Transcriber: gaith Takrity Reviewer: David DeRuwe
In 1893, it took the Supreme Court
to decide whether tomatoes were technically a fruit, or vegetable.
(Laughter)
Not long before that,
it was widely believed that tomatoes were poisonous,
and used by witches to summon werewolves.
In fact, the tomato’s Latin name literally translates to “wolf’s peach.”
Potatoes didn’t have it much better.
When they were first introduced to Europe,
people thought potatoes caused leprosy, and syphilis.
In parts of Russia,
people went so far as to burn potatoes at the stake,
and called them the “devil’s apples.”
Now it’s easy to look back and laugh at this,
but I’d like us to consider
whether our knowledge today is really that much better.
Sure, we no longer believe that tomatoes can summon werewolves,
but we also tend to believe that non-fat yogurt will give us non-fat arteries,
and skinny lattes will give us skinny thighs,
that good sources of fiber are actually good sources of fiber,
and that things like natural grass fed and zero trans fat
actually mean what they’re supposed to mean.
You see, I worry that not much has changed.
Walk through the health section of a grocery store, or even a book store,
and you’ll find that nutritional misinformation
is just as rampant as it was a few hundred years ago,
if not more so.
We still can’t agree whether or not eggs are good for us.
They’re either the perfect source of protein,
or they cause heart disease, high cholesterol and diabetes.
We're often told that fish is healthy,
but just as there are a lot of fish in the sea,
there’s also a lot of microplastics, methylmercury and agricultural pesticides.
Marion Nestle has this great quote
that to make an intelligent choice of fish in the supermarket,
you have to know more than you could possibly imagine
about nutrition, fish toxicology,
and the lifecycle and ecology of each fish.
And even if we somehow did know all that, it might not really matter,
because a lot of the fish sold in restaurants, and grocery stores,
are mislabeled.
Some are actually endangered species.
Others are on the FDA’s do not eat list.
In 2007, what was sold as monkfish in Chicago
turned out to be deadly puffer fish.
So that wild caught salmon you ordered,
might not be as healthy as you think it is.
In fact, it might not actually be wild caught, or salmon.
Potatoes and tomatoes - they’re less controversial than they used to be,
but they’re still controversial.
So is coconut oil, coffee, and gluten.
Now, I know this is depressing. It sucks.
(Laughter)
We struggle so much trying to eat healthy,
and it turns out the biggest barrier isn’t time or willpower;
it’s knowledge.
You see, it’s easy to see our food as something we’ve conquered,
but in reality, our diet is the leading cause of death and disability worldwide,
responsible for roughly one in five adult deaths.
In the United States, you’re about as likely
to die from poor nutrition as you are to have blue eyes.
But here’s the good news:
Our food has always been trying to kill us.
Think about bacteria, parasites, foodborne illness,
hunting animals that hunt us back.
We’ve figured out how to cook our food and destroy pathogens,
how to harvest and domesticate agriculture and preserve food for the winter,
refrigeration, pasteurization - humans have never had it easy.
We’ve never had the answers just handed to us,
but we’ve always persevered.
And throughout history, way back to our earliest ancestors,
the people who asked the most questions about their food
were the people who lived the longest.
“Where did these mushrooms come from?”
“How long have these animals been dead?”
These were life and death questions.
and now we have new life and death questions,
but not enough of us are asking them.
Now, you might be hoping this is the part where I give you all the answers.
But if you are, you’re sort of missing my point.
You see, if you’re trusting a stranger to break down everything you should eat
and shrink it down to a convenient bumper sticker,
you’re repeating a fallacy that historically hasn’t worked out well.
Food just isn’t that simple.
We're all taught to think critically about literature, about politics,
about culture, and that’s great,
but it’s equally important that we use those same skills
to think critically about our food;
to ask where it came from and how it got here;
to look for the fallacies and the sources behind health claims;
and look at the data, and the funding, and the politics,
not just the conclusions;
to take the time, not just to read food labels,
but to actually understand and question them;
to ask for the same burden of proof that our ancestors should have asked for
when they were told that, tomatoes summon werewolves.
Thank you.
(Applause)