Shelley Bridgeman: Are you confused about food?

Cooking at home is being muddled by all different messages about food, says Shelley Bridgeman. Photo / 123RF

Food is complicated. It's fashionable. It is of the moment. There are cooking shows, celebrity chefs, quinoa and kale. But, thanks to starvation, obesity, eating disorders, the dieting industry and factory farming, it's also problematic. In short, eating is a moral, political and ethical minefield. Those predictions that by now we'll be getting our daily nutrients through ingesting a single pill have unfortunately proved wrong.

As the mother of a daughter, for 11 years I've steadfastly given the impression that food is mainly about sustenance. We eat for nutrition and wellness. Food is a fuel that enables our bodies to function well. Food is not a reward or a bribe. We don't do comfort eating or emotional pigging out. Sweets were not offered when knees were grazed. Cake was not produced for tearful toddlers. Food is simply food.

I've done my best to neutralise food, to strip it of its power. My daughter seems to have no idea that I'm as dysfunctional as anyone. I've been religiously restricting my energy intake for over 20 years. I'm hungry a lot of the time but I hide it well. I've never made one comment about dissatisfaction with the aesthetics of my body. I've not critiqued anyone else's body shape either. The words "thin" or "fat" did not pass my lips for the first few years of her life. I dropped my guard once she discovered these words in the outside world. Some of her peers are beginning to assess their looks and think about "watching what they eat". I doubt my daughter will escape this tweenage phase.

I was a child in 1975 when the 40 Hour Famine fundraising campaign was launched. I recall, even back then, thinking that it seemed unwise for growing children to go without food for such a long time. In those days I did competitive riding and being under-fuelled while in sole charge of several hundred kilos worth of pony struck me as downright dangerous so I never participated. Now, as a mother, this kind of fasting (even for a good cause) seems contradictory to healthy messages about food. Being sponsored to go without it for extended periods is at odds with ideas I have been trying to promote. I'd sooner sponsor someone to eat normally for 40 hours rather than encourage them to fast and introduce them to unhealthy eating habits.

The Live Below the Line challenge is a recent example of fundraising via restricted diets. Participants must live on $2.25 worth of food a day. According to one "celebrity ambassador", to do so required a high degree of discipline and planning. The NZ campaign manager said, "We live in a culture that is so focused around food so it is a real challenge".

The Time magazine article How to Eat Now says that the "fetishizing of food is everywhere". Cooking competitions are so prevalent on television that once, while eating her favourite dinner (penne with roasted vegetables), my daughter said: "You know, this tastes really good but the presentation lets it down". When preparing food becomes a spectator sport and ingredients are something akin to status symbols, it's unsurprising that home cooks are starting to feel inadequate in the kitchen and, instead of making basic meals, are turning to convenience products and takeaways.

Mark Bittman, food writer and author of the Time piece, is on a mission to inspire a return to simple homemade food: "There's no mystique to cooking the evening meal. You just have to do a little thinking ahead and redefine what qualifies as dinner. It can be simple: a soup ... meat and ... bread; a chicken ... pasta with vegetables; tacos."

At home the dinners I churn out each evening follow these same themes. I prepare food that is healthy, fast and enjoyed by both children and adults. I'm too lazy to make separate meals to feed the different generations. We have tortillas, tacos, pasta, fish burgers and sweet-corn fritters with alarming regularity. I use only cheap, basic ingredients. Fillet steak, salmon and pomegranate molasses are not on my shopping list. Without over-thinking it, I arrived at the same conclusions as Bittman: that fashionable foods, fancy ingredients and complicated recipes are not helpful when the family needs feeding.