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The Big Eat
THE TRUTH ABOUT GLUTTONY
» Thursday 17 September 2009 | 5 pm
» The Bohemian Café, 524 Bernard Avenue
An informal afternoon hour showcasing ideas
and people in the Okanagan creative economy. Join us as writer and editor Jim Taylor, food and health advocate Cathryn Wellner, and registered clinical counsellor Kim Ewing explore sometimes excessive relationship we have with food.
» $2 at the door. Refreshments are available at a modest cost.
» Seating is limited, please reserve yours HERE
Feeding the Hungry Soul: An Examination of Excess
The news from Statistics Canada doesn't look good. More and more young Canadians are becoming obese. It's so bad, that experts are calling this a pandemic. The reports show that in 1978-79, approximately 12 per cent of children between the ages of two and 17 were overweight, and three percent of those were obese. By 2004, that figure had ballooned into a whopping 18 per cent, with eight percent of that population obese.
But is this about gluttony or something more? What does our overweight society say about relationship with food? And what does it say about the kinds of the food that we eat, and the roles that multi-nationals play in the increased availability of processed food which many people blame in part for today's ills.
On Thursday, September 17th at 5 pm the ongoing weekly Okanagan Institute Express series at the Bohemian Café presents The Big Eat: The Truth About Gluttony. Join us as we explore the relationship we have with that all too familiar member of the seven deadly sins - Gluttony - with three experts: long-time Courier columnist Jim Taylor, author of the book SIN: A New Understanding of Virtue and Vice, food and health advocate Cathryn Wellner, and registered clinical counsellor Kim Ewing, who specializes in eating disorders.
 Kim Ewing is a registered Clinical Counsellor and a registered Couple and Family Therapist. She has a private therapy practice in Kelowna and specializes in the treatment of eating disorders. She holds a master's degree in psychology from Wilfred Laurier University and a Master of Science from the University of Guelph in Couple and Family Therapy. Before moving to Kelowna four years ago, she was involved in setting up an outpatient Eating Disorder Clinic at Cambridge Memorial Hospital. Her column, "A Little Perspective" runs every second Sunday in the Daily Courier under the section Body & Soul.
Ewing will talk about this growing pattern in our society and why so many people get stuck in this negative cycle.
"For many people their relationship with food and their bodies has become very disordered," says Ewing. "These people may not necessarily have an eating disorder but their eating behaviours and attitudes about food and weight are so problematic that it controls their lives. Life consists of a constant battle with food and their thoughts about food. They are either consumed with the next diet or gimmick or they are desperately overeating. They focus on weight loss as the answer and believe that getting to the "right" weight will solve their problems.
 Cathryn Wellner became enamoured of Real Food during graduate studies in central France. For years her enthusiasm went no farther than buying organic food from co-ops and farmers' markets. She was the coordinator of the award-winning program HEAL (Healthy Eating and Active Living in Northern BC), and has spoken at numerous conferences, including the 61st Annual Conference on World Affairs at Boulder, Colorado. A professional storyteller as well, Wellner is an engaging and insightful speaker. She's currently lives in Kelowna where she is working on a website that addresses provincial food security.
For Wellner, gluttony is not only about the personal experience of food - it's about our national hunger to be fed, quite literally, by the food industry.
"We are gluttonous because of portion distortion (the alarming increase in the size of everything offered us in restaurants and on grocery shelves), because we are surrounded by an obesogenic environment (the term that has come to describe an environment where unhealthy choices are pushed at us and are more available than healthy ones), and just possibly, according to some recent research, because the food industry has created nutritionally vacuous products that have an addictive quality. There's some research that also suggests that because the food we consume is so nutritionally deficient our bodies are telling us to eat more of it."
 Jim Taylor was a co-founder of Wood Lake Publishing, and its editor-in-chief for 15 years. He has also edited two national magazines and half a dozen newsletters, has worked in radio and television, and currently writes weekly columns for two Okanagan newspapers. He has written or ghostwritten 17 books.
At a deeper level, true gluttony as a "sin" may have nothing to do with obesity. In his book, Taylor argues that gluttony is more about the "excessive pursuit" of any sensory pleasure - whether that is drinking, drugs, even massage or tropical cruises.
"At the time that Gluttony was named as one of the Seven Deadly Sins, the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake was an option for so few people that naming it as a sin would have brought on gales of derisive laughter," Taylor notes.
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO REGISTER ONLINE CLICK HERE
The Big Eat: The Truth About Gluttony takes place at the Bohemian Café. This marks the 107th event the Okanagan Institute has held since the Express series got underway in July 2007.
Express has played host to many Okanagan luminaries, including former deputy secretary general of Amnesty International Derek Evans, artists Lee Claremont and Gary Pearson, BC Book Award nominee Don Gayton, CBC Literary prize winner poet Harold Rhenisch, distinguished editor and author Jim Taylor, poet and professor John Lent, animator and filmmaker Jim Cliffe, community activist Don Elzer, dancer David LaHay, architect Jim Meiklejohn, culinary artist and writer Heidi Noble, broadcaster Marion Barschel and others from a wide range of creative fields.
The Okanagan Institute is a group of creative professionals that has gathered around the goal of providing events, publications and services of interest to enquiring minds in the Okanagan. We partner with individuals, organizations, institutions and businesses to achieve optimal creative and social impact.
Our mission is to ignite cultural transformation, catalyze collaborative action, build networks and foster sustainable creative enterprises. We invite the participation by all members of the creative community.
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