Running To Catch Up: Health in Our Times

At a holiday party a friend of mine told me that he is now working three times harder for half the pay. Welcome to 2009.

Just as greed in the corporate financial world devastated so many people when the bottom fell out of the markets, greed in the pharmaceutical, food and agricultural businesses has devastated the health of Americans. The statistics on chronic disease, obesity and mental health diagnoses tell the sad tale of health bankruptcy. People need affordable health insurance. But even more desperately they need good health.

In 1908, Dr. Harvey Wiley was head of the Bureau of Food Chemistry. His stated mission was to prevent any adulterated food substances into the American food supply because he felt that the future of the nation was dependent on the health of its citizens--and health was directly related to the purity of American foodstuffs.

Saccharin was invented in 1879 when a chemist named Constantin Fahlberg spilled a substance on his hands while doing research at Johns Hopkins University. It tasted sweet and the first artificial sweetener was born. A coal tar derivative, saccharin is 300 times sweeter than sugar. President Teddy Roosevelt grew up eating saccharin and was convinced it had helped him become the President of the United States, instead of being the sickly child he once was. Saccharin gained popularity during the sugar shortages of World War I. Teddy Roosevelt may have led the charge up San Juan Hill, but the nutrient value and integrity of the American food supply has been going downhill ever since.

Soil contains living organisms, as well as minerals. Plants use the minerals for food. If the minerals are not replaced, the plants won't grow--right? Not unless you pump artificial fertilizers into them, as we do. And genetically modify the DNA of the plant so that it looks oh-so-pretty in the supermarket, but is still devoid of the vitamins and minerals needed to sustain human and animal life. Yes, people die when denied real nutrition. They do it slowly--when they consume enough calories--and they do it painfully, as their physical and mental condition deteriorates.

Compound this with the fact that most of what is sold in grocery stores would have been illegal in 1908, when the health of Americans was a top priority for a visionary like Harvey Wiley, and you have the appalling state of health and obesity we face in 2009.

Given the low standards we have for organic foods in the U.S., compared to Europe and the United Kingdom, even eating organic isn't enough. It is more than a start. Eschewing junk and processed food is the first step. But, to rebuild health, to stave off aging and avoid Alzheimer's, dementia and generally drooling in a wheelchair when you reach your dotage, you have to be very, very smart about how you feed your body.

Does that mean that you have to eat vegetables, or gag down slimy green drinks? Give up the pleasures of crème brulee or chocolate fudge brownies? No, but it does mean that, if your tongue alone is in charge of your diet, you are going to need more than a government bail out to handle the bankruptcy of your health.

In other cultures that practice herbal medicine, children are given bitter foods from infancy to accustom them to taking their medicine straight. In the U.S. children are given ice cream and candy from an early age to accustom them to a lifetime of good-tasting foods that lead to learning problems and adult diseases in childhood. This often develops a dependency on "kids' foods" that are even more anemic and devoid of nutrition than the typical dinner table fare. We call this "marketing."

In the war over consumer dollars, all is fair. But the long-term cost of the cheap and abundant food we consume in health-dollars may be higher than we can calculate. And the cost in human suffering is enormous. No one ever seems to get addicted to broccoli. But ask someone to give up their diet soda or donuts or chips.

Just as my friend has to work three times harder, our food has to be three times healthier. The only answer is super foods--super concentrated foods that offer a surplus of nutrients and a minimum of preparation time. After all, if we were all cooking complete organic meals three times a day, there would be no need for this post.

When you ingest super foods, the body will give up toxins, repair cells and "turn off" genes that cause disease. Like a garden, where plentiful nutrients and healthy soil make disease and pest resistant plants, the human body blooms with energy, beauty and strength when fed properly.

Comments

[Betsy Putterman]

I loved the way that Anne is telling it like it is. So much of even the health food hype is irrelevant when our basic food supply is so degraded. Basic education on nutrition in our society is sorely lacking. I look forward to more of Anne's expert and thought provoking analyses.

[wolfgangmo]

Great article and good info. Our food supplies in this country are horrible. Our clinic teaches a class on how to shop for food at a grocery store. Rule of thumb is shop the periphery. All the middle isles don't really contain food. The edge of the store is mostly where the real food is, although that is getting less likely.

Regarding your friend who is working 3 times harder. Is that because he is tied down to a crappy job just for the health insurance offered? Universal health care would allow him/her to move to a smaller nicer company.

We need to get the hobnailed boot of private medical insurance off the neck of Americans and our companies as well. If we remove the profit motive from health care we can drop costs, increase coverage, and free up our citizens.

[Anne Dunev - Huffpost Blogger]

I agree that you can skip most of the grocery store and just shop the "cool" sections on the edge--dairy, meat and produce. Good rule!

Here is my suggestion regarding medical insurance: get rid of it entirely. As long as you have third party payment for health and medical products and services, no one will take responsibility for the exorbitant cost of getting sick in this country. I practiced in the UK for years and saw government sponsored National Health care first hand. It is not better care, and it is not cheaper care. It feels like it because it is paid for by taxes, not by insurance or out-of-pocket. Rich people had better care because they could pay for it. Many excellent physicians were outside the system. Doctors inside the system had average 8 minutes per patient. great care and diagnose People waited months for surgery and were sometimes turned away the day of surgery, after the long wait, because a hospital bed did not open up.

In China traditional doctors were paid when the patient was well, and not paid when the patient got sick. Health savings accounts and tax breaks might be part of the answer here. If the patient paid directly to the doctor and hospital, there would be accountability, which does not exist now. But mainly, we need to concentrate on creating wellness. "Screening" is not preventative medicine. We have confused diagnosis with prevention. Whole foods and lifestyle counseling is true prevention.