit as prone to this kind of hypocrisy as anyone else. The best I can do is try to recognize it for what it is and make sure it never ever becomes my baseline. I’ll bet you could very likely say the same about yourself and your own life.
So where does that leave us? If giving them access to all the information in the whole wide world isn’t enough, how do we make people smarter? How do we get past our desire to make the world a better place for the next generation and make the next generation better for the world? Well, I don’t know. I wish I did. I mean I really and truly wish I did. I have a feeling, though, that the answer lies somewhere in the example we set and in the life we live. You see, the brain is a really old tool. Millions of years of evolution have taught it all kinds of shortcuts, taught it to observe and copy behaviors to survive. I think the real “hack” lies there - in being the kind of example that makes this current brand of idiocy unsustainable. Being not only a present, but consistently positive and dependable model for the brains and behaviors of those who might be open to developing. Now I’ll admit, I’m not at all sure that will work. I’m gambling on the notion that people being proud of how stupid they are is a trend that will kill itself off. That even in a time when spectacle and the theater of the absurd rule the collective attention span, there is still some desire in most minds to see serious people in charge of the things that matter. Somewhere in the recesses of my reptilian brain, I hope against all evidence that no matter how soft or willfully ignorant the masses become, they still want to be able to trust that the people steering the ship and putting food on the table know what the hell they’re doing. That, at least, allows me my pragmatic optimism. In that, I hope living the right example will empower those who pay attention to take the wheel someday and set this nonsense right. In the meantime, the adventure continues. May we live for our purpose, do it honorably, and may all our scars be on the front of us.