菲格森一家特爱吃有机食物，认为这是爱护地球的表现

(本文取自《新闻周刊》Ian Yarett和Jesse Ellison所写“Divided We Eat”，美国中文网朱泽人编写)

在早餐时，我通常都会喝杯卡布其诺加意式浓缩咖啡。它是用高档意大利品牌阿莱西(Alessi)咖啡壶烧出，而我先生会倒入有机牛奶，稍微加热再搅拌至起奶泡。另外，我会吃两片进口荷兰帕拉诺(Parrano)起司，而且商品标志上写著“纽约最嬉皮的起司”，这可不是开玩笑。最后再配上两片家庭自制面包加奶油，我可能会被你想成是个饕客。

至于身为营养师邻居喝的则是蛋白粉，她五岁小儿子吃的是奎藜籽粥，外加苹果酱来增甜味，以及用羽衣甘蓝脆片点缀。她就是你所称的保健狂。在最近一个早晨，邻居的好朋友亚历珊德拉?菲格森(Alexandra Ferguson)，在舒适的厨房里喝著政治正确的尼加拉瓜咖啡，两个小儿子挑选著有机麦片。在我们坐下时，后院的六只鸡还从门缝盯著大家看，而它们都是菲格森和先生戴夫(Dave)为吃有机鸡蛋而养。菲格森太太可被称为吃土粮者(Locavores)。

亚历珊德拉说她每天要花好几个小时思考、采购，以及准备食物。她的导师是迈克?波兰(Michael Pollan)，此人在2006年所写《杂食者的两难》(The Omnivore's Dilemma)可是让吃土粮运动在美国蔚为潮流。亚历珊德认为吃有机食物和本地土产不仅对她和家人的健康有益，还能够增进农场动物与农夫的福利，并且更为爱护地球。

“迈克?波兰是我新的英雄，仅次于吉米?卡特(编注：前美国总统)，”她告诉我。在某些地区里，有个律师在她的后院养鸡可能被视为有点古怪，但我们住的地方是布鲁克林公园坡(Park Slope)，此社区是非常能适应与欣赏各种饮食习惯者。不论你相信吃东西是为了快乐、为了健康、为了公正，或是某种理想化的家庭生活形式，你都能找到反应出食物价值观的邻居。在公园坡，一个孩子的午餐盒食物可以引发20分钟的讨论。



菲格森“吃土粮者”的晚餐包括荞麦意大利面、两颗肉丸子，以及长叶莴苣沙拉
在饮用完咖啡后，我小心翼翼地提出一个最近困扰许久的问题：在不到五英里外，有些孩子没足够的食物可吃；有些人则是完全依赖垃圾食物而活。亚历珊德拉坦承她的饮食方式可能对那些人是遥不可及，不过她在公园坡社区并不算非常富裕：亚历珊德拉打零工过活，先生则是纽约市政府员工，夫妻俩花达到近百分之20的收入，大约一个月1,000在食物上。相较之下，美国人平均只花百分之13在饮食，包括上餐馆和外带。

因此，话题转移到他们想把对波兰教条的诠释，分享给未接受的大众是有多么困难。当他们拜访先生戴夫在田纳西州的家人时，食物的选择问题引爆了纠纷。亚历珊德拉回忆起有一次，她纠缠著婆婆买一代有机苹果，但婆婆已经在杂货店里买了一袋非有机的苹果了。婆婆表示这袋已买好的苹果非常棒，为什么要浪费钱扔弃它们呢？

菲格森夫妇回忆起戴夫的妈妈说了这些话：“当我们到你们家时，我们可没抱怨你的食物。为什么你要抱怨我们的呢？我们的食物可没有毒呀。”戴夫补充说：“我没办法说服我的兄弟多再花任何一分钱在食物。”

“这是我们的善行。这是我给世界的礼物，”亚历珊德拉在包午餐盒时终于说道。她给两个孩子的食物是有杂粮面包配上机花生酱与果酱、酸奶，和克莱门氏小柑橘。“我们贡献的很多。”

《纽约时报》公布一系列感恩节素食食谱，使用各类高档蔬果食材反应出美国上流社会生活型态
新鲜蔬果成中上阶级显示身分的象徵

根据上个星期美国农业部所公布的数据，百分之17的美国人，等于将近5,000万人住在一个“食粮不安”(food insecure)的家，而这词代表的是一个家庭为了要买食物用尽了金钱，或是在有更多收入进帐前已经没食物可吃。食粮不安的问题在单亲妈妈的家庭特别明显，在美国南部大城是最为严重。在纽约市，有140万人属于食粮不安，其中257,000人非常靠近我所住的布鲁克林社区。

当然，食粮不安是与其他经济因素如房产和就业联系在一块，因此不让人讶异，在美国农业部于1995年开始追踪数据后，粮食不安于经济开始衰退的2007与2008年是最为严重。(2009年数据在上星期公布，显示和前年没太大变化。)符合“饥饿”状态的家庭比例只有百分之6，属于美国农业部所称为“低粮食安全保障”的家庭。不过它和我生活圈子中对食物即为挑剔的美食家们形成对比，以及在注意力转移到海外穷困与饥饿的人民时，仅仅这一小部分挨饿的美国小孩数都难以让人接受。

某种程度上，这听起来像是很天真的抱怨。在美国这个资本主义经济的国家，永远都会有富人和穷人，而富裕的人永远都有自由能沉迷享用任何他们喜爱的食物。在经济困难的时候，食物一直是有钱人和穷人之间明显的分界点。在美国大萧条早期，贫民们大排长龙等拿面包，中产与上流阶级则流行吃减肥餐。哈维?莱文斯坦(Harvey Levenstein)就在1993年出版的《过多的矛盾》(Paradox of Plenty)写道，18天好莱坞减肥餐的追随者“一天能靠不到六百卡热量维生，只要限制每餐吃半个葡萄柚、梅尔巴吐司、不加奶与糖的咖啡，以及在中餐与晚餐时吃些生蔬菜。”

当代的美国是个极端的地方，你晚餐吃的东西变成是社会阶级的绝对象徵物；当富人与穷人的财富差距持续拉大时，最新鲜、最有营养的食物变成只有少数人能负担得起的奢侈品。根据美国统计局，美国最底层的家庭平均年收入，在过去二十多年一直都维持在10,000到13,000美元之间(调整通货膨胀后)；但是在富人阶层里，收入却是增加百分之20，于同期之间达到170,800美元。

此现象代表著，富有的美国人能在全食超市(Whole Foods)买非当季的莓果来吃。就当这间高档连锁超市最近公布季度获利成长成长百分之58时，粮食不安的人们还是在吃能负担得起的东西，例如高卡路里、大批生产的食物如披萨与包装蛋糕来快速塞饱肚子。在过去三年中，领粮食券的美国人数增加百分之58.5。



为推广贫穷民众吃的健康，美国各地政府开始推行领粮食券者，只要到当地农产市场买菜便可享有额外信用点
肥胖过去曾象徵著财富，现在却变成贫穷的商标。肥胖症随著收入差距拉大日益严重，有超过三分之一的美国成人和百分之17的小孩有此问题，而且在贫穷人口中更为糟糕。虽然肥胖症是种复杂的问题，如基因、环境，和运动程度都涉及在内，美国农业部在2008年公布的研究却指出领有粮食券的小孩和妇女，是比没拿的人更有过重的问题。

此外，根据领导此研究的英国流行病学家凯特?彼克特(Kate Pickett)指出，肥胖症在收入差距最大的发展中国家是拥有最高的比例。美国就是拥有最多肥胖者的国家；相较来说收入差距较小的日本则是拥有最少此患者的地方。

华盛顿大学流行病学家亚当?德鲁诺斯基(Adam Drewnowski)，用整个事业生涯来彰显美国食物选择和社会阶级息息相关。他批判最营养的食品，包括大量的水果、蔬菜、瘦肉、鱼，和谷类，都是穷人所买不起的，但经济上为精英主义的营养学家仍把它们当理想食物，而没有强调可负担性的问题。同时，尽管许多贫穷社区确实是“食物沙漠”，代表人们住的地方没有食物充沛的超市，许多人却不是如此。

低收入家庭选择糖份高、肥脂多，和加工过的食品，纯粹是因它们比较便宜，以及吃起来还不错。在今年春季公布的一份新报告中，德鲁诺斯基采用西雅图地区的超市调查出某些食物在2004到2008年间的价格变动。当食物价格总体上升百分之25时，最有营养的食物(红椒、生蚝、菠菜、芥菜，和长叶萵苣)增加百分之29，最没营养的食物(白糖、硬糖果、软糖豆，和可乐)只有增加百分之16。

“在美国，”德鲁诺斯基在电子邮件中写道，“食物变成社会分化，也就是指社会阶级的主要划分物。过去都是用服装和时尚来分，但已不存在，现在‘奢侈’已经变得可以负担，而且每个人都能买到。”他指出波兰先生在《纽约时报》所写文章里，把餐点元素一样样拆开，包括“一篮在雪士达山(Mt.Shasta)采摘的龙葵和牛肝菌”。“波兰，”德鲁诺斯基写，“描绘出阶级特权的影像，而强烈程度还超越伊迪丝?华顿(Edith Wharton)和亨利?詹姆斯(Henry James)笔下人物。”

在我写完前面这些段落后，我跑去楼上翻出纽约精品店巴尼斯(Barneys)的圣诞节目录。它的封面正写著“有个美食家假期”，至于里面的模特儿全都被食物覆盖。一个穿著2,000美元朗雯(Lanvin)风衣的女人头上顶著巨大的卷心菜。另一个女人手拿著绿色普罗恩萨?施罗(Proenza Schouler)晚装包，则是在蓬松卷发上放了只蒸好的大螃蟹。最让人不安的就是穿著80,500美元Munnu钻石挂坠的模特儿，似乎把头发变成一只章鱼，触脚延伸过她的肩膀，女孩脸上则挂著种在派对待太久的神情。食物不再是很时髦或是潮流。它本身就是时尚。

单亲妈妈蒂芙尼?戴维斯，和儿子塔肖恩与女儿玛莱希亚，通常都买外带或吃罐头食品打发一餐
将饮食视为社交活动

蒂芙尼?戴维斯(Tiffiney Davis)是位单亲妈妈，她住在一个离我家约四英里的政府补贴屋，而名为红鉤(Red Hook)的社区是经过重建规划改造。离她公寓不远处，你能找到许多美食文化的证据，例如我买荷兰起司的航道超市(Fairway)就在那里、一家时髦的面包店，和一个新开的龙虾餐厅。戴维斯女士说她有时候担心食物不够。她现在于曼哈顿一家餐饮公司工作，时薪为13美元，平常有领粮食券。她每星期要花100美元在自己与两个孩子的食物，有时为了节省开支还会带些上班餐馆内的食物回家。

戴维斯对于家人们吃什么有些难为情。每个人都在早上六点起床，大家匆匆忙忙出门，通常吃的就是小杂货店卖的食品。她10岁的女儿玛莱希亚(Malaezia)会有个蛋和起司卷；13岁的儿子塔肖恩(Tashawn)吃松饼和汽水；至于她自己则跑去唐恩都乐(Dunkin' Donuts)买两个甜甜圈与一杯拿铁。不过，当这纽约市连锁餐点店开始在菜单上公布热量后，她就不再去购买了。“我尽力减少吃化学物和会发胖的东西，”她说，“但这实在太难了。”

戴维斯女士解释说，时间可能是一部分的原因，特别是她在星期天于厨房里快乐地准备晚餐的时候。这晚，她做了炸鸡腿加罐装烤肉酱、盒装黄饭、罐头黑豆、西兰花，和加橄榄油与蜂蜜煮出的红萝卜。家里可不是每晚都会开火，在平日夜晚，每个人都精疲力尽地的回到家，还要做功课。他们每周有好几个晚上都吃外带食物；例如中国快餐、达美乐披萨，或是麦当劳。戴维斯不太买水果和蔬菜，主要是因为它们太贵，以及她买菜的超市里都没有新鲜蔬果。

“我买香蕉带回家，不过10分钟后就烂了...全食超市有卖新鲜漂亮的西红柿，”她说。“这个是包装好充满化学物的，反正也一样，所以我都买罐头食物。”

在最近这几个星期，纽约市充满著争议性的提案，预计要禁止领粮食券用政府的钱买汽水。纽约市公共卫生官员坚持要用更激烈的做法来减少肥胖，因为最近一份研究发现，纽约市幼儿园到八年级小孩中，百分之40有过重或肥胖症。相比之下，全美6到11岁的孩子则是有百分之36有此问题。反对这提案的人称此为“保姆国家”的作法、政府干预的另一例子，甚至更严重的，是代表政府告诉穷人们做什么，就好像他们自己没办法做出正确的决定。

“我认为这会很困难，”英国流行病学家彼克特说道。“每个人都需要觉得自己能控制消费，每个人也应该要让自己偶尔放纵一下。为什么一个贫童不能在生日派对上吃蛋糕和汽水呢？”

戴维斯一家的晚餐包括青酱义大利面、鸡胸肉、面包，加冰茶

不过单亲妈妈戴维斯女士倒是非常支持这政策。她所住同栋建筑中有个9岁孩子最近因气喘病发身亡，而且就在他母亲身旁往生。她说这孩子有肥胖症，但他妈妈却一直喂他吃垃圾食物。“如果这些人一点都不在乎卡路里，政府应该要关心才行。人们才能活得更久，”她说。

法国社会学家克洛德?费席勒(Claude Fischler)相信美国人能够同时对抗肥胖症和粮食不安，只要他们更像法国人就行了。美国人对待食物的方式和饮食习惯不像过去任何人。举例来讲，他们把食物(不论本身是好事坏)都当成是营养来源。当问到“什么是吃的健康？”美国人通常会用种每日摄取量的方式来说，如多少卡路里、碳水化合物、脂肪，和糖分。美国人不把饮食当做是社交活动，而且不觉得食物如过往数百万年那样是种分享的资源，例如一块给桌上每个人分的面包。

若是问法国人“什么是吃的健康？”他们则会难以抵抗使用“愉快”来形容，包含齐聚、亲密，和用传统方法品尝食物味道。费席勒还指出，比美国人执著于营养成分更具代表性的，就是把食物的选择当成是个人自由、一种无可分割的权力。美国人喜欢吃他们喜欢的东西，无论是龙葵或麦当劳大汉堡。除了感恩节时都吃相同的火鸡菜单，美国人都是自由主义者。

在调查研究中，费席勒发现无论白天或晚上，美国人都没预期会在一起吃饭。反观有百分之54的法国人会每天于中午12点30分吃饭，而且只有百分之9.5的法国人有肥胖症。

当我还是小孩时，我都被命令要“吃你的鸡蛋，在非洲有一堆小孩在挨饿呢”。当我长大到能帮自己著想时，很容易就观察到我吃或是不吃这个蛋，实际上都完全不会帮到非洲的小孩。这就是布鲁克林的难题，而它于全美国都正在上演。

当地土产的食物比起你在超市里买的还棒，对小产量的农夫和动物都更友善，以及做为种运动，它是更加环保。纽约大学营养学家玛丽昂?内斯通(Marion Nestle)指出，如果你能负担得起，吃当地生产食物可能更健康，而且对个人与家庭都是个简单的选择。“选土产或有机食品是你真的能做到的事。要人们和参与政策反而很困难。”

贾比尔?萨卢基和母亲两人都有糖尿病，因此尽管属低收入户，仍是致力让自己要吃得健康
纽约市开始强制改变低收入居民的饮食习惯

纽约和其他地方的吃土粮者运动者，都在尽其所能帮助穷人能吃到新鲜食物。奖励计划让领粮食券者只要在本地农产市场买食物，就能够享有额外的信用点。食品合作社(food co-op)和社区菜圃委员会都比都会的伙伴们做得更好。大城市正建立几条新巴士线路，让贫区居民能够直接通往库存丰富的超市。

纽约市反饥饿联盟贝格(NYCCAH)执行总监乔?贝格(Joel Berg)表示计划都不错，但他们还要再更向前推进。他和费席勒都相信问题的答案，就在把食物当成是种分享资源，如水一样，而不是像消费产品如鞋子。“这很微不足道，我认为把‘土产’或‘有机’都当成是好东西实在太过简化了，”贝格先生说道。“我觉得我们需要更广泛讨论关于规模、工作环境，以及环境冲击。这对没什么道德感的人来说要求似乎太高了些。”

即使是吃土粮者英雄的波兰先生都同意。“基本上，”他说，“我们有个系统让有钱的农夫喂穷人吃垃圾，并让贫穷的农夫喂有钱人吃高品质食物。”他指出沃尔玛(Walmart)最近宣布一项计划，会在店里架上放置更多当地产食物，彰显大型零售商都在卖民众能负担得起的新鲜食品。

波兰先生指出，这些蔬果可能不是有机，但目标本来就不是要一个人的食物意识型态走向绝对主义。“我争辩的是人要有意识，”他说，“不过完美主义成为进步的绊脚石。”他的愿景是在对抗糖尿病与肥胖症时，医疗保险公司能支持小型或中型农地规模的农夫。他梦想华盛顿能普遍讨论食物政策。“食物运动，”他提醒我，“仍是很年轻。”

贝格先生相信一部分的解答，是要靠与大型餐饮公司合作。餐饮业并不完都很邪恶，毕竟它发展出科技让威斯康星州在冬天也有苹果吃。当然它能够透过持续的生产计划让蔬果可以到处买到，以及可负担得起。“我们同样要把社会正义带到更大的农业领域，”贝格说道。



萨卢基的晚餐是用火鸡碎肉煎出索尔斯伯利牛排，上面放了融化的起司，佐菜放绿豆和马铃薯，饮料是杯冰茶
我最后一站是住在克林顿山丘(Clinton Hill)的贾比尔?萨卢基(Jabir Suluki)，离我家大概有两英里远。萨卢基的早餐是土司，上面加片起司放在烤箱中融化。他是个土生土长的布鲁克林人，不过倒是很像法国人。每天下午5点到晚上7点，他会帮妈妈、自己，或是刚好来玩的侄子或侄女准备晚餐。身为世代都为家庭厨艺好手的子孙，他准备起食物来可是充满自信。

萨卢基和母亲都有糖尿病。对他们来讲，健康的正餐是必须品，因此他一星期用75美元尽可能做出最棒。“想要买到好食物，你需要牺牲不少。它们很贵，不过我愿意做出牺牲，因为这很值得。”萨卢基利用他的粮食券在农产市场，把当地超市所卖腐坏的水果翻找一遍，以及特地跑到皇后区买一堆便宜的肉类食品。他坚信家长的责任是要喂孩子吃健康、有节制份量的食物，而这在有限收入下是能够做到的。

萨卢基对于食物以及其在邻居生活中所扮演的角色想了很多。他的冰箱里面没有汽水，但是他反对纽约市提议的禁令，原因政府一边补贴食品与农产品，另一边又放任超市里塞满不健康的食品，看起来实在太虚伪了。“你不能喂人们吃垃圾，又同时批评他们。”

他现在是个社区组织人员，将人们眼前面临的问题如饥饿、肥胖，和健康当成是社区的责任。“我们不能只是以个人来处理这些问题，”他告诉我。“一个健康的社区要能产出健康的居民。”这就是为什么，在这周末，他做出一大锅饭拌豆类，带去他家附近的热食发放所。
美新闻周刊原文：http://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/22/what-food-says-about-class-in-america.html

Divided We Eat

by Lisa MillerNovember 22, 2010

As more of us indulge our passion for local, organic delicacies, a growing number of Americans don’t have enough nutritious food to eat. How we can bridge the gap.

Christopher Anderson / Magnum for Newsweek

Photos: How We Can Bridge the Food Divide

For breakfast, I usually have a cappuccino—espresso made in an Alessi pot and mixed with organic milk, which has been gently heated and hand-fluffed by my husband. I eat two slices of imported cheese—Dutch Parrano, the label says, “the hippest cheese in New York” (no joke)—on homemade bread with butter. I am what you might call a food snob. My nutritionist neighbor drinks a protein shake while her 5-year-old son eats quinoa porridge sweetened with applesauce and laced with kale flakes. She is what you might call a health nut. On a recent morning, my neighbor’s friend Alexandra Ferguson sipped politically correct Nicaraguan coffee in her comfy kitchen while her two young boys chose from among an assortment of organic cereals. As we sat, the six chickens Ferguson and her husband, Dave, keep for eggs in a backyard coop peered indoors from the stoop. The Fergusons are known as locavores.

Alexandra says she spends hours each day thinking about, shopping for, and preparing food. She is a disciple of Michael Pollan, whose 2006 book The Omnivore’s Dilemma made the locavore movement a national phenomenon, and believes that eating organically and locally contributes not only to the health of her family but to the existential happiness of farm animals and farmers—and, indeed, to the survival of the planet. “Michael Pollan is my new hero, next to Jimmy Carter,” she told me. In some neighborhoods, a lawyer who raises chickens in her backyard might be considered eccentric, but we live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, a community that accommodates and celebrates every kind of foodie. Whether you believe in eating for pleasure, for health, for justice, or for some idealized vision of family life, you will find neighbors who reflect your food values. In Park Slope, the contents of a child’s lunchbox can be fodder for a 20-minute conversation.

Over coffee, I cautiously raise a subject that has concerned me of late: less than five miles away, some children don’t have enough to eat; others exist almost exclusively on junk food. Alexandra concedes that her approach is probably out of reach for those people. Though they are not wealthy by Park Slope standards—Alexandra works part time and Dave is employed by the city—the Fergusons spend approximately 20 percent of their income, or $1,000 a month, on food. The average American spends 13 percent, including restaurants and takeout.

And so the conversation turns to the difficulty of sharing their interpretation of the Pollan doctrine with the uninitiated. When they visit Dave’s family in Tennessee, tensions erupt over food choices. One time, Alexandra remembers, she irked her mother-in-law by purchasing a bag of organic apples, even though her mother-in-law had already bought the nonorganic kind at the grocery store. The old apples were perfectly good, her mother-in-law said. Why waste money—and apples?

The Fergusons recall Dave’s mother saying something along these lines: “When we come to your place, we don’t complain about your food. Why do you complain about ours? It’s not like our food is poison.”

“I can’t convince my brother to spend another dime on food,” adds Dave.

“This is our charity. This is my giving to the world,” says Alexandra, finally, as she packs lunchboxes—organic peanut butter and jelly on grainy bread, a yogurt, and a clementine—for her two boys. “We contribute a lot.”

According to data released last week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 17 percent of Americans—more than 50 million people—live in households that are “food insecure,” a term that means a family sometimes runs out of money to buy food, or it sometimes runs out of food before it can get more money. Food insecurity is especially high in households headed by a single mother. It is most severe in the South, and in big cities. In New York City, 1.4 million people are food insecure, and 257,000 of them live near me, in Brooklyn. Food insecurity is linked, of course, to other economic measures like housing and employment, so it surprised no one that the biggest surge in food insecurity since the agency established the measure in 1995 occurred between 2007 and 2008, at the start of the economic downturn. (The 2009 numbers, released last week, showed little change.) The proportion of households that qualify as “hungry”—with what the USDA calls “very low food security”—is small, about 6 percent. Reflected against the obsessive concerns of the foodies in my circle, and the glare of attention given to the plight of the poor and hungry abroad, even a fraction of starving children in America seems too high.

Mine seems on some level like a naive complaint. There have always been rich people and poor people in America and, in a capitalist economy, the well-to-do have always had the freedom to indulge themselves as they please. In hard times, food has always marked a bright border between the haves and the have-nots. In the earliest days of the Depression, as the poor waited on bread lines, the middle and upper classes in America became devoted to fad diets. Followers of the Hollywood 18-Day Diet, writes Harvey Levenstein in his 1993 book Paradox of Plenty,“could live on fewer than six hundred calories a day by limiting each meal to half a grapefruit, melba toast, coffee without cream or sugar, and, at lunch and dinner, some raw vegetables.”

But modern America is a place of extremes, and what you eat for dinner has become the definitive marker of social status; as the distance between rich and poor continues to grow, the freshest, most nutritious foods have become luxury goods that only some can afford. Among the lowest quintile of American families, mean household income has held relatively steady between $10,000 and $13,000 for the past two decades (in inflation-adjusted dollars); among the highest, income has jumped 20 percent to $170,800 over the same period, according to census data. What this means, in practical terms, is that the richest Americans can afford to buy berries out of season at Whole Foods—the upscale grocery chain that recently reported a 58 percent increase in its quarterly profits—while the food insecure often eat what they can: highly caloric, mass-produced foods like pizza and packaged cakes that fill them up quickly. The number of Americans on food stamps has surged by 58.5 percent over the last three years.

Corpulence used to signify the prosperity of a few but has now become a marker of poverty. Obesity has risen as the income gap has widened: more than a third of U.S. adults and 17 percent of children are obese, and the problem is acute among the poor. While obesity is a complex problem—genetics, environment, and activity level all play a role—a 2008 study by the USDA found that children and women on food stamps were likelier to be overweight than those who were not. According to studies led by British epidemiologist Kate Pickett, obesity rates are highest in developed countries with the greatest income disparities. America is among the most obese of nations; Japan, with its relatively low income inequality, is the thinnest.

Adam Drewnowski, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington, has spent his career showing that Americans’ food choices correlate to social class. He argues that the most nutritious diet—lots of fruits and vegetables, lean meats, fish, and grains—is beyond the reach of the poorest Americans, and it is economic elitism for nutritionists to uphold it as an ideal without broadly addressing issues of affordability. Lower-income families don’t subsist on junk food and fast food because they lack nutritional education, as some have argued. And though many poor neighborhoods are, indeed, food deserts—meaning that the people who live there don’t have access to a well-stocked supermarket—many are not. Lower-income families choose sugary, fat, and processed foods because they’re cheaper—and because they taste good. In a paper published last spring, Drewnowski showed how the prices of specific foods changed between 2004 and 2008 based on data from Seattle-area supermarkets. While food prices overall rose about 25 percent, the most nutritious foods (red peppers, raw oysters, spinach, mustard greens, romaine lettuce) rose 29 percent, while the least nutritious foods (white sugar, hard candy, jelly beans, and cola) rose just 16 percent.

“In America,” Drewnowski wrote in an e-mail, “food has become the premier marker of social distinctions, that is to say—social class. It used to be clothing and fashion, but no longer, now that ‘luxury’ has become affordable and available to all.” He points to an article in The New York Times, written by Pollan, which describes a meal element by element, including “a basket of morels and porcini gathered near Mount Shasta.” “Pollan,” writes Drewnowski, “is drawing a picture of class privilege that is as acute as anything written by Edith Wharton or Henry James.”

I finish writing the previous paragraph and go downstairs. There, in the mail, I find the Christmas catalog from the luxury retail store Barneys. HAVE A FOODIE HOLIDAY, its cover reads. Inside, models are covered—literally—with food. A woman in a red $2,000 Lanvin trench has an enormous cabbage on her head. Another, holding a green Proenza Schouler clutch, wears a boiled crab in her bouffant. Most disconcerting is the Munnu diamond pendant ($80,500) worn by a model who seems to have traded her hair for an octopus. Its tentacles dangle past her shoulders, and the girl herself wears the expression of someone who’s stayed too long at the party. Food is no longer trendy or fashionable. It is fashion.

Tiffiney Davis, a single mom, lives about four miles away from me, in subsidized housing, in a gentrifying neighborhood called Red Hook. Steps from her apartment, you can find ample evidence of foodie culture: Fairway, the supermarket where I buy my Dutch cheese, is right there, as is a chic bakery, and a newfangled lobster pound. Davis says she has sometimes worried about having enough food. She works in Manhattan, earning $13 an hour for a corporate catering company (which once had a contract with NEWSWEEK), and she receives food stamps. She spends $100 a week on food for herself and her two kids. Sometimes she stretches her budget by bringing food home from work.

Davis is sheepish about what her family eats for breakfast. Everybody rises at 6, and there’s a mad rush to get the door, so often they eat bodega food. Her daughter, Malaezia, 10, will have egg and cheese on a roll; her son, 13-year-old Tashawn, a muffin and soda. She herself used to pop into at Dunkin’ Donuts for two doughnuts and a latte, but when New York chain restaurants started posting calories on their menus, she stopped. “I try my best to lessen the chemicals and the fattening stuff,” she says, “but it’s hard.”

Time is just part of the problem, Davis explains, as she prepares Sunday dinner in her cheerful kitchen. Tonight she’s making fried chicken wings with bottled barbecue sauce; yellow rice from a box; black beans from a can; broccoli; and carrots, cooked in olive oil and honey. A home-cooked dinner doesn’t happen every night. On weeknights, everyone gets home, exhausted—and then there’s homework. Several nights a week, they get takeout: Chinese, or Domino’s, or McDonald’s. Davis doesn’t buy fruits and vegetables mostly because they’re too expensive, and in the markets where she usually shops, they’re not fresh. “I buy bananas and bring them home and 10 minutes later they’re no good…Whole Foods sells fresh, beautiful tomatoes,” she says. “Here, they’re packaged and full of chemicals anyway. So I mostly buy canned foods.”

In recent weeks the news in New York City has been full with a controversial proposal to ban food-stamp recipients from using their government money to buy soda. Local public-health officials insist they need to be more proactive about slowing obesity; a recent study found that 40 percent of the children in New York City’s kindergarten through eighth-grade classrooms were either overweight or obese. (Nationwide, 36 percent of 6- to 11-year-olds are overweight or obese.) Opponents of the proposal call it a “nanny state” measure, another instance of government interference, and worse—of the government telling poor people what to do, as if they can’t make good decisions on their own. “I think it’s really difficult,” says Pickett, the British epidemiologist. “Everybody needs to be able to feel that they have control over what they spend. And everybody should be able to treat themselves now and again. Why shouldn’t a poor child have a birthday party with cake and soda?”

But Davis enthusiastically supports the proposal. A 9-year-old boy in her building recently died of an asthma attack, right in front of his mother. He was obese, she says, but his mom kept feeding him junk. “If these people don’t care at all about calorie counts, then the government should. People would live a lot longer,” she says.

Claude Fischler, a French sociologist, believes that Americans can fight both obesity and food insecurity by being more, well, like the French. Americans take an approach to food and eating that is unlike any other people in history. For one thing, we regard food primarily as (good or bad) nutrition. When asked “What is eating well?” Americans generally answer in the language of daily allowances: they talk about calories and carbs, fats, and sugars. They don’t see eating as a social activity, and they don’t see food—as it has been seen for millennia—as a shared resource, like a loaf of bread passed around the table. When asked “What is eating well?” the French inevitably answer in terms of “conviviality”: togetherness, intimacy, and good tastes unfolding in a predictable way.

Even more idiosyncratic than our obsession with nutrition, says Fischler, is that Americans see food choice as a matter of personal freedom, an inalienable right. Americans want to eat what they want: morels or Big Macs. They want to eat where they want, in the car or alfresco. And they want to eat when they want. With the exception of Thanksgiving, when most of us dine off the same turkey menu, we are food libertarians. In surveys, Fischler has found no single time of day (or night) when Americans predictably sit together and eat. By contrast, 54 percent of the French dine at 12:30 each day. Only 9.5 percent of the French are obese.

When I was a child I was commanded to “eat your eggs. There are starving children in Africa.” And when I was old enough to think for myself, I could easily see that my own eaten or uneaten eggs would not do a single thing to help the children of Africa. This is the Brooklyn conundrum, playing out all over the country. Locally produced food is more delicious than the stuff you get in the supermarket; it’s better for the small farmers and the farm animals; and, as a movement, it’s better for the environment. It’s easy—and probably healthy, if you can afford it—to make that choice as an individual or a family, says the New York University nutritionist Marion Nestle. Bridging the divide is much harder. “Choosing local or organic is something you can actually do. It’s very difficult for people to get involved in policy.”

Locavore activists in New York and other cities are doing what they can to help the poor with access to fresh food. Incentive programs give food-stamp recipients extra credit if they buy groceries at farmers’ markets. Food co-ops and community-garden associations are doing better urban outreach. Municipalities are establishing bus routes between poor neighborhoods and those where well-stocked supermarkets exist.

Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, says these programs are good, but they need to go much, much further. He believes, like Fischler, that the answer lies in seeing food more as a shared resource, like water, than as a consumer product, like shoes. “It’s a nuanced conversation, but I think ‘local’ or ‘organic’ as the shorthand for all things good is way too simplistic,” says Berg. “I think we need a broader conversation about scale, working conditions, and environmental impact. It’s a little too much of people buying easy virtue.”

Even the locavore hero Pollan agrees. “Essentially,” he says, “we have a system where wealthy farmers feed the poor crap and poor farmers feed the wealthy high-quality food.” He points to Walmart’s recent announcement of a program that will put more locally grown food on its shelves as an indication that big retailers are looking to sell fresh produce in a scalable way. These fruits and vegetables might not be organic, but the goal, says Pollan, is not to be absolutist in one’s food ideology. “I argue for being conscious,” he says, “but perfectionism is an enemy of progress.” Pollan sees a future where, in an effort to fight diabetes and obesity, health-insurance companies are advocates for small and medium-size farmers. He dreams of a broad food-policy conversation in Washington. “The food movement,” he reminds me, “is still very young.”

Berg believes that part of the answer lies in working with Big Food. The food industry hasn’t been entirely bad: it developed the technology to bring apples to Wisconsin in the middle of winter, after all. It could surely make sustainably produced fruits and vegetables affordable and available. “We need to bring social justice to bigger agriculture as well,” Berg says.

My last stop was at Jabir Suluki’s house in Clinton Hill, about two miles from my home. Suluki has toast for breakfast, with a little cheese on top, melted in the toaster oven. He is not French—he was born and raised in Brooklyn—but he might as well be. Every day, between 5 and 7, he prepares dinner for his mother and himself—and any of his nieces and nephews who happen to drop by. He prepares food with the confidence of a person descended from a long line of home cooks—which he is.

Both Suluki and his mother are diabetic. For them, healthy, regular meals are a necessity—and so he does what he can on $75 a week. “To get good food, you really got to sacrifice a lot. It’s expensive. But I take that sacrifice, because it’s worth it.” Suluki uses his food stamps at the farmers’ market. He sorts through the rotten fruit at the local supermarket. He travels to Queens, when he can get a ride, and buys cheap meat in bulk. He is adamant that it is the responsibility of parents to feed their children good food in moderate portions, and that it’s possible to do so on a fixed income.

For dinner he and his mother ate Salisbury steak made from ground turkey, with a little ground beef thrown in and melted cheese on top “because turkey doesn’t have any taste”; roasted potatoes and green peppers; and frozen green beans, “heated quickly so they still have a crunch.” For dessert, his mother ate two pieces of supermarket coffeecake.

Suluki thinks a lot about food, and the role it plays in the life of his neighbors. He doesn’t have soda in his refrigerator, but he opposes the New York City soda proposal because, in light of the government’s food and farm subsidies—and in light of all the other kinds of unhealthy cheap foods for sale in his supermarket—he sees it as hypocrisy. “You can’t force junk on people and then criticize it at the same time.” Suluki is a community organizer, and sees the web of problems before us—hunger, obesity, health—as something for the community to solve. “We can’t just attack this problem as individuals,” he tells me. “A healthy community produces healthy people.” That’s why, on the weekends, he makes a big pot of rice and beans, and brings it down to the food pantry near his house.

With Ian Yarett and Jesse Ellison