Whole Foods CEO John Mackey: The 'Best Solution' is To Not Need Health Care and For Americans To Change How They Eat and Live (cnbc.com) 398
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey says the key to keeping people healthy in the United States is for people to eat better and live healthier lives. From a report: "I mean, honestly, we talk about health care. The best solution is not to need health care," Mackey told Freakonomics Radio host Stephen Dubner in an episode. "The best solution is to change the way people eat, the way they live, the lifestyle, and diet," Mackey says. "There's no reason why people shouldn't be healthy and have a longer health span. A bunch of drugs is not going to solve the problem." Americans are not taking as good care of their own bodies as they ought to be, Mackey says: "71% of Americans are overweight and 42.5% are obese. Clearly, we're making bad choices in the way we eat," he says. "It's not a sustainable path. And so, I'm calling it out."
Here's a radical thought (Score:5, Insightful)
Or you could, just, you know, promote preventative medicine. Our health care system is so broken and so expensive that people will sit on issues until they become a major, expensive problem instead of seeing a doctor early on to solve the problem when it's cheaper and easier. Sure, part of prevention is eating right, exercising, etc, but that will only get you so far. You can't eat or run your way out of bad genetics or bad luck. But people shouldn't be afraid of financial ruin every time they go see a doctor.
Re:Here's a radical thought (Score:5, Interesting)
That's pretty much exactly what this speaker in the article is doing.
Of late, I've been watching a lot of documentary and even just plain TV shows from the 60's and 70's and if you do this you'll notice something.
You RARELY see an obese or even overweight person. I"m not talking just about TV/Movie stars, but if you watch crowd shots or "man in the street" shots of common every day people, you rarely see anyone with weight issues.
Why is that?
There weren't huge fads or trends nationwide, this was the normal of the day.
This right here is the largest threat to our health care system, people eating themselves into diabetes and worse. If we could get people eating and exercising like they used to only a few decades ago, outside of the pandemic, we'd not see nearly the health care crisis we do today.
Food and lifestyle are the best preventative medicine there is.
Re:Here's a radical thought (Score:5, Informative)
You're missing two key things though...
1) Back then we were not subject to corporate-controlled science. The biggest example was when "Big Sugar" backed up Ansel Keys, the guy who blamed dietary fat for obesity, and buried John Yudkin, the guy whose research showed increase in sugar was a problem.
2) The food we have now, and I am talking in your normal mainstream grocery store like Kroger, is nutritionally different than those exact same foods in the era you cite. Factory farming has switched the focus to quantity at the expense of quality. Farming practices shifted to this as well which is one reason why antibiotics are failing (because we loaded animals with them to produce more meat and such), crop rotation is not used as much as it should be which depletes the nutrients in the soil, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
You're missing two key things though...
1) Back then we were not subject to corporate-controlled science. The biggest example was when "Big Sugar" backed up Ansel Keys, the guy who blamed dietary fat for obesity, and buried John Yudkin, the guy whose research showed increase in sugar was a problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Gotta love a show that actually shows references and sources on screen, and is also willing to call itself out on its own biases or when they misrepresent or use bad data.
Re:Here's a radical thought (Score:5, Insightful)
Factory farming has switched the focus to quantity at the expense of quality.
Exactly. It makes - and propagates - the wholly false assumption that food is fungible. A dollar is a dollar, but a piece of beef or ham, a loaf of bread, or an orange isn't the same as others.
How was the pig or cow reared? Out of doors except when it snowed, allowed to graze on lush grass or to root in the woods - or locked up in a tiny metal shed, never seeing the sun or stars, with a mixture of mud and shit underfoot, fed on a mixture of soy crap and sea-bottom dredgings, and dosed with antibiotics to keep it alive until it's slaughtered?
In her nutrition guide book "Let's Eat Right to Keep Fit", first published in 1954, the excellent American nutritionist Adelle Davis had a chapter entitled "Which Apricot? Grown Where?" and subtitled "It is difficult to obtain adequate Vitamin A".
She gave documented examples including oranges that looked and tasted perfectly normal, but contained no Vitamin C at all; and bread with no selenium at all, although it is meant to be "in the soil". (Not when you rape the soil by reaping vast harvests year after year, virtually clearing it of minerals).
People with very limited food budgets - more and more of us these days - naturally scoop up whatever is cheapest and looks fairly normal. How are they to know about what the animal was fed, how many antibiotics it had pumped into it, or whether the orange contains any Vitamin C or the bread any selenium?
Re:Here's a radical thought (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a lot of unsubstantiated claims in (2) there, that you're going to have to back up.
You might easily make an argument that *processed* foods are nutritionally different, but you are claiming that farming practices (rather than food processing practices) are the underlying cause. That's a bit of a stretch and will need some citations.
A chicken is a chicken. If anything, factory farmed chickens are likely to be MORE nutritious as farmers carefully control their diets to maximize production. A poorly fed chicken will not produce as much meat. Similarly, crops are grown to maximize output, which often means supplementing the soil with additional nutrients to support crops that grow faster and more densely. Poor soils don't yield as much product, and therefore not as much money.
Instead focus on processed foods. Not that processing is inherently a bad thing; Done properly it can increase the nutritional value, safety and shelf life of foods. However most processed foods include larger quantities of sugars, salt and fats to both cover up the use of cheaper ingredients, bulk the product volume and most importantly, engineer a product with addictive qualities while also suppressing satiation so that you can and will consume more.
=Smidge=
Re:Here's a radical thought (Score:5, Insightful)
A chicken is a chicken. If anything, factory farmed chickens are likely to be MORE nutritious as farmers carefully control their diets to maximize production.
They're controlling their diet to maximize production, which is a code word for weight. They don't care if the bones weigh more, they don't care how much of that is meat and how much is fat* and how much is water, their goal is to make the heaviest chickens they can.
But meat isn't really where the battle is fought, is it? It's really produce. Produce's content varies much more than meat's.
Similarly, crops are grown to maximize output, which often means supplementing the soil with additional nutrients to support crops that grow faster and more densely. Poor soils don't yield as much product, and therefore not as much money.
Most crops are being grown with machine cultivation which creates hardpan, which destroys soil diversity. As such the topsoil is basically turned into dirt through destruction of the organic, living components. At that point farming is essentially hydroponics in a dirt medium. The crops are actually fed with oil-derived fertilizers like ANFO, not by the soil at all (there is no soil, only dirt.) This makes them not only less nutritious (if minerals aren't in the soil, they can't make it into the plant) but also less efficient. It takes a lot of energy to make those crops, which translates into a lot of pollution because there are no emissions controls on farm equipment outside California. That's an aside given our current topic, though.
Instead focus on processed foods.
That really is a place where a lot of harm is being done, so I agree that is where most of the change should take place. They should be required to be as nutritious as a basically nourishing meal. They can be fortified with supplements, which will help some, although often that goes awry. For example, Vitamin E Acetate.
* Actually leaner chicken is in demand right now, so they do care about fat, but it's only because the public is demanding it, the idiots. Eating fat doesn't make you fat.
Re: (Score:3)
A chicken is a chicken. If anything, factory farmed chickens are likely to be MORE nutritious as farmers carefully control their diets to maximize production.
They're controlling their diet to maximize production, which is a code word for weight. They don't care if the bones weigh more, they don't care how much of that is meat and how much is fat* and how much is water, their goal is to make the heaviest chickens they can.
There's a reason why fresh chicken breasts that you buy in the store tend to shrink up so much when you cook them: they're full of water. But they look nice and plump in the package. Also, the focus on size has also led to an increase in woody chicken:
https://www.thepoultrysite.com... [thepoultrysite.com]
* Actually leaner chicken is in demand right now, so they do care about fat, but it's only because the public is demanding it, the idiots. Eating fat doesn't make you fat.
Love that nice little bit of crispy chicken fat when you pan-fry or roast chicken (I actually pan sear in a skillet to get surface browning/texture while the over warms up, then throw it in the over to finish cooking). Luck
Re:Here's a radical thought (Score:4, Informative)
ANFO is not a fertilizer: It's an explosive made of mixing Ammonium Nitrate (AN) with Fuel Oil (FO). Fuel oil is essentially diesel fuel, and adding that to a field would ruin the soil for agriculture.
The Ammonium Nitrate is the fertilizer. It is not directly a petroleum product.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
You're right, it's fair that it's not actually ANFO being poured on crops. The diesel oil is poured into the heavy machinery that compacts the subsoil. The ammonium nitrate is presumably siphoned or mixed into the watering system, since it's water soluble.
Re: (Score:3)
You missed one other major difference and it isn't food related. Back in the 50's and 60's most labour was physical and most recreation was physical. Today a large portion of the population don't need as much physical exertion to carry out their daily work and most recreation is also physically limited.
All of these factors contribute to a life where there is (in general) more energy going into people's bodies than is being exerted.
Re: (Score:3)
...let's not guess and just look it up [statista.com] -- to pick a specific year, right in the middle: 1960, the life expectancy was 69.66 years in the US, and then in 2020 they've estimating 78.81 years -- so it's not a difference of ten years, it's a difference of 19 years.
I'm not up on the new math being taught these days but in my day the difference between 69.66 years and 78.81 years is 9.15 years not 19 years. 8^)
Re: (Score:3)
That certainly is a troubling trend in the US and may very well demonstrate that advances in medicine and public health are being overcome by other factors. It doesn't have much bearing on the fact that people in the 1960s, who were less obese and are being held up as paragons of health, had shorter life expectancies than today's 30% obese, engineered food chomping Americans.
This is a bit of a long reply, with a number of cites, so bear with. What do you think about the endocrine disrupters and obesity? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov] https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com] https://loe.org/shows/segments... [loe.org] https://www.niehs.nih.gov/heal... [nih.gov] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
It is an interesting subject, and in addition to a link to obesity, there are also feminizing effects which have been harmful to males, with testicular abnormalities. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov] h [nih.gov]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In the old days, women married men and then stayed home to cook, clean, and raise children. That doesn't happen nowadays. Now women refuse to stay home, don't know how or simply refuse to cook, and people aren't having children.
With nobody taking up the task of cooking for the family, what are people eating?
How about getting your lazy ass off the sofa and cooking for yourself?
Re: (Score:3)
Amen to that. Cooking is fun.
Re:We don't make our own food these days... (Score:5, Interesting)
What a disgusting example of gender shaming Nidi makes here. In America men make up the majority of workers that work over 50 hours per week. In America, men are more likely to be up earlier and off to work or back later from work than women. So the bigoted statement that the poster is lazy when he suggested home cooked meals decreased with women in the work force is just that, a highly bigoted statement towards men.
Yeah, but it's allowed. I listened to a group of women on a panel blaming everything on Sexist and racist old white men.
When a man pointed out that the ladies were bing sexist, racist and ageist, they claimed that was being sexist and racist. So apparently it depends on who a person is, and sexism and racism is not sexism and racism.
My wife and I both worked professional careers. Whoever came home first cooked dinner, if we were going to be around each other that evening (I travelled a good bit, and sometimes worked long hours)
The interesting thing is now that we are both retired, She has taken over the kitchen almost exclusively. We've fallen into some pretty traditional gender roles at her insistence. I mainly note this because in her career, she was a VP and the highest paid person in the corporation she worked for, presumably a feminist archetype.
As for dangerous, I will note that in my work, I sometimes was doing dangerous work that the ladies in our office refused to do (even though we technically had the same job title).
Re: We don't make our own food these days... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
The sugar laden foods came about because of the war on fat / war on salt... You remove fat and salt, the food tastes disgusting so you add other things to make it taste tolerable - including sugar.
Now removing the sugar too and it will taste like crap again, so what will it be replaced with? Most likely something worse.
The natural foods people have been eating for hundreds of years contained fat, salt and sugar - in sensible quantities. They need to stop messing with food, and go back to proper recipes usin
Re:Here's a radical thought (Score:5, Funny)
Of late, I've been watching a lot of documentary and even just plain TV shows from the 60's and 70's and if you do this you'll notice something.
You RARELY see an obese or even overweight person. I"m not talking just about TV/Movie stars, but if you watch crowd shots or "man in the street" shots of common every day people, you rarely see anyone with weight issues.
Why is that?
Back then everybody smoked cigarettes. Nicotine is a natural appetite suppressor.
Thus, we should be encouraging people to smoke.
Re: (Score:2)
Or you could, just, you know, promote preventative medicine.
That's pretty much exactly what this speaker in the article is doing.
What he is doing is telling lies for his own financial gain. We call that fraud.
Of late, I've been watching a lot of documentary and even just plain TV shows from the 60's and 70's and if you do this you'll notice something.
You RARELY see an obese or even overweight person.
[...]
Why is that?
Because they rarely showed an obese or even overweight person, because there was such a stigma against it. What the fuck is this, kindergarten? There were fat people back then too, you know.
Re: (Score:3)
There are certainly more fat people now, but there were certainly fat people back then. They were just forced to hide in the shadows. In the 1970s, 13% of Americans were obese. Today it's more like 30% so it's clearly gotten worse. But over 1 in 10 people were obese back then, pretending that nobody was fat fifty years ago is dumb as shit.
Re: Here's a radical thought (Score:2)
Healty food IS preventative medicine.
But, you suggestion is to give tanks to everyone instead of not dropping grenades anymore, have I got that right?
Re: Here's a radical thought (Score:5, Insightful)
Healty food IS preventative medicine.
But, you suggestion is to give tanks to everyone instead of not dropping grenades anymore, have I got that right?
Healthy food wouldn't have helped my friend who died in his sleep (in his mid 20s) of internal bleeding from a ruptured spleen after slipping in the shower. But if he could have gone to the emergency room or a doctor without fear of massive doctor bills? Hell, I had a $10k bill from a 2 hour late-night ER visit for a kidney stone. I ended up getting a herniated disc in my back in grad school. There were signs there was a problem (could feel a twinge run down my leg if I stepped off a curb sometimes) but if I could have gone to a doctor then without worrying about a potential bill, I might not have ended up needing a shot in my spine, or ended up with permanent numbness and weakness in my right foot/ankle. Medicine should not be a for profit industry, because you are literally forcing people to put a price tag on their own health, (lack of) pain, or their own lives.
Re: Here's a radical thought (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's why Europe considers the US system far right wing. There are lots of models for working health care systems in the world the US could copy. None are perfect but many are better.
Re: Here's a radical thought (Score:5, Interesting)
You should go live in China, they've got communism there and they don't believe in profits.
Or are you already living there and getting paid to troll us [zerohedge.com] over the Internet?
Spoken like someone who has never visited China. The topic is health care. To be seen by a doctor in China, first go to the hospital and stand in line to buy a ticket. The costs varies by how bad the medical problem you think you have. If you get the wrong ticket because you've self-diagnosed incorrectly then after you've seen the doctor who specializes in the wrong thing, stand in line again and buy the correct ticket. Oh, and if you need something really critical then be prepared to spend 100x the ticket price to a scalper who bought up the day's supply already and is standing outside to resell it to desperate patients.
Re: Here's a radical thought (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize that you don't have to go to China or any other communist country to get universal healthcare right? You can go to any developed country other than the US and get universal healthcare. A short trip north would take you to Canada that isn't communist and has a working public healthcare system*.
*I know there are going to be people wanting to post that Canada's healthcare system doesn't actually work but I will take it over the US system any day of the week (and twice on Sunday). If it is a decision between waiting to see a doctor and spending my life savings afterwards I don't mind the wait.
Re: Here's a radical thought (Score:5, Insightful)
Medicine should not be a for profit industry, because you are literally forcing people to put a price tag on their own health, (lack of) pain, or their own lives.
Unfortunately, medicine is goods and services, and since people want to eat they don't produce those things for free. Given that reality, somebody is going to be putting a price tag on your health, no matter what.
However, using healthcare as a profit center is a abject failure, witness the US healthcare system. You do realize that people are choosing to die instead of bankrupt their family? I will, and this is the final judgement on the Trumpian level failure of our Healthcare system. Death over treatment as the preferred option.
Re: Here's a radical thought (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a middle ground between using something as a total profit center with no checks for abuse and using profit to produce output. I work in the public sector, and when there are no expectations for result as there often are in "profit driven" businesses( where I used to work), people tend work to that level: SLOW. Profit is always looked down upon, but frankly I'll take a guy doing a job for profit over someone doing it "for the common good" any day of the week. The profit guy, invariably, does a better job faster. The key is knowing how to ameliorate the downsides to profit driven businesses while using the profit motive to produce good outcomes.
I'm not against profit. But in our system, we are in a spiraling positive feedback loop. Ever wonder about the 50 dollar band aid?. Or how a simple procedure can double in a year (my wife's family gets cataracts, and she got them very early. They do them one at a time. The second one was double the cost of the first one.
This is not happening because the hospitals or Insurance is greedy. They are caught in the loop as well.
As insurance cost increase, more people drop off the rolls. Or go with deductibles that merely mean they pay for everything anyhow.
So they end up using the emergency room as their primary group. But they don't pay because they can't afford it. Even if they declare bankruptcy, the hospital doesn't get paid, and the insurance company doesn't get enough to cover costs.
And the emergency room is the most expensive medical treatment around. The last year of my father's life, we ended taking him to ER a number of times. And it was true, a lot of obviously poor people in the ER with fairly minor medical issues. They get treated, and don't hear from them again until the next issue.
The irony is that as more and more people end up dropping off the rolls or on plans that essentially are just giving money to the insurance companies, we will eventually have a warped sort of universal healthcare. Bankrupt people, insurance companies and hospitals that can't figure out how to stay in business.
Right Approach: Diet, Exercise + Doctor Visits (Score:5, Interesting)
I tend to eat healthy and have a good BMI however I tend towards hypertension and high LDL cholesterol. With regular exercise, I can put my HDL at a very high range (very healthy) but my LDL requires statins to keep them in a healthy range, the same for my hypertension which requires ACE inhibitors. I also had narrow angle glaucoma (I'm quite long sighted) which was caught in a yearly doctor's appointment and fixed surprisingly easily by an ophthalmologist.
Years ago, I remember hearing from a gerontologist that our goals should be to be as healthy as possible when we die (it sounds counterintuitive but there's a lot of wisdom in that statement) and eating healthy (ie balanced) is a big part of that but regular doctor's visits will make sure that you'll live the vast majority of your life healthy and active.
Re:Right Approach: Diet, Exercise + Doctor Visits (Score:5, Interesting)
I went from eating a typical American diet (meaning a bad one) to a much better one:
1. No processed foods.
2. Organic fruits and vegetables.
3. Far less meat during the week, with all of it being unsalted organic chicken.
4. Low sodium [a couple hundred milligrams a day, at most], vs the several thousand milligrams most of us consume during the day.
5. A brisk, half-hour a day walk on my treadmill.
6. Eat less every day.
In one week:
1. I lost ten pounds.
2. My dangerously high blood pressure decreased by 35/28 points. Now I'm just in the "high" category, and not in the "have you drawn up your will?" category.
I had (yes, past-tense) relatives on pharmaceuticals to control their blood pressure, and it always lead to more pharmaceuticals to handle the side effects of the prior pharmaceuticals. There may be people who have no other choice (genetics or other reasons), but the vast majority of us have bad health because of bad lifestyle.
While John Mackey may have a self-interested financial interest in promoting healthy eating, he's not wrong about the health benefits. And the pharmaceutical/medical industry has a vested interest in us eating poorly. If we ate healthy and exercised more, the medical industry would experience a massive collapse.
Re: Right Approach: Diet, Exercise + Doctor Visits (Score:4, Informative)
Just changing diet can make you lose water weight, and rapidly. So they may have lost ten pounds right away. This happens to people on a keto diet for example.
Re: (Score:2)
That doesn't work because of how humans evolved. Youth will attempt to break the norms and engage in high risk behaviors, and that is the normal societal evolution.
Destroying this would harm humanity far more than shaving a few years off of the tail end of our collective life span.
uh what (Score:3, Insightful)
We will still need health care no matter how healthy we eat. Covid may affect fat people worse, but it still affects thin ones. Skinny people break limbs, too. Etc. What an ass.
Re:uh what (Score:5, Insightful)
But I read his statement in a different context than is being reported. I don't think he meant that we could eliminate the entire health care industry by eating right, I think he means there are problems that industry currently treats with drugs and the like, and proper nutrition would prevent in the first place
Re: (Score:2)
It is probably more complicated than fat vs thin
It always is. I'm 5'10, in college my senior year I weighed about 230-240, and took my one mandatory PE class. In my class was someone my same height, had to weigh at least half what I did, if not closer to 100lbs, all skin and bones. I was technically obese. However, I had just finished my final season of football and was in the rugby club that semester. This class was literally the only exercise he was getting. Which of us was healthier?
Re:uh what (Score:5, Insightful)
No one says we don't need health care.
But we DO need better preventative care....and that is something every individual needs to do.
Sure there are diseases and things happen, pandemic is a rare by valid example.
But before the pandemic and likely after the pandemic threat is over, we'll still have the problem of widespread obesity and the chronic health ills that brings with it.
Per my earlier post, if you go back and look at films of people just a very few decades back, it is rare to see anyone that is even close to being overweight or obese in the general population.
If we could promote the same eating and exercise habits for even just back then, we'd solve a lot of problem we have in the modern day which ARE linked to all of us fatsos (self included) running around.
I'm working on it myself....we need to have a national push to do this....one place to start, is to perhaps quit making obesity something to be proud of.
I'm not saying to make someone feel bad by shaming them, but we also need to push the message that this is NOT healthy and is not the human norm and that one should strive to be in better shape.
I cannot believe that the mass population now has a genetic predisposition to obesity, since the 60's and 70's.
No, this has to do with lifestyle and foods we're eating.
Re: (Score:2)
No, this has to do with lifestyle and foods we're eating.
And portion sizes.
I've been to the USA and one of the lasting impressions is that you guys sure know how to fill a plate.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree largely to your point, but the larger portions in restaurants compared to the rest of the world isn't an entirely new concept. We always served larger portions that much of the world, even before the obesity levels started rising towards the beginning of the 80's or so.
That's not the full answer.
And I like to get m
Re: (Score:2)
Americans have almost always eaten like that. Those portion sizes are what you eat if you work on a farm all day.
Re: (Score:2)
We will still need health care no matter how healthy we eat.
No one says we don't need health care.
Except CEO of Whole Foods "John Mackey" who is quoted in the story, right?
Hey dude, why not try reading TFS?
This is essentially the same thing the supplement industry is nailed for all the time, and when that happens, slashdotters cheer. This guy is making false medical claims (he is implying quite obviously that we don't need health care if we eat bet
Re:uh what (Score:5, Insightful)
I read the quote not literally, but more with the implications of:
The best way to live life and save money on your health, is to promote health and make needing to go to the Dr. a rare event in the normal person's life.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Treating comorbidities is vastly more expensive than treating injuries.
That is true, and yet does not at all speak to the point I was making. He literally said we should eat better instead of having health care. That is literally insane. In this case, it's sociopathic: if people believe that shit, then he personally profits. It's fraud, and what's more, it's fraud with medical ramifications. The FDA should open an office on his buttcheek, to make it easier to go straight up his ass.
Either CEOs are in charge or they aren't, in which case they either have a responsibility to wat
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
He's right though. When the population trends towards diabetics with heart problems and high blood pressure, medical care winds up being more expensive for everyone. If you go to the hospital or even a doctor's office, your medical bill is higher to make up for the people on Medicaid or Medicare regardless of WHY you're at the doctor's office. States and the Feds do not have a 100% reimbursement rate. You and/or your insurance company are expected to make up the difference.
When people live unhealthy lif
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously. Infectious illnesses are still a thing. Type 1 diabetes is still a thing. Cancers of tissue other than digestive tract are still a thing. Lupus is still a thing. Measles, rubella, HIV, meningitis, the list is endless. There are nearly countless illnesses that have little to nothing to do with what you eat.
Concept given in the story is asinine and demonstrates ivory towerism of incredible proportions. Complete disconnect by a rich and powerful person from basic principles based on which normal pe
Re:uh what (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me guess, you're overweight and felt attacked.
Really? Why the do you think skinny, healthy athletes still pay for healthcare?
I'd recommend you pull your head out of your ass. Carefully. The parent is correct here, and it's rather disingenuous to suggest to not "need" health care, as if dropping it altogether will be some goal to reach once you're at your ideal weight and cholesterol level. I've seen a doctor for medical issues less times than I have fingers in my life. Doesn't mean I don't "need" health care, as I still engage with professionals and do regular checkups and monitoring.
A better way of putting this, would be to say we shouldn't need to rely on our healthcare as much as we do, but reducing the burden and demand on the healthcare industry sadly will not reduce cost. Greed N. Corruption will see to that.
Re:uh what (Score:4, Insightful)
and it's rather disingenuous to suggest to not "need" health care, as if dropping it altogether
I think both you and all the people who you replied to need to re-read the summary. At no point did the CEO say suggest to not need healthcare and imply dropping it. He said quite clearly you "shouldn't" need healthcare. And you shouldn't as a result of having nasty food and pills shoved in your face.
At no point did he suggest dropping it or that simply eating better you'd live forever. You "shouldn't" need any insurance. You have it because things happen. But while we have electrical regulations that reduce the odds of your house burning down so you shouldn't need a fire department, why do we instead treat health differently?
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, look at his user name. My guess is he needs healthcare for his weekly meetings with tubgirl. (Look it up at your own peril. ;)
He could just be a big fan of cholera?
He's right (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The solution is to incentivize people to live and eat healthy.
I have an idea: how about we incentivize them with the benefits of being healthy and fit?
Re: (Score:2)
I have an idea: how about we incentivize them with the benefits of being healthy and fit?
I don't think there's any lack of that in the USA.
Re: (Score:2)
That's already the case with our deficient health care. You get rewarded by living and eating healthy by not getting screwed by the health system. Don't live and eat healthy and get taken to the cleaners by the health care system.
It doesn't seem to matter. So "incentivizing" (are you from Marketing 101?) people isn't working.
Re: (Score:2)
That's already the case with our deficient health care. You get rewarded by living and eating healthy by not getting screwed by the health system. Don't live and eat healthy and get taken to the cleaners by the health care system.
Unless you have bad luck, or bad genetics. Then you're fucked, regardless of how you ate or how much you exercise.
Re: He's right (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the solution is to ban food fraud and the resulting for-profit mass-assault and mass-murder. Let's be perfectly m frank about what this actually is.
There are people who willingly sell "food" that causes more deaths and sick people than any other pandemic or war before! The black death and WWII don't even come close!
And you just shrug and blame it on the victims? In true American manner, where everyone is responsible for everything happening to him and "vaginas got only themelves to blame if they did not reject the rape sperm". --.--
Because it lies about what it is, and is optimized for addictiveness at the expense of nutritional value and natural composition and structure (like micronutrients or freedom from denaturation).
And don't even try to blame people who barely make minimum wage for not buying at whole foods and Walmart also only offering them thrash at that price level.
Want them to eat healthy? Then stop peddling Ferengi takling points, and make sure those profiteers don't steal most of the wealth those employees actually made! Then they can afford actual food that wasn't a white powder or clear liquid at some point too.
Re:He's right (Score:5, Interesting)
Tax credits for able-bodied people who make the effort, plus subsidies to help them afford healthier food which is often more expensive than processed junk.
Or tax the crap food. It seems backwards to let the people pushing the cost-incurring crap keep their profits and make everyone else foot the bill.
Re: (Score:3)
do you blame people who fuck up the world just to see it burn?
If so, why on earth do you think it's ok to do it for money instead. How does that make it better?
Whole Paycheck (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And once the cost of health care is factored in, eating properly actually costs significantly less.
Re: (Score:2)
Eating healthy food does not cost so much, that is a myth.
It can be really expensive if you want your healthy food pre-packaged and with a big marketing campaign behind it.
Maybe you meant to say something like, "Preparing decent food at home isn't anywhere near as difficult or time-consuming as you might think".
Re: (Score:2)
Eating healthy food does not cost so much, that is a myth.
Why do people say, "That is a myth" when what they mean is, "I disagree"?
Of course it depends entirely on what you consider to be "healthy food". The Whole Foods CEO who wrote the fine article is said to be a Vegan, so his idea of "healthy food" is entirely different from mine.
Maybe a wealthy CEO finds it easier to eat healthy food and take care of himself than most people - including, I imagine, most of his employees.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a valid point for many of us, but not all. Access to anything resembling healthy, fresh food depends a LOT on where you live.
In my reasonably safe suburb I can get by car to a lot of places that sell semi-healthy food.
People living in crappier neighborhoods often don't have that option. They often don't have cars, nearby food stores sell exclusively crap, and the nearest places that sell fresh produce may be a 90 minute bus ride away.
They can easily get processed, frozen, off-brand garbage from the
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
... we need to find the underlying solution as to what changed in the last 50 years or so.
I have a couple of plausible suggestions, but they are politically incorrect and would make me so unpopular that I'll just let you guess.
Very Sensible - and Not. (Score:2)
No healthcare can match the health benefit that getting rid of cigarettes has had. The preventive fix achieved by avoiding the problem substance is very powerful. The same with food. An awful lot of health problems will disappear if you eat better.
But from that sensible argument this CEO then changes tack and sees healthier food as a replacement for healthcare. What? That is an entirely different thing. He's selling bullshit and asking you to eat that instead.
Re: (Score:3)
I think he's talking about reducing the burden on the system, not replacing it.
But that's bullshit too. Even if his product worked (which it doesn't) it would just change the age demographic. The overall amount of healthcare needed would stay the same.
Re: (Score:2)
I believe that EVERY major cause of death in the U.S., with the exception of auto accidents, is directly tied to diet. That absolutely includes, but is not limited to, COVID-19. It's been known since almost the start of the pandemic that people with conditions such as obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease were both more likely to become infected, and drastically more likely to have serious complications up to and including death, than those without. And each of these is directly relat
Re: Very Sensible - and Not. (Score:2)
No, that is not what he means.
He means it is the ideal state to never need health care because you made sure your environment isn't harmful in the first place. (Duh!)
A goal to strive for.
Obviously you "never" really hit a mathematical limit.
I put "never" in quotes, because I know older folks here in Europe who truly never needed a doctor in their lives. And somehow, most tribal people get by just fine. Especially with a complete lack of cardiovascular diseases unless introduced to processed "food". (And yes
Re: (Score:2)
You'll have a lot less illness in general, and a lot fewer preventable, premature deaths.
You still need healthcare to deal with those that remain, plus accidents, injuries, and other conditions not related to diet, even though most preventable illnesses and deaths are.
But it's an awful lot cheaper to set a broken bone than it is to control diabetes and hypertension in a 40 year old who with proper care will live to be 70, except only with a lot of expensive drugs and other medical interventions that will be
Yep (Score:2)
This from somebody who sells "Whole Foods". No conflict of interest there. Nope. Not at all.
I've long been convinced the problem isn't so much what people eat, it's the amount*.
TLDR reasoning: The world is big and there's a million different diets out there from paleo-vegans-since-birth to seal blubber with 0% vegetables.
What there isn't is a single group of people that outlives any of the the others based on their diet.
Re: (Score:2)
I've long been convinced the problem isn't so much what people eat, it's the amount*.
It is actually both.
Re: (Score:2)
I was waiting for this comment and I'm going to say you're wrong.
See the reasoning. There's whole groups of people out there living on complete garbage (according to medical theory) without being obese or living especially short lives, eg. the seal blubber eaters, but there's plenty of other examples.
There's one caveat: "Junk food" can enable you to consume a huge amount of calories in a very short time.
Having sugar/fat laden foods all around you every time you go out of the house doesn't help either, but
You are peddling Coca-Cola talking points. (Score:2)
It is very very much NOT the amount.
See, for proof: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
You can eat as many raw vegetables as you like, it is impossible to get fat from them, full stop. Your belly will stretch and you just don't want anymore before that. I'm surprised you never heard of the glycemic load or energy homeostasis. (Yes, a healthy body knows when it had enough. If you regularly consciously have to refrain from eating more, your body *is* sick, or what you ate must be qualified as an addictive drug.
Self-serving comment (Score:4, Insightful)
He is basically saying "buy my product! It will make you healthy!"
Why is this news? The guy is not a doctor. He is pimping his company.
Market (Score:2)
Last time I checked, you could buy lettuce and carrots at Kroger, Safeway, and even Wal-Mart. You can buy salads at McDonald's. I didn't see anywhere in the article where he said Whole Foods has the best health food.
Re: Self-serving comment (Score:2)
Then again, what do you expect him to do?
Be more sneaky about it, like his massa Jeff Bezos?
We know. But there is profit to be made! (Score:2)
And customers aren't real people. Who cares about other people. They ae just numbers. Never seen anyone of them cry or feel bad or die. That just happens to peers. And they are not as important as The One Number. That needs to go up for no reason whatsoever.
Also: Whole Foods has Bezos's hand up its behind. At least to the elbow. So about that virtue signaling ...
Re: (Score:2)
He's somewhat right (Score:2)
"I mean, honestly, we talk about health care. The best solution is not to need health care,"
For Diabetes and Heart Disease maybe, but if you have a car accident, get shot or infected by a disease, you're still fucked.
Re: (Score:2)
> if you have a car accident, get shot or infected by a disease, you're still fucked.
Does anybody actually think that he's saying that if everybody eats healthy and exercises that we won't need doctors for car accidents?
Because I don't think there's anybody who thinks he's making that argument.
Re: (Score:2)
And I think the people who wrote the headlines here and at the linked article and several other places I've seen this reported, are attempting to elicit that reaction from their readers.
Whole foods advert (Score:3)
In other news today (Score:5, Insightful)
Better idea (Score:3, Insightful)
to the guillotine .... OFF WITH HIS HEAD!
Time for Americans to step up to these assholes and take back control from the fat cats that do nothing of value but take all the wealth///
If only Steve Jobs ate better, hmm? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Came here to note that this is basically the Steve Jobs school of medicine, and it didn't work out so well for Jobs, who DID eat well and get exercise, to no effect on his pancreatic cancer...
The other thing this kind of resembles is modern "traditional Chinese medicine," basically a collection of placebos composed of largely ineffective old folk cures brought back into use by Mao Zedong to give the Chinese people something to feel better about as they were dying from diseases that they couldn't afford to t
Steve Jobs != Balanced Diet (Score:2)
I thought one of the big issues with Jobs was that he had a very strange diet that was not very balanced:
- https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
- https://www.nbcnews.com/health... [nbcnews.com]
Along with that, when his cancer was in advanced stages and he needed additional protein and fat (eating meat) to get his strength up, he refused and that helped lead to his death.
I don't think he is somebody that is a good example of what's described here.
So, it's all so simple, eh? (Score:2)
Victim blaming (Score:5, Informative)
It worked too. We didn't even get a public option much less a proper healthcare system like Canada or France (hilariously "communist" China has a private healthcare system).
Biden ran on more healthcare reform and the promise of a public option. Expect to see a *lot* of attacks on any attempt at reform. Remember to put on your critical thinking hat every time anyone's talking about healthcare (including me).
Indeed (Score:2)
He's a good CEO (Score:2)
He's promoting the sale of "healthy" foods, whatever those are, which would increase revenue, and the elimination of employee health care costs, which would reduce expenses. If you're an investor, it's a win-win.
Of course, the fact that societies without health care tend to have high rates of, oh, infant mortality, infectious disease, death due to accidental injury, et al. seems to be lost on him. I presume he expects his wife to provide her own prenatal health care? Health care in developed societies ha
The voice of corporate America (Score:2)
Lifestyle isn't the problem (Score:2)
Turns out it's good ol' fashion mutation. The engine that powers evolution has a downside.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.or... [hopkinsmedicine.org].
No credibility (Score:3)
He's right, over 73% of Americans are fat (Score:2, Interesting)
The percentage of overweight and obese Americans has nearly doubled in the last 40 years: https://www.diabetes.co.uk/new... [diabetes.co.uk]
For a society that is so risk averse, the growing obesity epidemic is perplexing. Add one more risk factor, like Covid, and the chance of an unexpected death goes up significantly.
Perhaps without the combined obesity epidemic the severity of the Covid pandemic might be more like a bad flu season? Is that what this data says? https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/da... [jhu.edu]
If being overweight isn't
If this is an ad, then the CEO should be fired (Score:2)
If this is an advertisement for Whole Foods by the CEO, then he should be fired. Nobody wants to be preached to about their personal flaws.
This CEO might actually personally care about an individual's health, but his employers - the corporation and its stockholders - don't. Their "concern" for us ends when they get our money. Health consequences be damned; that's our problem.
Re: (Score:2)
No, John, we must all be forced to hand over our money to insurance companies because living a healthy lifestyle is simply not an option.
Before World War II, the only kind of health insurance was for catastrophic conditions. You paid your doctor directly. Comprehensive health insurance was created as an incentive to get people to go back to work. It was never supposed to be the primary method of funding the health care system, but that's what it became.
Before the health care reorganization under Obama, there were doctors in Oregon experimenting going back to the old method. You pay your doctor directly, say, $100 a month, and you can visit t
Re: (Score:2)
Before the health care reorganization under Obama, there were doctors in Oregon experimenting going back to the old method.
Before insurance companies got involved [youtube.com], the old method worked well. But once people were forced to hand over their money, it's been all downhill from there.
Re: (Score:2)
It's the American Way.
I've read a lot of get-rich-quick books that told me to "find a need and fill it" but takes work and you'll have hundreds of competitors.
The real trick is to create a need. Fear is a good way to do it.
(preferably a "need" for something that's really cheap to manufacture, eg. bottled water - it's just water, in bottles... but you'll die if you drink that scary tap water!)