Policy to ban or severely restrict foods that we know cause diabetes, heart attacks, hypertension, and obesity.

Healthy and proactive lifestyle.

I bet we could cut our healthcare costs by 90% in just one decade.

I'm sure Monsanto ,Tyson Foods and the food lobby heart the healthcare lobby.

Checking into the latest, greatest fitness or healthy app will make you no more likely to be heathy than buying Nike makes you a great athlete. The community support is undeniable, but if we changed our policies and our lifestyles, we'd be a much healthier country.

The truly promising arenas, besides policy changes, are the ones science is advancing. Bioinformatics is an exciting field; if only we could convert the food scientists into other disciplines, we all might be better off.

What does troutgirl say?

I'm all for a healthy lifestyle -- who isn't? -- but the older I get, the more I believe that people just don't do things that they find unpleasant in the short term... no matter how great the benefits in the long term, or even the slightly less short term. I've learned a lot about this from Bakadesuyo!

Also, remember that diabetes, hypertension, and obesity are rarely the actual cause of death -- they just happen to be correlated with heart disease and stroke, which ARE major causes of death. And in theory these are all relatively cheap to treat, so they're probably not going to be responsible for 90% of health care costs. My impression is that long-term illness like these -- and asthma, allergies, orthopedic problems, etc. -- are awful for QUALITY of life but don't necessarily have a very bad effect on LENGTH of life. Despite all the hype about the "obesity epidemic", life expectancy is at an all-time high of 78 years.

I hate to say this, because I was saved by it myself, but I'm pretty sure that "heroic medicine" -- surgery, radiation, chemo -- account for an awful lot of the total cost of healthcare. And I think that a lot of this is just not preventable by healthful eating and exercise. You really can't predict who is going to get cancer, need a hip replacement, be injured in a gruesome car accident, or have an aneurysm by looking at them.

In some ways, the first part confirms that I think policy should play an important and proactive role; especially if we can teach kids early.

Fascinating insights. Length of life is as long as ever, but "heroic medicine," as you mention, is as advanced as it's ever been.

Michael Pollan in his book "In Defense of Food," does argue that lifestyle choices might be linked to cancer, IIRC. However in Blink by gladwell he cites a study that showed strength of relationships was critical for life expectancy.

It's exciting to learn more.

Naval wrote this: "It's very simple, actually. Almost everything designed and served by restaurants and supermarkets is made for your mouth, not your body. Almost everything designed to seem healthy is made for brandability, mass production, and differentiation. No food manufacturer or restaurant can make money by telling you that the best things are whole, unprocessed, non-patentable or trademarkable, undifferentiated meat and vegetables."

And i think a high-protein diet is the only way to do this and simultaneously feel satisfied and full.

What it comes down to this: it's expensive to eat healthy in this country, and inexpensive in most countries to eat healthy/organic/unprocessed.

http://pandawhale.com/convo/3273/q-and-a-are-high-protein-low-carb-diets-effective-nytimescom