Harlem: Tell Me What You Eat and I’ll Tell You What Social Class You Are

Situated in Harlem, New York, is Sylvia’s, one of the best restaurants for soul food, the traditional cuisine of the African-American community. Thanks to this style of cooking, slaves were able to make good food out of even the worst scraps and raw materials left for them by the boss.

However, walking through this quarter, you can’t help but notice a large quantity of junk food. The high incidence of severe obesity is visible and a queue of beggars is always outside McDonald’s. Even the mannequins in the clothing shops are fat. In the fast food joint where I’m eating, there are virtually only African-Americans.

I observe the preparation of my wrap and get a little fright when I see the Mexican at the grill pour 2 big tablespoons of deep-frying oil onto the sausage belonging to my neighbor at the counter. I console myself by thinking that, in truth, this will just be an exception to my usual eating habits.

Yet all around me there are so many obese people who eat in places like this every day. According to data from Columbia University, released in 2010, Harlem has the highest rate of obesity in Manhattan. But the obesity problem in Harlem is reflective of an epidemic that is hitting all of Manhattan, New York City and the entire country. Furthermore, it is an epidemic that has come to have social — and therefore racial — connotations.

There is a clear correlation between low income and obesity. When you combine poverty, bad health, inadequate schools and education, stressful living conditions and lack of access to fresh food and to structured physical activity, the obesity percentages go through the roof.

A study by Columbia University showed that the majority of public schools in New York are found within 5 minutes’ walk of national chains, fast food joints, pizzerias and stores that don’t sell fresh food. The availability of healthy foods in poor areas is seriously lacking. Two out of three food stores in Harlem are convenience stores rather than supermarkets — stores that therefore don’t offer fresh, quality food, and where fruit and vegetables can’t be found. It follows that while obesity in Harlem is up to 30 percent, its well-off neighboring quarter, the Upper East Side, has a rate of nine percent. The city as a whole has an obesity rate of 22 percent.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in New York, obesity is 51 percent higher among blacks and 21 percent higher among Latinos than among whites, with a consequently higher rate of obesity-related diseases and poor diet. Among children and adolescents in Harlem, the percentage who are overweight or obese is as high as 48 percent. For the elderly, obesity rates in East and Central Harlem are decidedly higher than those in Manhattan: we are talking about 40 percent compared to 20 percent.

In the “radical chic” supermarkets of SoHo, on the other hand, fast food consists of quinoa, fresh fruit smoothies, spinach and lots of washed vegetables for making salads. Healthy food is in fashion.

For the white upper class, spinach is politically correct and junk food is to be stigmatized and feared. Whole milk is considered a poison. It’s wrong, it’s “out”; soy milk is right, it’s “in”.

Are we sure that there isn’t a bit of rigidity, a certain Manichaeism, a very real stigma behind all of this?

Perhaps it’s all in my head, but it seems to me that the demand for a healthy diet doesn’t come from some natural, inner call that must be heeded. I might be wrong, but I imagine those at the supermarket in SoHo secretly scarfing down the worst kind of junk food at the first sign of a nervous breakdown. Instead, it seems to me that it’s a label, a tag, an excuse to construct yet another defining factor by which to differentiate class.