The Obese Elephant in the Room

A couple of weeks ago I posted some thoughts on President Obama's speech to Congress on his healthcare proposals. My chief observation was that his efforts are focused on fixing a "system" that is oriented around disease management instead of disease prevention. Health and food writer, and national spokesperson on all things related, Michael Pollan, addressed the same issue in his usual thorough and eloquent style.

The heart of his article (and complaint about the president's "plan") is this:

No one disputes that the $2.3 trillion we devote to the health care industry is often spent unwisely, but the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the most efficient health care system that the administration could hope to devise would still confront a rising tide of chronic disease linked to diet.

That’s why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry.

He concludes his article this way (with my addition in brackets drawn from his article):

All of which suggests that passing a health care reform bill, no matter how ambitious, is only the first step in solving our health care crisis. To keep from bankrupting ourselves, we will then have to get to work on improving our health — which means going to work on the American way of eating.

But even if we get a health care bill that does little more than require insurers to cover everyone on the same basis, it could put us on that course.

For it will force the industry, and the government, to take a good hard look at the elephant in the room [i.e., obesity based on a broken industrial food system] and galvanize a movement to slim it down.

You can read his whole New York Times op-ed piece here.