Most of you will be aware of the acronym ‘SAD’, standing for the Standard American Diet. Yes?
That diet, since the Second World War and at an accelerating rate since the 1990s, has been sugar-loaded and high on processed carbohydrates. Fat was bad, and energy comes from carbohydrates, Americans (and most of us ‘downstream’) were exhorted to believe. The consequences of this diet have been catastrophic and are spiralling out of control.
I have been vaguely aware of this for a long time, but negligent in regards to the scale of the problem and its world-wide dissemination, as well as the consequences for my own health.
I would rationalise my growing symptoms of inflammation by saying to myself and others that I lived a pretty moderate life, had never been a smoker or a heavy drinker, and had survived a 12-year battle with cancer. But I have not tackled the key issue: sugar and metabolism.
Two things have changed that. First, I reached a point this past winter where I was feeling overwhelmed by inflammatory problems of several kinds, which the medications prescribed by my GP were not fixing, but at best papering over.
Second, a good friend introduced me to a newly published study of the SAD problem, called Good Energy. Reading the book has been eye-opening, in a radical way.
Immediately adopting a low-carb diet and taking direct responsibility for my wellbeing has had astonishingly quick and positive benefits.
But, in this brief column, I want to concentrate simply on the core argument that the authors of Good Energy make. We’re rationalists and the marshalling of clear evidence and rigorous argument fascinate us. Right?
So try this one:
Imagine you were an intelligent alien who was transported from outer space to the United States and saw the health landscape: more than 75% of deaths and 80% of costs are driven by obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other preventable and reversible metabolic conditions we have today. Now, imagine you asked that alien to allocate $4 trillion – the amount we spend on health care annually – to fix the problem. Never in a million years would that alien say that we should wait for everyone to get sick and then write prescriptions and perform procedures that don’t reverse the underlying reasons they’re sick. But that is what we are doing today, because it generates recurring revenue for the largest industry in the country.
Pause a minute to absorb that. Its implications, both superficially and deeply, are stunning.
First, the ‘healthcare’ industry is the largest industry in the United States. Not Silicon Valley, not the Pentagon, not agriculture, not pharmaceuticals, not education. No, healthcare!
Second, the term healthcare is, in vital respects, an insidious misnomer. The industry thrives on chronic sickness, not on wellbeing. This is laid out with compelling data. It does not dispense the means for avoiding or curing illness, so much as engage in a feeding frenzy, based precisely on epidemics of inflammatory diseases.
Third, it is contributing massively to the incipient bankruptcy of the richest country in the world. This is scandalous.
Can this be believed? How does a rationalist assess that? Well, by asking who the authors are and calibrating their credibility. Then by looking at the evidence they present. Then by carefully analysing and critically assessing the reasoning they do, based on that evidence. Let’s take those one by one.
The authors are Casey and Calley Means, siblings. The first is a brilliant graduate from Stanford Medical School, the second, her brother, is a former lobbyist for big agriculture. They are both highly intelligent and undertook to write this book after years of experiencing the problems it describes from the ‘coalface’ of their own work.
The evidence they bring to the table is grounded in cell biology, the physiology of metabolism and the nature of metabolic disorders. It is detailed, crystal clear and woven into an argument that is so compelling that it led me to remark to the friend who had introduced me to it that it is ‘radicalising’ me.
Could it be deliberately misleading? Perhaps, but there is no apparent motive for it to be so. It is tackling, head on, a cluster of the most powerful industries and political lobby groups in the United States. None of those interest groups will benefit from the book’s argument.
But this brings me to the reason reading the book recently has had a ‘radicalising’ effect on me. More clearly than any other book I’ve read on the subject, Good Energy lays out unsparingly the profound connections between the incentives and practices driving the healthcare industry, agribusiness, the pharmaceutical industry, and food conglomerates such as R. J. Reynolds and Philip Morris.
That’s right. The two big tobacco companies, since their nefarious defence of tobacco was curtailed somewhat, have branched out into fast food and processed sugars and used scientific research to make their foods addictive, while lobbying successfully for subsidies, exemptions and even the purchase by the government of their products for distribution in school lunches.
Between them, all these industries and interest groups are reaping super profits, while ruining America’s health, corrupting its politics and driving its budget to the wall.
I write this for Rationale because, as much as the biological science underlying the book’s analysis, the political economy of its narrative demands serious attention. I intend, in the months ahead – while following its recommendations – to do some of that analysis, without fear or favour.
Those of you who have followed my writing here will acknowledge, I believe, that I am no political firebrand. But I have, I think, a reputation for following evidence and argument to where they lead. The argument in Good Energy leads inescapably to the need for robust political engagement. That’s where I’m headed.
Published 18 September 2024.
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Images: Bernard Hermant on Unsplash (CC).