Body and Soul

Gonna look today at a couple of books that will be part of my holiday shopping, starting with this inspiring combination of nutritional musings and cartoons about food.

"Eat Drink Vote" is a collaboration between nutritionist Marion Nestle and about 40 cartoonists under the aegis of the Cartoonist Group, with more than 250 cartoons illustrating her thoughts about everything from hunger in America to school lunch programs to food labeling to pet food to what used to be the food pyramid.

I particularly appreciated her comments on the destruction of the food pyramid, which she attributes to corporate lobbyists under the GWB administration, who didn't want their own types of food dissed. So they pressured the FDA to change the graphic from something that made sense to something that was utter and complete nonsense.

As near as I can tell, the old pyramid told you to eat a lot of breads and grains, quite a bit of fruit and vegetables, some dairy and meat and not very much sugar and fat at all.

The new pyramid apparently teaches you that, if you exercise enough, you will eventually no longer have to eat at all.

I knew it was stupid, I just didn't know what kind of stupid. I just assumed it was the kind of stupid perpetrated by people who either (A) can't interpret graphics or (B) can't resist the urge to fix things that ain't broke. Most likely both.

But I think Nestle is right, and she's got several cartoons making sport of the food pyramid, including the Mike Peters cartoon on the book cover.

This is both a fun book and a sensible conversation, and you don't find those two factors in the same place very often. Nor do you often find this many thoughtful and often hilarious cartoons on one topic in one place.

Nestle is well-informed without being doctrinaire. She concedes that people will believe what they are inclined to believe about nutrition, and is fair-minded about it, noting, for example, that there is no actual evidence that genetically-modified foods do any real harm, but conceding that a lot of people find the concept icky and are also repelled by the aggressive marketing of new technologies.

Meanwhile, the cartoons in that section vary, from those that make fun of "Frankenfoods" to those that mock selective concerns, like a Joel Pett panel in which someone fears that his "chili-cheese cardio-corndog could have a tofu gene in it."

I will say, however, that the quest for fairness goes from a sometimes bland "on the one hand, but on the other" insistence on representing both sides, which is okay, though more spine would be nice, to the inclusion of a few editorial cartoons that genuinely do not fall under the category of "responsible opposing opinions."

These more strident and radical panels undermine both the atmosphere of otherwise good-natured give-and-take and the coherence of Nestle's information. 

All in all, however, this is not only a delightful book in itself, but a terrific idea, and I'd like to see the Cartoonist Group do more themed collections like this.

And, no, my approval shouldn't be surprising, given that the basic premise of this blog is that a good cartoon, even a silly one, works because on some level it makes you think.

I'm all in favor of emphasizing that point, and more books like this could not only provide some laughs to a world badly in need of them, but could persuade more people to take cartoons seriously.

 

I fully expected to go to Hell for laughing at this:

Another combination of text-and-comics is "God is Disappointed in You," written by Mark Russell with cartoons by Shannon Wheeler. It's not nearly as blasphemous as you might expect, and, no, I don't expect that to be blurbed on the inside cover of the next edition.

Then again, you never know.

Russell read the entire Bible and has boiled it down to a few pages for each book, rephrasing things in a more accessible manner for a contemporary audience. And laffs.

Somehow, he manages to be irreverent without being disrespectful, which is a mighty fine line well walked.

Most of the material gains its humor from simple informality, as in this passage from the Book of Exodus: "The Israelites got to keep their sheep and cattle. And they got to leave Egypt. God told Moses to take his people out into the desert and await further instructions."

Often, that informality turns out to be more compelling than the more ornate, familiar passages we've learned to let flow through our ears without sticking: "'When you give to the needy, do it because you're a decent, caring person, not because there's a crowd watching,' Jesus said. 'I see these guys in the marketplace who make a big show of throwing coins to a blind man and I think, "Shit, why not just bring a trumpet player with you?" If you need a big fanfare every time you do something decent, then you're probably a miserable human being.'"

And even when it is offensive, well, it's only as offensive as its source material. This really is a pretty good summation of the rule as laid down in Leviticus: "In addition, God forbids the following: Club sandwiches, gay sex between men, sorcery, incest, making fun of the deaf, bestiality, shaving, tattoos, rare steaks, gossip, cotton-and-wool twills, threesomes, crooked scales, sex with slaves, and eating animals if you don't know how they died.

"God also gave me several penalties for breaking these laws, and most of which are rather unpleasant and, frankly, complicated. For example, if a couple commits good old-fashioned adultery, they're both to be killed. But if a guy complicates matters by sleeping with his wife's mother, then all three of them have to be burned to death, including his wife, who might not have even known what was going on. Harsh, I know."

Yeah, it is harsh. But it's not like Russell is making this stuff up.

There are, inevitably, a few places where the effort to be flip falls a little flat, but he does some inventive things to skate past the parts that might otherwise have failed entirely: The Book of Obadiah is re-cast as an open letter to the faithful, at which point its blandness works both as a cheesy, familiar-sounding open letter and, more practically, as a bridge from Amos to Jonah which is pretty much all it is anyway. 

The only real flaw in this book is the same as for any sharply focused, extended (223 pages) satire: If you're not familiar with the original, you might not get much out of the spoof.

Fortunately, I know a person or two who is both familiar with the original and not the kind of tightass who thinks there weren't already some pretty weird things in there before Russell and Wheeler got their hands on it.

If you are one of those people, no fair buying this until St. Stephen's Day.

 

Comments

[Dann]

The food pyramid that preceded the current one wasn't any better. In fact, it may have significantly exacerbated the trends in obesity and type II diabetes.

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/137082/

Love the "God is disappointed in you" book concept. If I weren't a recovering Christian, it would have already been on the truck from Amazon by now.

Regards,
Dann

[Mike Peterson]

The link he cites is quite interesting and even quotes Marion Nestle!
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/diet/themes/pyramid.html

Her point about portion sizes is interesting, by the way. A lot of blue collar eateries are judged by how much they can pile on the plate, as opposed to more upscale places where the critical factor is to serve just enough of the main course that it can be seen after you have draped a pimento over it.

In any case, I don't think the old pyramid was perfect, but it was at least coherent, which the new one isn't. But conflating bread and brown rice is starting at an odd spot -- and, as noted there several places, they end at the top with a suggestion that lard and olive oil are also the same thing. Ah well.

On a related note, the recent flurry over getting rid of transfats is producing some nonsensical commentary -- I think some cartoonists need to put down their pens for a minute and find out what transfats actually are and how hard it would be to replace them before they start drawing.

[Mark Jackson]

Note that the "new" pyramid was replaced by a plate in 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPlate - it's not very good either, the difference in portion size being too subtle to come across quickly. (When our [ex-]Xerox Science Consultant team does the nutrition kit for our 4th grade classes I try to use both the old pyramid and the plate.)

Note also that /God Is Disappointed In You/ *looks* like a bible - textured black cover, rounded corners, gilt-edged pages, red ribbon attached to the spine for use as a bookmark. Putting review blurbs on the inside cover really wouldn't fit the package, although there's room right before Ecclesiastes to slide in a whole chapter of 'em - it could be called The 2nd Book of Proverbs....