Pi-Consulting

The last 40 years has seen meat consumption rise by 59% in Europe, and 39% in America. Europeans now eat just under 200 pounds of flesh per year each, while Americans gnaw their way though 270 pounds of meat per person. The trouble is, it would be vastly more efficient if we all reverted to vegetarianism. It takes 10lb of animal feed to produce 1lb of beef. (Source: Compassion In World Farming Report/The Economist.)

It has been suggested that one American in three now weighs as much as the other two combined. This kind of statistic is intrinsically impossible to verify. True or not, the idea is not likely to be contradicted very widely. America has been putting on weight, and fingers have been pointed at the food and beverage industries as the principal culprits.

But wait. Another striking statistic was recently cited (in a report in the Washington Post, no less) as a possible contributory factor. Could the expanding size of ourselves be related to the expanding size of our kitchens?

In the mid-20th century, the typical American kitchen was about 80 square feet in size, while the average American male weighed 166 pounds. Today, average kitchen size has almost tripled, to 225 square feet. American adult males now weigh in at 191 pounds on average.

Mere coincidence?

Aric Chen, as the Post reports, is a specialist writer on architecture and design, and he is convinced that, in this case at least, architecture has had a knock-on effect on human attitudes, and in turn on human behavior.

Chen’s inspired guess dated from his recent co-curatorship of a New York NY exhibition entitled “Value Meal: Design and (Over-)Eating”. He was moved to take on the exhibition project when he saw a news item about a well-known US furniture manufacturer marketing a chair for people whose body weight ranged up to 500 pounds. This firm was responding to a growing problem basically by accommodating it. Wrong answer, Chen said to himself.

He turned his questing mind to the subject of kitchens, rather than chairs. He noticed that kitchen rooms were not just getting bigger, they were also mutating in function, and that society’s attitudes to kitchens were mutating accordingly. This was encouraging people who should not spend more time around food to do just exactly that, he conjectured.

Unlike the smaller kitchens of yesterday, on which the door was closed once a meal had been eaten and the washing-up put away, today’s triple-sized kitchen has been re-cast as a combined living room, entertainment-center, communication post, children’s playroom, dining room, bar-room, meeting point and home office, (quite apart from its primary function as a place where food is stored and prepared). Many now have couches in them. Probably the most requested feature in new-build kitchens is the central island unit, where we park our increasingly capacious behinds on stools, nnd engage in activities that range from yakking about the day’s events to paying the bills online. Oh, and, of course, we eat.

It may be eating as an accompaniment to all those other kitchen-based activities that causes the trouble, muses Chen. He acknowledges that there is something romantic and nice about family and friends choosing the kitchen as the place to foregather, and he traces this back to “a nostalgic era of hearth and home”. But back then, as Chen so eloquently puts it, “You didn’t have big bags of Fritos lying around”.

After the multi-purpose eating island, the next most requested feature in new-build kitchens is “more pantry space”, implying that American feel a pressing need for more room in which to store food. The presence of more food, argue dieticians, particularly processed foods and non-perishable snacks, in itself contributes to systematic over-eating, and eating for reasons other than hunger. A spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association gives the cautious nod to enlarging kitchens and people spending more time in them, on the basis that this will promote home-cooking and discourage visits to take-outs and restaurants, where portions are bigger and calorie-counts are usually higher. However, the ADA expresses concern about kitchens becoming the nerve-center of a household for nearly all activities. Their beef is that “Americans become somehow mindless when they are watching TV, paying the bills, answering the phone or doing e-mails. …Put all those tasks in the middle of the kitchen with food around, and it’s a recipe for mindless munching”

The ADA alternative recipe? “We suggest people stop the “family-style buffet”, where they put food out on the island and tell people to help themselves. We want people to put one serving on a plate, take it out of the kitchen and go eat it in the dining room”.

The underlying aim is to restore a “sense of self-consciousness” about eating. When a kitchen was just a kitchen, it was embarrassing to be caught in front of an open fridge, snacking late at night. The “kitchen-as-kitchen” persuasion wants you to feel that way about impromptu snacking in general.

Seems the old adage about “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen” is getting updated to a new variant: “If you can’t handle temptation…”

Ah, retirement. Our sunset years are supposed to be like going to heaven a couple of decades before we actually get around to dying.

You’ve seen the ads, of course. We all swan around in blue blazers with gold buttons, white duck trousers and deckshoes, only pausing between cruises and bridge weeks for long enough to survey the financial pages with quiet satisfaction. Our wives can be identified by their candy-pink suits and gold shoes, and their tendency to fret about not having enough fingers to put all of their rings on. And of course we’re all so busy living a perfect, carefree existence that we don’t really have time to actually do anything.

Sounds like just another fantasy from adland, right? The peculiar thing is that this silly picture, or something rather like it, actually seems to be coming true for a significant number of older people. The difference is that the Zsa Zsa Gabor fashion-sense from the ads has given way to snappier modern styles. The significant thing is that the “after work experience” from now on has less and less to do with cats and carpet slippers. A whole generation of prospective ‘retirees’, far from slowing down, is set to take on a new lease of life. (more…)

“Every day, and in every way, I am getting better and better. Every day, and in every way, I am getting better and better. Every day….”. Devotees of TCOYL (i.e. Taking Control Of Your Life) are supposed to repeat such things to themselves as a self-motivating mantra.

The New Year is upon us. 2006, you will be told, is the beginning of the rest of your life. A plethora of advice, finger-wagging and cajolery will be underpinned by the compelling thought that there is money to be made by the purveyors of health and fitness.

With the arrival of the New Year, dieting fads will grip the public imagination again, as they do every year. Health-food sales will soar. Health-club membership rosters will swell like Schwarzenegger’s pectorals. Ashtrays will be firmly hidden in the cupboard under the stairs. Trainers, squash racquets and jogging suits will fly off the shelves of sports-goods stores. “The body is a temple” will once again be a prevailing journalistic and commercial theme-line.

And worship we will, for a while. In some people’s lives, fitness-fanaticism has colonised the place that used to be reserved for religious piety. Journalist Lucy Kellaway, (in an insightful Financial Times article) visited one of London’s new personal training gyms. When she emerged, it was with “the realisation that this place wasn’t a gym at all. It was a CHURCH”.

The faith will certainly make new converts this year. Indeed quite a high proportion of European men already claim regular active involvement in some physical sport or other. In France and Britain, participation levels hover around the 50% mark. However, over half as many again claim to have a keen interest in sport, when what they really mean is WATCHING sport on TV, or reading about it in newspapers and magazines. A significant chunk of sporting activity, it seems, takes place on the couch, six-pack and snack-foods in hand.

That’s part of the problem. It’s not just what we do, but what we eat. Where diet is concerned, consciences are already stirring around the European continent. Over 50% of women in Spain, France and Britain believe they should be “doing more about their health”, though only two-fifths of their sisters in Germany admit to this kind of health-concern.

How much good is this actually doing for their figures? Sadly, less than you might imagine. It seems that less than a third of European women pay heed to the calorie content of what they eat. Worrying about our weight, and doing something about it, appear to be two separate things.

Recent research suggests that humanity is biologically programmed to eat food in quantity when it’s available. Tomorrow, says our collective biological memory, there may not be any. Fixing this problem may mean we need genetic readjustment. None of these gloomy ruminations, however, will impede us from pledging our virtuous resolutions in the New Year. How long will the mood last? Well, how long do virtuous resolutions ever last?

“Every day, and in every way….”. You’re right, this website doesn’t believe it either. It will probably take more than a week of post-holiday remorse to get Western society off its backside for long.

The history of medicine can be reduced to six bullet points:

• 2000 BC: “Here, eat this root”
• 1000 AD: “That root is heathen. Say this prayer”.
• 1850 AD: “That prayer is superstition. Drink this potion”.
• 1950 AD: “That potion is snake oil. Swallow this pill”.
• 1980 AD: “That pill is ineffective. Take this antibiotic”.
• 2000 AD: “Uh, that antibiotic doesn’t work any more. Here, eat this root”. (more…)