if rice bad, why taste good?
On October 3, a report was posted to the American College of Cardiology. A group of researchers in Iran had supposedly found an association between consuming refined grains and an early onset of heart disease. The study’s lead author, Mohammad Amin Khajavi Gaskarei, had the following to say:
“...a diet that includes consuming a high amount of unhealthy and refined grains can be considered similar to consuming a diet containing a lot of unhealthy sugars and oils.”
A couple large news outlets took this single quote and ran with it.
Now, I take issue with the way this is being covered for many reasons. First, and most striking, is the fact that the newspaper coverage of this study seems to have singled out a culprit for early onset heart disease entirely on their own. I say “entirely on their own” because there’s nothing in the original study that singles out white rice as the biggest nor sole contributor to the results that were found, and yet our outlets have entirely latched onto it. The whole idea is that refined grains refer to an entire category of grains, and that we should be wary of overconsumption of any foods high in its content; why is it, then, that white rice has been identified as the culprit of increased exposure to heart disease when hundreds of others exist? The articles sprouting up in response to the published study could just as easily have been titled, “Idiot, you’re going to die; you shouldn't've eaten that PB&J,” and yet. No white bread. Not in name, nor likeness. Every single visual? White rice.
The violations of good practices in journalism don’t stop there. Similarly to how white rice has been conjured out of thin air, the authors have deemed the general category of “candy” to be an apt comparison for “sugar” despite there not being a single mention of candy in the entire report. Sugars are named only once in the entire article, and have somehow appeared in nearly every subsequent headline, to the point of frustration. Sugars aren’t limited to the form of candy, so the act of reporting sugars as only their most “memorable” form is untruthful. It is true that most people’s images of sugars lend themselves to manufactured sweetness; syrups, sweeteners, sports drinks, pastries, cakes, and, yes, candy. But it’s clear that the use of “sugar” here is to capitalize on the fear surrounding candy to emphasize their point on the detrimental health effects of white rice. Sugar is unhealthy in excess, more so than lots of other compounds due to the plethora of other health detriments associated with it (calorie count, increase in blood pressure, onset of diabetes, etc.), which makes using “candy” perfect for journalizing purposes; people have been attributing health issues to candy since the age of man-stick-rock-fire. “Consuming an excess of unrefined grains can be regarded as similarly bad for one’s heart as consuming excessive amounts of sugar” needs to be boiled down to a handful of words that’ll hook users into reading the full article, that much is clear. It’s just the choice of “white rice” and “candy” that baffles me.
What could drive the consistent, low-quality coverage of this topic? Who’s behind this journalism? More importantly, why?
Food and health are highly volatile subjects that draw hordes of impressionable readers, making misinformation all the more nefarious. Diet culture is a topic of such great magnitude that I couldn’t hope to tackle it in one sitting; it’s been a driving force in the coverage of food for as long as mass media has been in circulation. Everyone’s looking to stay on top of the next biggest breakthrough in good skin or fast metabolism, enticed by the prestige of their favorite social media personalities. It’s understandable that people would take the advice of an Instagram model over words on a page—we’re more inclined to believe people who look like the ideal they’re trying to achieve. Influencers have immeasurable influence (hence the name) in this sense; their endorsement is enough to drive the rise and fall of modern food trends. And while there’s an active fight against health myths and misinformation on social media platforms, the latter runs rampant as discussion of dieting continues to drive views and sales. In short: it would be to the surprise of absolutely nobody if this push to pitch white rice as the primary perpetrator of obesity was rooted in a need to be the next biggest voice in “informed” food reporting, motivations that are in line with the culprits in this scenario.
While The New York Post and The Daily Mail are fairly recognizable names, the prestige of a journal isn’t always indicative of its reliability. This holds especially true when it comes to coverage of topics like health—there’s a constant influx of new information as studies emerge and shape global perspectives. Relying on large news outlets for digests on these studies means readers are accessing the information entirely secondhand. One click reveals that the author behind the New York Post article discussed above is hardly an accomplished author, frequently publishing low-quality articles on irrelevant topics at a whopping four publications a day, in true clickbait fashion. It’s a realization that begs us readers to be very critical of the avenues of media we’re engaging with. Does the nature of the author excuse the poor coverage of the topic, in reference to the grievances described prior, on such a large media platform like this? Absolutely not.
It’s hard to ignore the bad faith in these headlines. Negative coverage of Asian foods is absolutely not without precedent, and has long since been a socially acceptable form of racial discrimination. Remember how the world’s completely unfounded fear of MSG (the FDA-approved, now globally endorsed food additive) became a campaign primarily denouncing East Asian cuisine? How many times have you been advised by Western sources to stay away from “dirty” food stalls in your travels to South Asia? Recently, in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, racism against Chinese-Americans in the U.S. skyrocketed; citing the conditions in Wuhan, age-old rumors resurfaced that the modern Chinese diet consisted of bats, dogs, and rats, and revived the rhetoric that Chinese food is filthy, unhealthy, and otherwise inferior. This rhetoric is not new, it’s just taken a different form over the years; it’s a testament to how little progress we’ve made in the realm of cultural education.
What makes the coverage of this specific study especially deplorable how covert the racist subtext is. Garnering readership through Asian “L”s is discriminatory; it attempts to pitch one aspect of a culture as “worse” than its foreign counterparts (white rice over pasta, for example), on top of being an absolutely horrific exercise in journalism. While Asia isn’t name-dropped in the study nor the publications surrounding it, the association goes unsaid, but not unnoticed.
A piece that I find especially applicable is one that’s emerged to oppose this resurgence in bigotry: a resistance zine by Clarence Kwan, titled “Chinese Protest Recipes”. It’s a publication that holds true to its title: it pushes us readers to reevaluate commonplace and colonized perceptions of Asian cooking in a “literary and culinary protest” of sorts. It’s a work that celebrates Chinese cuisine at its simplest, and thus, most authentic. Kwan is a proponent of food appreciation over scrutiny, acting in direct opposition to the rise of dieting and health misinformation culture, and inspires others to view cross-cultural exchanges with compassion.
Kwan challenges us to inform rather than contribute to hostilities. Branching out from our childhood comforts gives us room to be amazed in ways that weren’t possible before! This coming season, eat your favorite foods out of spite for whatever the media may have framed it as. Experiment with new cuisines, and most importantly, spend time with your loved ones doing it. The best resistance to this campaign against our cultures is to promote the other direction; take care of yourself and others, and find joy in doing it.
