Apocalypse Chow: Don’t Let Corporations Define Vegetables

YES! Media is excited to present a new column, Apocalypse Chow, by Arun Gupta, investigative reporter, French-trained chef, food tour guide, and author of the forthcoming eponymous book, Apocalypse Chow: A Junk Food–Loving Chef Explains How America Created the Most Revolutionary Food System Ever (The New Press). This monthly column will explore how our tastes are shaped by social forces and how the mundane parts of our lives—cars, social media, industrialization, office jobs, and more—shape what we eat. By understanding why we love junk food, we can remake our food culture to focus on what’s tastier, has greater variety, and is healthier for ourselves and the planet. In Gupta’s inaugural column, he explores how corporations have redefined what a vegetable is—and how that is impacting our health.

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There is no sager dietary advice than “Eat your vegetables.” A parent has probably told you this countless times. It’s also the mantra of Michael Pollan, which he turned into multiple best-selling books: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Nutrition experts have been telling us to eat more fresh produce for so long they sound like a weary parent.

However, it turns out vegetables are making us fat. The more servings of vegetables we eat, the more calories we consume. That’s the startling conclusion of a 2014 United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) report titled “Healthy Vegetables Undermined by the Company They Keep,” which concluded that when we eat one cup of a particular vegetable—read on to find out which one—in a restaurant, we rack up 364 more calories than if we didn’t eat it.

To understand why requires a brief primer in nutrition. We need fruits and vegetables to thrive. They provide water, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals. They have a lot of bulk but are low in calories, so they help us avoid sugary, salty, fatty snacks. Pickled produce, such as cabbage, mango, radish, and cucumbers, delivers probiotics for gut health. Most importantly, eating lots of fruits and vegetables can help us live longer. In the clinical language of government scientists: “Fruit and vegetable intakes were associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and all-cause mortality.”

Nearly everyone is familiar with the “five-a-day” recommendation for fruits and vegetables. Harvard Medical School, the World Health Organization, and even the Texas state government agree we should eat five servings a day. That means half a cup of foods such as blueberries, cucumbers, broccoli, carrots, or apples. For greens such as spinach, kale, cabbage, or lettuce, a serving is one packed cup of raw leaves or a half-cup of cooked greens. A half cup of cooked pulses, such as beans, chickpeas, peas, and lentils also counts as a serving.

In 2014, Americans ate, on average, 2.51 cups of fruits and vegetables a day, or five servings, according to the USDA. It sounds like we are meeting our goals, but all is not what it seems. One problem is the real minimum is three servings of fruit and four servings of vegetables a day, per the U.S. National Cancer Institute. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 10 percent of adults eat this amount of fruit or vegetables. 

But even seven servings a day is misleading. That’s what a petite, sedentary 85-year-old woman should eat. The first problem is many of us should eat 10 or more servings a day, as I will explain. Because we are so far below 10 a day, the advice to eat five servings is a form of harm reduction. Nutrition experts are encouraging us to eat one or two more servings a day rather than discouraging us by admitting we are falling far short of out minimum needs.

The second issue is we also need a variety of vegetables. Every day we should have a serving of dark leafy greens; a red or orange vegetable, such as a tomato or a sweet potato; and lentils, peas, or beans. Virtually no one eats these foods every day. The third problem is the type of vegetables we eat regularly, how they are prepared, and what accompanies them. Related to this is the problem of what the USDA considers a serving of a fruit or a vegetable.

Here’s the rub: We average about three servings of vegetables a day, and potatoes and tomatoes make up a majority of that. Potatoes almost always come loaded with fat, calories, and sodium, such as fries, chips, mashed, scalloped, or gratin. Baked potatoes are healthier, but spuds are typically swimming in butter, cheese, sour cream, and bacon. Tomatoes are even worse. We may think we usually enjoy them on a refreshing salad with a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil, but in reality we eat tomatoes as salsa, ketchup, and sauces in cheesy pizza, meaty lasagna, stuffed burritos, loaded nachos, thick hamburgers, and greasy fries. That’s why for every cup of tomatoes we eat in restaurants, we pack on an extra 364 calories. 

Eliminate potatoes and tomatoes, and Americans eat less than one cup of vegetables a day, and there is no guarantee it’s healthy. It might be creamed spinach, broccoli with cheese sauce, or greens piled with meat and cheese and slicked with oil. 

Adding fat to vegetables is a strategy in the restaurant industry. Vegetables can be made tasty, healthy, and low fat, such as those roasted, but such methods are labor intensive. Instead, restaurants have adopted the mantra “When in doubt, add bacon and cheese.” These ingredients are taxpayer subsidized, packed with flavor, and require little added labor, which makes them high profit. But we end up ingesting excessive amounts of butter, bacon, and cheese, only adding to the restaurant’s bottom line and our waist line.

Our diets have worsened since the USDA’s 2014 report. Vegetable consumption has steadily declined since 2003, dropping from more than 400 pounds annually per capita to about 350 pounds in 2022. This is largely a result of social conditions: The Great Recession, the pandemic, and inflation have pushed more people into poverty even as food, especially fresh produce, rises in cost.

The situation is just as bad for fruit. That’s because the USDA considers juice a serving, which accounts for more than 35 percent of our fruit intake. Sure, 100 percent fruit juice has vitamins and minerals. But it can have as much sugar as soda, and it’s the added “free sugars” that are most harmful to our health. Another 10 percent of our fruit intake is canned or dried—and it’s a good bet they have added sugar as well. 

Remove potatoes, tomatoes, and fruit juice, and Americans eat barely 2.5 servings of fruit and vegetables a day on average, and even that may be overstating it. How did our diets get so bad and how can we improve them? 

The main problem is corporations hold sway over our food system and our lives, from work and housing to family and leisure. Agribusiness fruits and vegetables are expensive. They are grown thousands of miles from our tables, expensive to transport and store, and cost far more per calorie than energy-dense and heavily subsidized commodities such as beef, cheese, wheat, and sugar. Since we are time and money stressed, we eat subsidized foods in the form of ultra-processed fast food and junk food that give us a moment of satisfaction at the cost of a lifetime of illness. 

The solution is simple: Remove the profit motive so workers and communities own and operate farms, kitchens, grocers, and restaurants. This would allow us to mine our vast culinary history to match food cultures with local communities, tastes, and bioregions. Food cooked daily from fresh ingredients in small batches is mostly found in immigrant or high-end restaurants as it requires skill and labor. Such restaurants often exploit workers, but we could redirect tens of billions in agricultural subsidies that benefit food giants to subsidize local systems with cuisines that are far more delicious than corporate food while being healthy and low cost.

Of course we need to build a constituency and political power to have any hope of creating food systems free of capitalist rot. In the meantime, how do we get more fresh produce every day?

I tried one method after stumbling on an online calculator created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2013. Based on age, exercise, and gender, it told me how many fruits and vegetables I should eat. Forget five a day—as a male in my 40s who exercised more than one hour a day, I had to eat 12 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. For my partner, Michelle, who is similarly active, it was 10 servings a day. (That calculator has disappeared, but there is a similar one at myplate.gov.) 

I was stunned. Having cooked professionally, I knew that meant shopping, prepping, cooking, cleaning, and storing 154 portions of fruits and vegetables a week. I tried it for several months. It took me 25 hours a week or more, almost a full-time job. But I discovered something interesting. When I ate more than eight servings of produce a day, I shifted to a plant-based diet. I was eating fewer chips and cold cuts, and more salads, beans, pickles, fresh fruit smoothies, and stir fries. 

Even though I work from home, spending so much time cooking wasn’t a realistic solution for me, much less for families with kids and those who don’t have professional skills and equipment. 

The most important morsel of knowledge for healthier eating is understanding what motivates food choices. Taste, convenience, speed, predictability, and cost determine what we eat. We hit the drive-through because we know and like how that fried chicken sandwich tastes, it is (relatively) cheap, the location is convenient as is eating—it can be done with one hand while driving—and it’s quick to order, cook, eat, and clean up. 

Obesity-related diseases have risen sharply as eating out has soared. Over a 40-year period, beginning in the late 1970s, eating out increased more than 70 percent, and fast food visits nearly tripled. Knowing this, eat at home as much as possible. Minimally processed foods such as pre-cut vegetables and salads are fine. When possible, avoid highly processed foods in bags, cans, and boxes. Plain frozen fruit and vegetables are great since they preserve the nutritional value at peak harvest, but when possible, avoid frozen meals like burritos, dumplings, and pizzas. They tend to have lots of additives, are high calorie, and lead to overconsumption. Eat produce without gobs of meat, dairy, oil, and sugar. We joke that “Pizza has all the major food groups,” but putting a salad on top of a slice doesn’t make it healthier. Have a salad instead. 

While we should eat more fruits and vegetables however we can, we can’t put the onus on individuals if for no other reason than 50 years of health advice is not working. Real change begins with knowing how Big Food is tricking us into thinking we are eating healthy when we aren’t. Ultimately we need to tear out the existing food system root and branch, and create a culinary polyculture that serves the needs of humans and the planet.