How the other half eats attempts to change the way we perceive obesity, health issues, and food in general, claiming that contrary to some researchers and doctors,Obesity and other issues our families situations, personal responsibility is not to blame, instead Priya Fielding-Singh has placed the blame on the food itself.

Bold, personal, and well researched this book will attack popular myths about food and force the reader to pause and think about the level of inequality in our society and how that hurts our very selfs, endangering families while going mostly unnoticed, Priya Fielding-Singh has pulled the curtains back and shed some light on inequality and forces the reader to question their thoughts on the subject..

I was thrilled to receive this book, however it was something I could not get behind. Others may take more from the book than I did and thats great if you do, but given the choice I'd pass on this one in favor of other books.

Thank you to netgalley and publisher for providing me an e-copy so I can share my honest opinion. ( )

The entire world knows Americans eat badly, are hugely overweight and unfit, and don’t know good food when they see it. But Priya Fielding-Singh, a Stanford sociology student, wanted to know what exactly families were eating, and why. She personally conducted a study, interviewing 160 parents and their mostly teenage children, and spending three months observing four families, all in the Bay area of northern California. The result was a Phd and this book, How The Other Half Eats.

Not being a nutritionist, she avoided judgment on what people ate. Being a sociologist, she wanted to know why parents bought what they did, why everyone ate what they did, and the role food played in their families. She networked her way to a balanced effort, with rich and poor, Black, white, Hispanics and Asians. (It was all but impossible to find a father responsible for the groceries and the feeding. She managed to profile one.) She was open to getting close to the families, and ended up helping make dinner, going to birthday parties, watching old movies and of course, shopping. She recorded their stories, listened to their histories and avoided getting personally involved in their crises. Like any ethnographer, her focus was observation, making endless notes on artifacts, décor, clothing, hair, activities, neighborhoods and foods, in order to write it all up as if no one had ever heard of these kinds of people before.

Her book is very personal as well as thorough. She weaves in her own story and the food she was raised on, and how she approaches bringing up her own child now, nearly ten years later. She is class conscious and very aware of privilege.

It takes about a hundred pages, but Priya Fielding-Singh (hereinafter PFS) finally discovers where conventional wisdom and common knowledge are plainly wrong. Everyone “knows” that being poor means being unable to afford quality food. That poverty makes people fat and sloppy, that it leads the higher quality supermarkets to pack up and leave, changing neighborhoods into food deserts. But PFS looked at the data and found that was not true.

Mothers will buy junk food for their kids when it is the only luxury they can afford. A couple of Starbucks Frappacinos, a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal or peanut butter cinnamon Oreos is not their idea of nutrition, but it is about the only thing they can do that makes their kids feel great. In wealthier families, the mothers have far less compunction about saying no to junk food. It actually makes them feel like good mothers, she says. Poorer moms spend all day saying no, so a treat they can actually afford is a no-brainer.

In the summer, richer kids go to camps, have laptop computers, take lessons or tutors as needed. They go on trips, they eat in restaurants on a regular basis. For the marginal, there is none of that. Their kids sit and watch videos all through the summer break. Ice cream from the passing truck is as good as it gets.

She found another myth regarding food deserts. The moms in the study had all the choice in the world, because Americans go far for their groceries. The “average American travels 5.2 miles to grocery shop, and 90 percent of shopping trips in the country are made by car. It turns out that people are willing to travel long distances to buy food and are less geographically constrained,” she says.

She found from her participants that quality foods were not more expensive or beyond their means. Processed foods cost more, not less, but were more filling. To that extent, they provided more value than raw ingredients. It was never a preference for junk; it was all thought through.

This brings up waste. Americans trash nearly 40% of the food they buy. In poorer households, that just cannot happen. Mothers quickly learn that brussel sprouts stay on the plate, but KFC is eaten completely, right to the bone, every time. When it is critical to get calories into growing (and growling) stomachs, they have no option but to cater to picky teenage preferences. It’s not their choice, but it satisfies their families and keeps them going. Mothers are clear that fast food and processed foods are not the legacy they want future generations to wax nostalgic over, like these moms do about their own mothers’ cooking.

She says “Food insecurity in the United States affects more than thirty-five million people and about two-thirds of households below the poverty line. In 2019, one in nine Americans lacked enough food.” Programs like SNAP and WIC did not solve the problem (nor were they meant to), but they alter behavior dramatically. When their cards are recharged on the first of the month, cardholders grocery shop like there’s no tomorrow. Rather than budget weekly, they spend it all gloriously at once (it also saves on gas), and eat really well that first week. As the month wears on, the cupboards empty out, sometimes leaving nothing at all before the cards recharge. It’s an artificial, unnatural and most unfortunate cycle for those who must pay half their income in rent. They are simply never out of the hole, and this is how they cope.

Food shopping is an ordeal, rich or poor. Junk foods, processed foods and candies line the aisles and end caps. Children ask, then beg, then cry for them. The tie-ins from all the commercials they see on TV and their own phones make them drool for the products when they see them within reach. Never mind the bad effects, their own cultural heritage, their economic position or the food’s bad effects: moms (must) cave on a regular basis. The processed food makers win, again and again. “They promise moms ease, comfort, and convenience. They promise moms quiet, happy children. They promise moms the chance to be ‘good’ by making their lives easier and getting their kids fed. They promise less sodium and fat and more whole grains and protein. They promise health. But apart from, perhaps, convenience, the industry does not deliver on any of these promises. In fact, it brings parents the exact opposite. It fosters nagging and begging. It prompts meltdowns and tantrums in the supermarket. It forces moms to sacrifice their preferences to keep kids quiet and content. It promotes lies about food’s qualities and benefits.” PFS is hardly the first to call for regulation banning food advertising to children.

She was initially shocked that poorer mothers had no problem blowing twenty bucks on fast food treats, even though the rent was short again and the cellphones were cut off for lack of payment. But sober reflection made PFS come to the same conclusion the mothers did: twenty bucks was not going to pay off a bill, appease the landlord or mollify the phone company. It was never going to make up for anything. A treat was a necessary event when cellphones were dead to the world. Another food perversion of poverty.

She found that mothers were always comparing themselves, judging how well their families were faring, taking small satisfaction that there were some worse off than they were, and that they were doing a better job with what little they had.

Most of all, she found mothers of all economic strata were totally stressed. The wealthier ones were stressed by not having enough time to make dinners for the family or spend quality time with the kids. The poorer ones stressed over that they could not deliver the American Dream. PFS did not, could not find even one mother satisfied with her own performance as a mom. If it wasn’t homecooking, it was worry over what a balanced regimen should be, what advertising to believe, or putting too much pressure on kids, supervising them too closely or not enough, exploiting their talents too hard or not at all, having a great family life or not – it is endless. Motherhood is a gigantic negative force endured seemingly by all American moms.

From there, PFS jumps to a remarkable Conclusion. She calls outright for far more respect and resources for mothers. She wants programs like SNAP and WIC totally revamped and made effective for far more families. Schools should provide good breakfasts and lunches. She wants governments to make the American Dream and the safety net real and activated parts of family life. “Personal responsibility has never solved a public health problem or remedied an inequity. Food is no exception. Certainly, many of us could make small choices to eat differently. Many of the families I met had either done so or were trying to figure out how to eat more nutritiously with the resources they had. But, largely due to the structures implemented by the food industry and federal government, most felt like they were fighting an uphill battle—and losing.”

These conclusions do not flow from her study; they flow from being an eyewitness to the daily distortions that food, sexism, racism and classism engender in modern American life. They come from the heart, which is to be applauded and encouraged.

David Wineberg ( )