Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food
is a very good book that, weirdly, I'd also like to see subjected to a very good critical review. So if anyone has seen a solid skeptical take -- surely some angry nutritionist has taken to her keyboard! -- leave a link in comments. I've been meaning, however, to toss this quote on the blog. The quick context is that Pollan is talking about the chronic diseases that seem to accompany the "Western diet." Ailments like heart disease and diabetes that are virtually unknown in more traditional nutritional cultures, but emerge as soon as members of those cultures adopt the American manner of eating.We turn for salvation to the health care industry. Medicine is learning how to keep alive the people whom the Western diet is making sick. Doctors have gotten really good at keeping people with heart disease alive, and now they're hard at work on obesity and diabetes. Much more so than the human body, capitalism is marvelously adaptive, able to turn the problems it creates into new business opportunities: Diet pills, heart bypass operations, insulin pumps, bariatric surgery. But though fast food may be good business for the health are industry, the cost to society -- an estimated $250 billion a year in diet-related health care costs and rising rapidly -- cannot be sustained indefinitely. An American born in 2000 has a 1 in 3 chance of developing diabetes in his lifetime; the risk is even greater for a Hispanic American or an African American. A diagnosis of diabetes subtract roughly twelve years from one's life and living with the condition incurs medical costs of $13,000 a year (compared with $2,500 for someone without diabetes).This is a global pandemic in the making, but a most unusual one, because it involves no virus or bacteria, no microbe of any kind -- just a way of eating. It remains to be seen whether we'll respond by changing our diet or our culture and economy. Although an estimated 80 percent of cases of type 2 diabetes could be prevented by a change of diet and exercise, it looks like the smart money is instead on the creation of a vast new diabetes industry. The mainstream media is full of advertisements for new gadgets and drugs for diabetics, and the health industry is gearing up to meet the surging demand for heart bypass operations (80 percent of diabetics will suffer from heart disease), dialysis, and kidney transplantation. At the supermarket checkout you can thumb copies of a new lifestyle magazine, Diabetic Living. Diabetes is well on its way to becoming normalized in the West -- recognized as a whole new demographic and so a major marketing opportunity.
I'd just add a question: How many discrete interest groups would save money from a sweeping policy initiative aimed at reducing chronic disease through nutrition, exercise, and other low-cost lifestyle changes? How many discrete interest groups would make money from a sweeping policy initiative aimed at increasing the number of insured Americans able to purchase cutting edge medical care in response to the onset of chronic disease?
