New Health Code

More-positive and reasonable advice on how we all should eat finally is being voiced.

By Patricia B. Dailey, Editor-in-Chief -- Restaurants & Institutions, 2/1/2007

Apparently, no annual list of food trends to watch is complete unless it includes the requisite nod to health, a pattern that has repeated itself quite predictably for at least the better part of a decade. Futurists, soothsayers—and R&I as well—confidently have gone on record saying that Americans most assuredly will be cutting back on dietary fat. Or counting calories. Banishing carbohydrates. Buying organic, local and sustainable. Eating lots of fruits and vegetables. Choosing more foods that are functional and fewer that are fried.

In short, in any given year, the nation’s eating habits are projected to magically morph, instantly transforming an entire populace from mindless, food-seeking hedonists into paragons of dietary restraint and models of nutritional virtue.

So far, it hasn’t happened that way, as foodservice operators well know. In fact, it seems quite the opposite, if statistics about the increase in obesity rates are taken as truth. How we are supposed to eat, according to the current medical advice, and how we actually do eat are not entirely congruent. Despite earnest avowals and promises, the high-minded myths and the cold, hard reality continue to travel along parallel tracks, coming close sometimes but so far only occasionally intersecting. Buried under an avalanche of diet and health information, a chaotic and confusing mixture that often contradicts or entirely reverses itself, many consumers simply retreat, sporadically sampling the many recommendations piecemeal or ignoring them altogether.

If all of the research, the multitude of studies and reams of complex data, has created this inertia, that may soon change. Recommendations and guidelines coming from the medical and health communities are beginning to sound more reasonable and practical, framed not as a series of stern warnings about what not to do but instead as positive steps.

That certainly was an underlying message that emerged from the third annual Worlds of Healthy Flavors Leadership Retreat held last month at The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in conjunction with the Harvard School of Public Health. This smart, forward-thinking gathering gave foodservice operator attendees access to some of the most studied and authoritative medical-nutrition researchers in the nation. And what they heard didn’t sound at all incomprehensible or unrealistic, either for the industry or consumers.

Trans fats, but not all fats, have to go. Food portions should not be so large. Whole grains and legumes should have much greater prominence in diets and on restaurant menus. Produce consumption needs to be ramped up considerably, nudging meat to a somewhat smaller role than it presently holds. And it really is OK to enjoy a drink or two with meals.

Such straightforward, practical recommendations are far more likely to be embraced and integrated into American lifestyles than those that strip pleasure and enjoyment from meals. Unlike some of the faddish crazes that are here and gone in 60 seconds, the foodservice industry can expect more endurance from and interest in this new code.