I have to quote one of my facebook friends who introduced the article with the following excellent summary:
In this piece, Michael Pollan elegantly makes the case that America's healthcare funding crisis can be attributed partially to the many-tentacled octopus that is America's food processing industry -- aswim in a flood of government-subsidize...d corn syrup -- and the horrible health consequences resulting from the consumption of its products. His main argument is that the industrial food system externalizes -- i.e., hides from the consumer -- certain costs of its products -- e.g., the massive cost of treating the Type 2 diabetes that is a potential by-product of consuming a diet of artificially "cheap," heavily processed foods. Instead of paying the "real" price at checkout, we all pay the price later as the treatment of diseases resulting from poor diet cause healthcare expenses to consume an ever increasing share of the nation's total economic output.
I also just read Mark Bittman's "Food Matters". He's a cookbook author/chef I REALLY love (He wrote "How to Cook Everything" and it's a great basics book), but this book was half about the food industry and how our bodies and planet can't sustain our consumption, and half recipes putting his principles into practice. Awesome!
Yup! I give Pollan full credit for turning around my head - which made me ready for the commitment of getting the weight off. I think I learned more from the Omnivore's Dilemma than any book I've read in ... a very long time. I recommend it to everyone who even mentions the word "book".
Type 2 diabetes is a result of consumers CHOOSING to eat crap foods to excess. We all have personal choice. The government/food industry/marketing gurus aren't responsible for my choices. I am. I got fat because I ate alot of crap. No one to blame but me.
Sorry, Ms Julie -- don't understand your comment....Free market, capitalism, freedom of choice with respect to what we choose to put into our bodies -- it all has a cost. Unless the USA is prepared to ban/outlaw the freedom of its citizens to choose what they want to eat and to alter the free-market system to make manufacturers produce what it deems necessary for its citizens to consume, there's going to be a cost. Profit is profit in the free market system. If consumers choose to eat other things, then there would be no market for crap out there. Last time I checked, those on this board who lost significant amounts of weight were able to do so through exercising their free will. They ---gasp---made a CHOICE not to eat crap. We all can do the same. It isn't the fault of the government or the marketing boards or the evil corporations. It IS the fault of those who hold the fork...
I mean our national poor health costs all of us dearly in the pocketbook.
I have said nothing about taking away free choice. But our government *does* subsidize and enable, and it makes poor choices about what it subsidizes and enables.
I have said nothing about taking away free choice. But our government *does* subsidize and enable, and it makes poor choices about what it subsidizes and enables.
Yup yup. Kira, I'd agree with you fully if we actually did have a free market when it came to food. But we don't. We have a government that subsidizes the production of the foods that turn into cheap junk and animal feed for factory farmed animals, so that those things can be produced cheaply and in bulk, and once this cheap junk food is produced, because the pricing for source materials is artificially lower than a free market would allow, those manufacturers have plenty of advertising budget to attempt to sell the product (using deceptive tactics like the "Smart Choice" label, for example, or other tricks that you have to be very aware of not to fall for).
If we're not going to have a truly free market in food anyway, and are going to have such subsidies, I'd like to see at least SOME of those subsidies go toward the raising of foods that are actually GOOD for the health of the American people (like vegetables, maybe?), rather than all going to cheap, overproduced commodity crops.
I liked the implication that if the health care industry can no longer turn away sick people, they might be more interested in helping people not get sick in the first place.
I liked the implication that if the health care industry can no longer turn away sick people, they might be more interested in helping people not get sick in the first place.
That is exactly what resonated with me. Yeah, the effect on crop subsidies is one thing, but the change it would spur in the health insurance industry is what really opened my eyes.
I <3 Michael Pollan
