While the Democratic debate has turned into an all-out popularity contest, and the most-discussed issues continue to be the economy, oil and war, there are two topics that none of the three candidates have really honed in on. They all spend a lot of time dancing around the perimeters, yet they never touch the essence of them. In fact, I'm not sure any of them even know what the essence is.
The two that I'm referring to are healthcare and the environment. Obviously healthcare is a huge concern, and has been addressed continually. Both Clinton and Obama support universal healthcare (well, wait -- since when is America the universe?), and plan on having everybody insured if they were to gain the throne. McCain says the same, that we "can and must" cover everyone. It's a hopeful idea, and one we can appreciate, especially given that numerous other countries already have this system in place without having to use it as a political platform. But of all three candidates, only one (McCain) even mentions the word "nutrition," and makes some sort of claim to try to stop problems before they start -- at the very bottom of his list.
Like our healthcare system already, everything is geared around curing, and not preventing. This sort-of thinking is what has led us to acquire what nutrition expert Colin Campbell calls "diseases of affluence," illnesses that define the way Americans die in our times; namely: heart disease and cancer. (Not surprisingly, the third highest killer of Americans is the healthcare system itself, through faulty prescriptions, botched surgeries and wrongful diagnoses). In The China Study he not only shows why the way we approach nutrition is misguided, but that it is actually helping promote diseases like the aforementioned. He does not conclude that these nutritive guidelines -- high protein, high fat, low carbohydrate meals -- create the illness, but the way many Americans eat is certainly helping move us down the line a lot quicker, and more painfully.
In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan mentions that a child born after 2000 now has a one out of three chance of developing diabetes. That's tragic, but there is a cause, and it's not genetic. That our candidates are pushing forth the idea that accessible coverage (read: cheap pills) is the most pressing issue in our societal health is remarkably illogical. Well, from a realistic standpoint that is; from a political stance, it makes perfect sense. Can you imagine a candidate stepping up on the next debate to declare that we can begin to heal ourselves through a whole foods, plant-based diet? Not only would they be booed off the stage, their entire candidacy would be shot, they would be sued by the National Cattleman's Association, and Us magazine would have fodder for a year. This says as much about the American public as it does about our candidates.
Yet I've found the most vehement responses from people often occur around the topic of food, even more than politics, war, religion, oil and economics. It is immediate, personal and in many ways defines who we are -- what we put inside of us informs us on every level of our being. If the person does not know me, I'm instantly a vegan (I'm not) freak or a vegetarian (I'm not that either) Nazi. This is because our ideas about nutrition, if we even have any, stem from beliefs and not actual science. For example: One can believe that eating meat-based protein is what gives us energy, but as Campbell shows on numerous occasions is that plants provide healthier protein, not to mention things that meat will never give us, like fiber and antioxidants (except for the trace amount they receive because the animals themselves eat plants).
What we need from our candidates (not to mention doctors and "health experts") is honest and detailed information regarding what we eat and how food affects our bodies. We're not going to get this from star diet gurus who have no peer-reviewed evidence or any amount of scientific credibility when they inform us that type A blood shouldn't be vegetarian or that you can enter the "zone" by deriving 30% of your daily calories from protein. Or, my favorite, that bacon will help you lose weight. Or that half of your presidential cabinet sits or has sat on the board of Monsanto, and doesn't want pesky nuisances like these authors being heard. It's understandable when capitalistic tendencies underlies legislation; as Campbell writes, regarding anti-estrogen breast cancer drugs:
"Instead of suggesting dietary change as a solution, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing and publicizing a drug that may or may not work and that almost certainly will have unintended side effects."
Unintended side effects are not only internal. Consider that, according to John Robbins in The Food Revolution, to grow a pound of California beef requires 2,464 gallons of water. To put this in perspective, he tells us that a seven-minute shower everyday for six months equals roughly 5,200 gallons of water. Think about that: A full year of showering uses as much water -- a non-renewable substance, in terms of drinking and potable water -- as two pounds of beef. This isn't a biased belief or a vegetarian call to arms. It's the factual reality of modern food production. As you can imagine, the amount of energy used in keeping the livestock industry going is laughably higher than normal human consumption.
When Robbins' book was published in 2001, the average annual use of antibiotics for Americans was 3 million pounds. To keep livestock "healthy," farmers used 24.6 million pounds. As Pollan reminds us, we are not only what we eat -- we are what what we eat eats, too. Now consider that between 90-95% of cancer-causing carcinogens enter our bodies through the food we eat. Why does our medical industry not make these connections? Why do they prescribe drugs to deal with illnesses that can be dealt with, reversed and sometimes cured through proper nutrition? Just this week it was announced that a placebo proved as effective as Prozac in dealing with most cases of depression. Do we not yet understand that many of our antibiotics may prove of equal worth -- that is, of no worth at all, perhaps even harming more than helping us?
Yes, Hillary, Barack and John, everyone does need healthcare. I am no way "against" antibiotics or eating meat. But we also need to be informed of the economic and scientific realities. The food industry is a vicious cycle. Our slumping economy is causing us to deal with constant increases in heating homes, fueling cars and grocery store checkouts. Our food costs are rising because transportation is becoming more expensive, as are costs in the actual growing of foods, thanks to patented seeds and pesticides. There is an easy solution: eat a locally grown, whole foods, plant-based diet. Do we really need strawberries in the winter? Exotic sugar from Africa? Australian wine? The costs of these and other fineries far exceed what we pay at the cashier.
Yet diet is too simplistic for our media. As Campbell wrote, quoting from one of Dean Ornish's studies, "The point of our study was to determine what is true, not what is practicable." It reminds me that in the yogic discipline, a teacher does not tell a student what he or she wants to hear, but what they need to hear. Megachurch pastors and meat-toting diet writers sell millions of books because they feed our cravings, not the reality of our situation. If we want public relations experts, well, then, we have three exceptional candidates dominating the press, passing off rhetoric as ingenuity. If we want actual leaders willing to teach us a well-rounded, holistic approach to modern life -- and not say just what we want to hear -- we need to look a little harder. As the saying goes, when the student is ready, the teacher appears.