Forget the health care crisis.
This country is in the midst of a health crisis -- we are simply in worse health now than we were a decade ago. The trend lines are pointing in the wrong direction. And it all starts with obesity.
When you think about it, the U.S. has done a terrific job catering to our worst impulses. Calories are cheap, and so we eat too many burgers and sodas (200 calories of good food are considerably more expensive than 200 calories of processed, fattening foods, as these pictures demonstrate). Entertainment is free and ubiquitous, so we plop down in front of our television sets for hours a day (in fact, researchers have found that the more hours people watch TV, the fatter they tend to be).
The result is that in many areas of the U.S., life expectancy is actually heading downward, for the first time in the modern era. A 2008 study in PLoS Medicine shows that in many pockets of the country, people are simply dying earlier than they used to. "Beginning in the early 1980s and continuing through 1999," the study says, "those who were already disadvantaged did not benefit from the gains in life expectancy experienced by the advantaged, and some became even worse off." A primary culprit: Obesity and the resulting conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke.
This "reversal of fortune," as the study's authors put it, is likely to have accelerated since the year 2000, when the study's data ended -- meaning that the downturn in life expectancy may be even more widespread today.
This health crisis, of course, does in fact dovetail with the larger issue of health care reform. Almost $100 billion is spent annually on medical issues related specifically to weight and obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and half of that cost is paid by the government via Medicare.
This is a vast and growing crisis -- and there's starting to be some organization to combat it. Some people, including Michelle Obama with her Let's Move campaign against childhood obesity, are trying to draw attention to it.
And earlier this week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former President Bill Clinton took part in an obesity summit in Los Angeles to discuss possible solutions. Alas, many of these solutions look to government bans and regulation rather than improving people's understanding of their health -- and their responsibility in protecting their own health.
The fact is that, for too many of us, our health is something that provokes anxiety, something that we don't want to take care of -- and something we often don't feel very much in control of. We need to change that. We need to find ways that work for us, individually, to engage in our health and make better decisions about what we eat, how much we eat, and how often we eat.
Yes, food companies are doing a very good job of exploiting our brain chemistry. And yes, for some people genetics play a significant role in predisposing them to obesity. But the food companies sold Fritos and Coke 20 years ago. And our DNA hasn't suddenly changed enough to account for the rapid change in our national waist-size. The fact is that we are agents in our own lives, and our actions have consequences. And right now, we are making choices that have made us a more overweight country.
We need to make this a national priority to help people know why their choices matter, and how they can make better choices for better health. The key is to give people a place to start -- let them know their actions have consequences. The calorie counts posted outside fast food restaurants are a good start, and may help change people's decision making (though there's much debate over this). And educating parents about things, like, how to cook healthy meals - an increasingly forgotten skill in this country -- would go miles.
We should increase funding for after-school sports programs and gym classes, so that more kids have a chance to develop healthy exercise habits. It's important that this be about more than team sports -- an "athletic identity" has been closely associated with better health -- and an athletic identity is for everyone!
We don't have to go down this road. We don't have to stand by and watch the country become less healthy. We can act. It all starts with us.
Thomas Goetz is author of the new book The Decision Tree: Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era of Personalized Medicine.
Follow Thomas Goetz on Twitter: www.twitter.com/tgoetz
Cathy Erway: Top 9 Reasons For Not Eating Out
america is a land of people who like to do things with our hands, and we love to eat, so why shouldn't we be the world's food basket? two birds, one stone is kinda what i'm thinking. more college majors in nutrition and farming- we have the eaters, we have the agricultural space, money, irrigation and technology- would go a long way toward solving a host of issues. more emphasis, education and jobs in nutrition would:
raise overall awareness of nutrition and it's importance to the human body and the way that it functions, and
be a great job industry for americans that cannot be outsourced to countries where people are willing to work longer hours for a lower wage.
couple that with greater DIVERSITY in agribusiness will equate to more production, and a workforce who are healthier, happier and contributing to making a more healthy society. (diversity in farming is important, one of our biggest problems is the specializing in growing only one crop, like corn. or soybeans. we have to EAT! that's why there's so much hfcs, we have to find more stuff to do w all that subsidized corn. why not grow eggplant, lentils, zucchini or broccoli? or cannibis? ;-))
This is so serious that health experts expect warn that so many children will develop diabetes that they will be the first generation to live shorter lives than their parents, and bankrupt the health system along the way.
The Internet and book stores are filled with the information parents need to know. Start with:
-purging the cupboards of everything made of while flour, white rice, white pasta.
-purging the cupboards of everything containing high fructose corn syrup.
-eating more fruits and veggies.
-eating more beans and nuts.
-eating less red meat.
Some resources:
On Diet -- http://www.garmaonhealth.com/2009/08/diet-101/
On Childhood Diabetes: http://www.garmaonhealth.com/2010/02/lets-move/
Yep.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/magazine/22wwlnlede.t.html?_r=1
Eating processed foods is like bringing the enemy into your body. Eating real food is bringing your body's allies to your body.
No other diet has ever wreaked more harm to the human body than the Western highly processed diet. Every other regional diet choices, from Japanese, the Mediterranean, Eskimo, Chinese, French, you name it, has one thing in common: those people eat real food instead of processed. Just the Facts.
If you believe what I have just posted, and want to eat out tonight, where can you go?
We who wish to limit our risk of getting these often preventable diseases amongst ourselves and family, know that by taking personal responsibility we are also helping to save this country from the weight of its health care crisis that is caused partly by the stuff at the end of our forks.
Am done with this cr.p. Too many people don’t think enough for them selves and blame anything and anybody for their behaviour. That behaviour being smoking or overeating or drinking, drugs, divorce, beaten up by my hubby who will soon repent and become an angel, etc-etc-etc.
You name it and people have an excuse for it. Others take advantage and make money out of those excuse-seekers.
If you really want to make a difference put psychology on the curriculum; next to grammar, math and physics. Then after 2 or 3 generations things will be different. In the mean time if you want to know why and how people come up with all those excuses read up on discounting and the discounting matrix or try Games People Play.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,994390,00.html
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=4439943&page=1
Hell, even George WIll makes the point:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/06/AR2009030602070_2.html
etc etc etc
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/06/AR2009030602070.html
food, chemicals out of the milk, and corn syrup out of everything else. Get government to
control antibotic use (see sweden) Then invest in some research not tied to agri-business
to investigate how the body absorbs all the contaminants in our food and water supply.
Elect a congress not indebted to agri-business/corn lobby to enact subsidies for vegatables
and fruit so the poor can afford to eat what is good for them, instead of stretching a dollar's
worth of pasta or rice to feed a family.
You might find out its not just the poor schlub eating a twinkie after all.
Now, get the conservative politicians out of my bedroom and doctor's office - PLEASE!!
You say, "(in fact, researchers have found that the more hours people watch TV, the fatter they tend to be)." Well gee, could it be because people who live a sedentary lifestyle (watching TV) are more likely to gain weight?
A sedentary lifestyle and poor diet is the cause of our health woes, NOT WEIGHT. Weight can simply another indicator of that sedentary lifestyle.
But thin people with poor lifestyle are ALSO unhealthy. And fat people who are active and eat right ARE healthy.
You are promoting ignorance. Please stop.
Peace,
Shannon
Your mythical healthy fat person would be healthier still if they lost a bit of weight.
You can certainly be too thin to be healthy too, but that problem's not overwhelming the healthcare system.
There can be large people who have a low BMI in regards to body fat, eat healthy and exercise. Their cholesterol and blood pressure are low.
They are healthy.
But they appear to be overweight.
Just because someone is thin doesn't mean they're healthy.
We need to stop making judgements based on how people look. Whether it's weight, race or age.
I'm sure after we're doing fat-bashing we'll start bashing old people for being old. After all, you're more likely to have health issues and take up more than your fair share of health care if you're old, right? What's your answer to old? Get young?
Peace,
Shannon
As I stated above, we need to do something about our lifestyle to improve our health, not our weight.
It's one thing to say that fat people are unhealthy, but it's another to say what a fat person should do about it. The current advice is "Lose weight," but there is currently NO KNOWN LONG-TERM WEIGHT LOSS SOLUTION.
The most popular statistic says 95% of all weight loss attempts fail at the five year mark, but regardless of what statistic you want to cite, the truth is that weight loss failure rates are incredibly discouraging. AND weight cycling can also damage your blood vessel lining, wearing it down and accelerating atherosclerosis.
So yes, you can be fat and healthy, if you have have a healthy lifestyle.
Peace,
Shannon
remove all hfcs from your diet (it should really be completely banned)
exercise for 1hr 3x/wk
eat a well rounded diet of wholesome unprocessed foods
cut back on trans and saturated fats.
love and be loved.
it really IS that simple.
Some of you folks really need to read the book "1984."
The point is that most people are not s*icidal in the short or long term. If they understood that processed foods have nutrients removed and dangerous stuff added to them that over the long term lead directly to diabetes, cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, arthritis, and the list goes on, they would limit those edible food-like substances. Note that these foods lead Directly to those consequences in the long term in the general population. Also, if people understood that eating real food, and a variety of real foods provides all kinds of support for your body, people would (or so you would think) eat much more of it.
Eating processed foods is like bringing the enemy into your body. Eating real food is bringing your body's allies to your side.
No social police here.
No other diet has ever wreaked more harm to the human body than the Western highly processed diet. Every other regional diet choices, from Japanese food, the Mediterranean diet, the Eskimo diet, Chinese, French, you name it has one thing in common: those people eat real food instead of processed. Just the Facts.
If you believe what I have just posted, and want to eat out tonight, where can you go? That's the "social police" on the wrong side.