Karen Stabiner

Tim Walz, food czar?

Minnesota Star Tribune

Gov. Tim Walz should be the Harris administration’s food czar.

Yes, the man who washes down tater tot hotdish with vast amounts of Diet Mountain Dew is the guy who can get us to eat better. Look at the photos from his teaching days. The man has dropped some serious pounds, and he did it long before anyone had heard of Ozempic.

A disclaimer before I go any further: This is not about Walz’s appearance, nor is it an exercise in body shaming. This is about health — specifically Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and certain cancers, where increased weight means increased risk. More than 40% of American adults are clinically obese, and at this rate we’ll hit 50% by 2030. Obesity-related medical care costs the U.S. about $173 billion annually, and it hits poor people and people of color the hardest.

If that news makes you want to collapse on the couch with a bag of your favorite snack, think again: Ultra-processed foods contribute to increased risk of stroke and cognitive decline as well as obesity.

As a nation, it’s time to eat better to live better. Clearly, Walz decided to. I’d like to know more about how and why he did it — and how a Democratic administration can help to improve food options and access for people who want to follow his lead.

In his first official day as a candidate, Walz proved how willing he is to share a personal story when it advances the campaign agenda. Candidates sprinkle anecdotes into their stump speeches like chefs adding just the right amount of finishing salt, nothing new there, but Walz’s reference to his and his wife’s fertility struggles, to the agony of waiting for the phone to ring, was remarkable in its immediacy. He’s since spoken about his son’s learning disability; he seems willing to offer up his own experience if it resonates with voters.

I bet he has food stories, too — and every vice president needs his or her own issues, so why not food for a guy who both improved his body mass index and spent summers working on the family farm?

The first challenge is to figure out how to put good, fresh food within reach of more people, and then to give it a brand makeover, because too many of us consider a handful of Cheetos to be a more attractive source of calories than a handful of baby carrots.

The next step is a basic skills education campaign, also a good fit for a career teacher who knows his way around a kitchen. Nobody needs to turn out Michelin-level tweezer food, but with a little guidance we can dodge ultra-processed meals and fast food restaurants at dinnertime and save money in the process. We can dismantle the myth that there’s not enough time to make a meal after a long day at work. If you can’t cook every night, just try some nights, to put a new goal within reach. But more often, for starters.

There’s one more step, possibly the trickiest one of all, because it pits reformers against the very large, very successful snack food industry, where scientists devote entire careers to making sure we crave food that isn’t good for us. How large and successful? Mars just agreed to acquire Kellanova for over $36 billion, to expand its snack food empire to include savory snacks.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Michael Moss has written two books on the war for our taste buds, the 2021 “Hooked” and the 2014 “Salt Sugar Fat,” where he introduced readers to the “bliss point,” the Holy Grail of convenience foods, a combination of ingredients that makes people eat past the point of satiation. Even if carrots were supermarket loss leaders, even if everyone knew how to roast them, we might still veer toward the chips and keep eating even after we’re full.

As a nation, we’re lost in the convenience food aisle. We need a guide to escort us out.

No, wait: We need a coach.

Dodging obesity could be Walz’s issue. He has the credibility that comes with experience.

In that spirit, one final thought about the effort he’s clearly made. As I understand it, the appeal of Mountain Dew has to do in part with caffeine, and I assume he drinks the diet version to help keep the pounds off. But artificial sweeteners are hardly innocent bystanders when it comes to good health. Though I risk being a laughingstock in certain circles, I wonder he’d consider trying a flavored seltzer with a coffee chaser, in case that does the trick.

Gwen Walz’s empathy

Minnesota Star Tribune

You know the recipe for a traditional political convention: Political star power, celebrities, a lot of preaching to the choir, standing ovations, speeches that run long and cutaways to delirious delegates.

And then there’s Gwen Walz, aspiring Second Lady and professional-grade empath. For all the marquee names, she is, I believe, a tremendous stealth asset — particularly among women her age and up, who are moving toward the Democratic ticket, but not as quickly as younger voters are.

Note to campaign organizers: Gwen Walz can help because she is hardwired to understand and share the feelings of others, which is what being empathic is all about. You can tell just looking at her.

The first-night roster was full of speakers I knew I wanted to hear, like Hillary Clinton, and speakers I didn’t know, like Olympics basketball coach Steve Kerr. And yet what mesmerized me was Gwen Walz, who said not a word but sat quietly and watched the proceedings.

I paid as much attention to her reactions as to the speakers who elicited them. As she listened to Hillary Clinton and the quartet who spoke about personal tragedies and reproductive rights, her eyes welled up, and she set her mouth the way people do when they’re trying to hold it together. Sometimes she managed a small and sympathetic smile, a rueful shaking of the head, or a glance heavenward, as though trying to regain her composure. Any woman who’s ever tried not to fall apart will likely recognize the moves.

A cynic will say she was looking at a big screen somewhere, but Tim Walz and Doug Emhoff were looking straight ahead.

And if you think I am merely one sloppy sentimental woman talking about another, I refer you to the National Institutes of Health’s Library of Medicine, where you can read a research article about the compassionate face.

One night later, empathy appeared onstage: “Her empathy is her strength,” said Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, in praise of his wife. Michelle Obama talked about Kamala Harris’ compassionate nature and included empathy as a quality voters have to protect on Nov. 5. On the other hand, Donald Trump’s former White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, called out her one-time boss for not having any.

I’ve always stood in awe of public figures who channel their emotions into powerful speeches: Gwen Walz wasn’t the only one who teared up at Hillary Clinton’s speech. But during the stories of reproductive nightmare, I imagined Walz might get up out of her seat to comfort the young people onstage. She looked so pained during those speeches — and then, so genuinely excited by the second-night rhetoric. You know. Like a regular person. 

I’ve read about her engagement as Minnesota’s First Lady, her policy agenda, her own office, and I anticipate she will continue to seek that kind of input as the wife of the vice president, but that was not on display Monday night, nor should it have been. And on Tuesday, in an appearance at the DNC’s Rural Council event, she hinted at how steep the learning curve is for a national candidate and his wife. “It’s been a little over a week since we joined the ticket,” she told the audience. “We are learning a lot. And I just want to thank you for your patience and your help as we do that. I can’t tell you how much it means.”

Wouldn’t you want to talk to someone like that, someone who can be vulnerable and honest about their feelings? That’s the funny thing about empaths; they might as well have “welcome” tattooed on their foreheads, because they instinctively acknowledge feelings, their own and others’ — which aligns nicely with all the big-picture talk about moving forward not back, about pursuing the greater good rather than individual gain.

Oddly, Gwen Walz reminds me of the comic Alex Edelman, which will make anyone who’s heard of both of them think I’ve lost my mind. Edelman is the antithesis of Walz — a younger, East Coast, urban Jewish guy who’s as gregarious as Walz is composed — yet they intersect at empathy because it’s been ingrained in them both, from opposite sides of the American experience.

Edelman’s one-man show, “Just For Us,” a Tony-award winner and Emmy nominee, raises the question of how far empathy should extend, which Edelman ponders when he infiltrates a meeting of white nationalists. He wonders if he’s hit the outer limits by trying to stand in other people’s shoes, if he might lose himself along the way.

Spoiler alert (it’s on MAX): He doesn’t. Walz won’t, either, because truly empathic people often come equipped with a steel spine.

That came up on the second night of the convention as well, when Michelle Obama referred to “the steel of her spine” when describing Harris.

Good listeners with backbone. It’s hardly a platform plank, but it feels just as important.