Who Made Celebrities Food Experts?

A weekend of great March Madness action was interrupted on Sunday with a television commercial about  the latest entertainment endeavor by actress Kirstie Alley. The new A&E show Kirstie Alley's Big Life will focus on the actress's struggles with losing weight and keeping it off.

I was disturbed as the commercial made wisecracks at the expense of a serious problem in Alley's life, and the lives of many others -- the struggle to make healthy food and lifestyle choices.

The discomfort hit a new level when I read about Alley's recent comments on The Late Show with David Letterman on Monday morning: 

“Everybody would like to lose weight ... I blame the American food producers because…we get addicted to the food and the grease and we love it. Cake frosting, forget it, that's all I eat.”

“That's what I'm working on now, is getting all the chemicals out of my life, out of all the foods, the pesticides, the insecticides, the herbicides, fungicides, all the antibiotics, all the hormones that are in food. It really is what's making us fat because I've always eaten a lot and I wasn't fat.”

I worry the American struggle to make healthy choices is going to become comedy-level entertainment. The possibility of people laughing about their poor choices instead of doing something about them scares me as an American food producer and citizen.

It concerns me that consumers might actually believe Alley is a food expert. She might have good intentions, but they are misguided and misinformed. The food we eat is completely free of the "chemicals." For starters the U.S. government has little tolerance for foreign substances in food. Even if there was a rule to bend, farmers wouldn't step across that line. They eat the same food they produce. Alley's comment is false, and I'm not going to give it credit by spending more time discussing it. I want to talk about the bigger issue here.

Food elitists and celebrities with big wallets are ignoring the source of the problem when they only point fingers at the food system. Food isn't evil. Food cannot be ethical. As much as I'd like my cattle to make moral decisions, they won't. So, my family makes sure our cattle stay at safe from threats with a good fence, and we shelter newborn calves during harsh winters when their moms get distracted.

The good news in this debate is we can all make ethical food choices, and it goes beyond simply looking at the way food is produced. It starts with taking a serious look at ourselves. I think everyone would agree the Whopper-And-Coke-A-Day diet plan probably isn't the best idea for an average American. Yet, Olympic Swimmer Michael Phelps consumers around 12,000 calories a day and has washboard abs.

Folks, ethical food decisions start with living a disciplined life, and frankly, as a nation, we've gotten a bit sloppy. We can't afford to maintain a diet filled with empty calories and skip exercise. It's not rocket science. It's common sense. It's discipline.

This show represents a disturbing trend toward complacency in America, where finger pointing instead of belt tightening appears is the default for creating action. Discipline is painful, but it's also a great learning tool.

Let's hold each other accountable in this debate. It starts with us, and maybe that means making some better choices at home first.

Photo Source: http://www.flickr.com/ member Alan Light