They are about the merit of the GDP but give a perspective on the current health care debate – that is, in my opinion, both overeating and the resultant required health care spending end up being “good” for the economy, or at least good for how we measure our economy. Someone who eats out all the time, becomes obese and has to go on medications is better for the GDP than someone who lives with a bit more caution or restraint.

I’m not suggesting any sort of grand conspiracy, just people in various industries trying to increase their particular profits. But together, the government, big agriculture and big pharma seem to have found a situtation in which they all support each others growth.

First, I’m training for a marathon and it has been amazingly hard to feel motivated to run alone. Training with my sister is a blast, though, and there’s a program with my local running club where adults pair up with at-risk youth to train for marathons. Wow, that could bring down the obesity rate and possibly deal with some deeper spiritual/emotional issues that have huge cultural implications, too. Perhaps I’ll need to find time to invest in that program and train with an at-risk high school student. Sounds like it could even be fun.

But there’s a deeper level at which community is important for maintaining health. Obesity is bad, but food is good. Food is more than just something to sustain our personal bodies; eating is also one of the best ways to have good times with others. Enjoying food together, it seems, also facilitates good emotional and spiritual health. What does this all mean for obesity? Well, I wonder if obesity levels would go down if we had meals together more often? I don’t have a study to cite here, but it seems that I’m less likely to eat 7 cookies if I’m eating with friends who might notice. And if I eat a good healthy meal with my family, I won’t need a midnight snack. It’s ironic, but I think that being too busy to sit and thankfully eat together may actually contribute to obesity in America.

I’m not sure what your post has to do with my post, or Mark’s post. As I understand Mark’s original post, he is saying that health care reform, in the sense of controlling costs and providing more coverage, won’t be effective if we don’t address some basic cultural/behavioral issues at the same time. My “statistics” were simply an extension of that argument; statistics specifically chosen to demonstrate that a lot of money is being spent on non-essential things. My point is that items such as these are all implicated in health care reform. You respond by talking about the causes of death. Well, that’s fine, but it has nothing to do with anything I was talking about. Who’s begging the question here?

“The three biggest causes of death yearly in the US right now are heart, cancer, and doctor-hospitals.”
You, sir, have made my day!

All of that said, healthier eating habits and regular exercise of the body is the key to a physically healthier country, as we all have stated. The fact that most Americans do not have time to exercise regularly due to overdemanding jobs, I thought, was a very good point to bring forward.

I’d like to say that I thought this a good post, though I personally could have gone without the fat guy’s backside greeting me every time I visit the page.

I, too, have found it interesting that health reform has not addressed behavioral issues. Consider, for example:

In 2007 Americans spent over $12 billion on cosmetic surgery, which is more than four times all of Europe combined. Among that spending:

*$1.3 billion for breast augmentation, and another half a billion for breast lifts.
*$2.3 billion for botox injections.
*Nearly a billion for liposuction, and $800 million for tummy tucks.
*91% of all cosmetic surgeries are performed on women, and more than a third of those are between the ages of 30 and 40.
*42% of cosmetic patients are repeat patients.

Or further, let’s say, for example, that I am told I am at risk for type-2 diabetes if I don’t curtail my sugar consumption. Despite the doctor’s warning, I continue to pound high amounts of glucose and develop type-2 diabetes, with all its attendant medical problems. This is not a failure on the part of the system, but it does generate tremendous costs to the system. In the meantime, such behavior will almost certainly lower my life expectancy. In this instance, there might be an aggregate lowering in life expectancy, but it’s not clear how this implicates the delivery system itself. Doctors don’t always have mechanisms to insure certain outcomes precisely because of choices people make. Given the affluence of our society, people are more likely to make decisions that create medical complications, but within a context that will provide treatment for those complications. There has been a dramatic increase in type-2 diabetes in this society, and that generates related costs (an estimated $23 billion in 2006). Think about other behavior specific costs: smoking ($157 billion with another $92 billion in lost wages), alcohol consumption ($22.5 billion in health care costs, $175 billion in total related costs), drug use, etcetera.

There is no magic bullet for healthcare reform. Your article is a good demonstration of how government reform doesn’t solve or perhaps even address core problems.

The Ag Secretary under Nixon, Earl Butz, started pushing the “go big or go home” model of farming, “fencerow to fencerow.” As a consequence, food has gotten a lot cheaper in America. Also as a consequence, food has gotten a lot worse in America.

The USG pays subsidies for the production of corn, which means we have lots of corn. What to do with all this corn, particularly when its cheap? We feed it to animals, including cows. Of course, we also juice the cows up with hormones and antibiotics, so they grow faster and better tolerate their sedate, unnatural lifestyle.

I’d think this was an issue of supreme interest to the FPRers.

We’ve got questions of scale and conformity and state planning: plant fencerow to fencerow, corn and soy and wheat, ignore crop rotation and focus on monoculture, be a cog in the machine! We’ve got questions of synthetic approximations of reality: meat is meat, right, only the grass fed, grass finished, hormone and antibiotic free beef I buy from local producers is an entirely different product than the “industrial beef” churned out in CAFOs and dependent on cheap, subsidized grain and modern industrial pharma.

It really is different.

I’ve always been (how did Tolkein put it?) inclined to stoutness. I took advantage of the convenience and cheapness of modern industrial food, and wondered why I stayed fat.

I suspected I could get in shape, by combining with asceticism of a Buddhist monk with a touch of self-torturing Neitzchean superman. I didn’t want to do that!

Then a friend started talking to me about the paleo diet, and authors like Gary Taubes, Loren Cordain and Art de Vany. I was skeptical, but I like to read, so I read a little more about it.

The simplest description of the paleo diet is don’t eat grains. Eat animals and plants, but stay away from grains and highly processed foods. Use butter instead of margarine. Embrace saturated fat, avoid (much) carbohydrate intake, avoid sugars.

By following these guidelines, and incorporating moderate exercise (long walks and some homemade medicine ball play), I’ve lost fifty pounds of fat in the last year, and put on about fifteen pounds of muscle, and it’s been easy. I feel better, I look better, I’m a better husband and father . . . and I’m helping to support locally produced, small scale agriculture.

What’s not to love?

My wife was diagnosed with gestational diabetes a couple of months back. The doctor graciously agreed to let us try and control it through dietary means before going on insulin. My wife began to adopt the principles I’d been losing weight on . . . limited sugars, limited grains, green leafy vegetables and meat . . . and she is controlling her blood sugar without insulin supplementation.

Look at our skyrocketing obesity, and diabetes, and cancer, and consider that our USDA recommended diet has changed, and changed markedly, in the last thirty years. Our genetics hasn’t changed that much in that time frame, so why are we doing so much worse?

Check out, if you are interested, Mark Sisson’s website “Mark’s Daily Apple” or google/noodle around searching for the “paleo diet” for vast amounts of information. Heck, the collective I write for, “The Paleo Garden,” addresses many of these type issues.

Don’t be SAD! (Standard American Diet.)

I am not, with this piece, suggesting that the government should regulate diets. but here is the problem as I see it. Obesity is increasing. The health care costs associated with obesity are clear. Thus, health care will continue to increase even as our health decreases. This seems a perfect opportunity for those who want to expand government power to point out the looming “crisis” in health care. A simply way to defuse the “crisis” is to reverse the weight gain.

What does it say about our nation that with our incredible wealth we are simply becoming larger? Are we happier? Does this national binge indicate a longing for something that food will not satisfy? This national obsession with food has a flip side, of course, and this can be seen in the diet/exercise industry where millions spend millions on special food and equipment that promise to bring happiness and thinness.

Cheeks. The reason I chose this picture is for the very reason that the man seems so sad. To be sure, a proper response to suffering individuals is compassion. But at the same time, it is surely possible to speak of aggregates and policies. This is a piece about public policy and the threat of expanding government power. I would submit that it is not Christian compassion to subject any person to the “care” of a paternalistic, centralized bureaucracy. Frankly, that’s the easy way out, for it alleviates personal responsibility and attenuates personal human contact, and these are precisely the best means to help those who are hurting.