The High Cost of High Calories

I've been a bit of a negative Nelly lately towards the mainstream media, so I'm switching into positive Polly mode (not to be confused with Pollyanna) and sharing with y'all this great op-ed in the New York Times by chef/author Mark Bittman.

In the scheme of things, saving the 38 billion bucks that Congress seems poised to agree upon is not a big deal. A big deal is saving a trillion bucks. And we could do that by preventing disease instead of treating it.

For the first time in history, lifestyle diseases like diabetes, heart disease, some cancers and others kill more people than communicable ones. Treating these diseases — and futile attempts to “cure” them — costs a fortune, more than one-seventh of our GDP.

But they’re preventable, and you prevent them the same way you cause them: lifestyle. A sane diet, along with exercise, meditation and intangibles like love prevent and even reverse disease. A sane diet alone would save us hundreds of billions of dollars and maybe more.

Bittman nails it further down in the article, albeit in an overly idealistic fashion.

Corny as it is to say so, if we can put a man on the moon we can create an environment in which an apple is a better and more accessible choice than a Pop-Tart. Some other billions of dollars must go to public health. Again: we built sewage systems; we built water supplies; we showed that we could get people to eat anything we marketed. Now all we have to do is build a food distribution system that favors real food, and market that.

Experts without vested interests in the status quo come to much the same conclusion: Only a massive public health effort can save both our health and our budget.

Even though I truly dig what Bittman is saying here, I do think it needs to be understood that we have become a country serving big business and special interest groups, as opposed to a country serving the people. As long as there's money to be made in making us fat, we can't look to our leaders to help us get thin. I appreciate Bittman's stance, as well as all the work Michelle Obama is putting into things like reforming school lunch programs, but ultimately we're the ones who need to do the heavy lifting. It's you, not the government, who needs to choose between the apple and the Pop-Tart.

And, no, Frosted Apple Strudel Pop-Tarts don't count. Stop being a smart-ass.