John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, recently published an article in the Wall Street Journal outlining his problems with the national health care service being championed by President Obama and offered his own opinion about what we can do to solve the health care crisis in the U.S. Mackey's article infuriated members of the food industry who immediately began attempting a boycott of Whole Foods.
Now, I have never stepped foot into a Whole Foods and have no stock holdings in that business, but something is terribly, terribly wrong when someone urges U.S. adults to take responsibility for their own health and is terrorized politcally and economically for it.
Michael Pollan has also recently published an article in The New York Times, Big-Food vs. Big Insurance where he delineates the same scenario as Mackey: that 75% (SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT!) of our national health care costs come from personal behaviors and lifestyle choices that directly contribute to obesity, cancer, heart disease, and type II diabetes. Pollan points out that in the U.S. "we are spending $147 billion to treat obesity, $116 billion to treat diabetes, and hundreds of billions more to treat cardiovascular disease and the many types of cancer that have been linked to the so-called Western diet.
I have YET to be convinced that we need socialized medicine if the main problem with the system is that we won't eat whole, natural foods that contribute to robust health and start putting our folks down when it comes to foods that clearly do not support health. However, I also realize that this comes down to what I wrote about yesterday: networked behavior. I think that reforming a cultural system that is built around a car-centered, cheap, unhealthy food system would go much farther towards ending our "health care crisis" than simply spending more money to give people pills that we aren't even sure work, are incredibly expensive, and have side effects that can kill you.
What is most alarming to me is that school systems are now part of a system that hooks kids into eating crap at school (but hey, it's cheap crap that has been subsidized by the government!) so that they have a harder time learning to discriminate between healthy and unhealthy foods, as well as develop a palate for healthy food. When I did research in two middle schools a year ago, I stopped eating the school lunches when I visited because although they were cheap at $2.00 a tray, they were packed with processed, fat- and sugar-laden, products. There is nothing sadder than watching an 11-year-old with a tire of fat around his middle eating hamburgers, french fries, and fruit-in-sugar-syrup, followed by potato chips and ice cream (for sale every single day during lunch and after school). There was not one, single fresh fruit or veggie to be found unless the child brought his/her lunch from home.
Our health care system does need help, but not by pouring more money into it for pills and acute care of people who have eaten themselves into the grave, but rather through some restraint and common sense.
Miles: 6
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