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 Globesity and Health Care: 5 Little Known Secrets of Why
We Are Fat and Miserable

Jed Diamond, Ph.D. has been a marriage and family counselor for the last 45
years. He is the author of 8 books, including Looking for Love in All the Wrong
Places, Male Menopause, The Irritable Male Syndrome, and Mr. Mean: Saving
Your Relationship from the Irritable Male Syndrome (May, 2010). He offers
counseling to men, women, and couples in his office in California or by phone
with people throughout the U.S. and around the world. To receive a Free E-book
on Men’s Health and a free subscription to Jed’s e-newsletter go to
www.MenAlive.com. If you are looking for an expert counselor to help with
relationship issues, write Jed@MenAlive.com.

While we listen to endless debate about health-care in America, the real

cause of our ill health goes unrecognized. My doctorate is in international health,
but you don’t need a PhD to understand some simple facts. As long as we live in
a society that believes that profits are more important than people we will
continue to sicken and die. It is much more profitable for big business to create a
culture of sickness than it is to create one focused on wellness.

Having a decent health-care plan might improve our health by 5 or 10%.

Changing the system that promotes obesity could improve our health by 60 or
75%. Here are some facts you should know.

1. Most enlightened countries find a way to pay for health care.

As T.R. Reid, author of The Healing of America: A Global Quest for

Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care reminds us, most countries find a way
to pay for the health care of its citizens. In travelling throughout the world he
learned that almost all countries use one of four health-care models: Germany's
Bismarck system, in which hospitals and insurers are private entities and
financing comes from payroll deductions; Britain's Beveridge Model, with the
government providing health care financed by taxes; the Canadian plan, where
private doctors and hospitals are paid by the government through taxes; and the
out-of-pocket care found in most poor nations, where those who can afford care
get it, while the rest suffer or die.

Unlike any other country, the U.S. combines all four models. The
employer-based coverage most workers get follows the Bismarck Model.
Veterans and soldiers are treated under the Beveridge Model (which
conservatives often call socialized medicine). Medicare is so similar to Canada's
system that they share the name. And the 47 million uninsured do as
Cambodians do.
 Reid interviewed doctors, politicians, patients, and experts in each
country he visited. Everyone had gripes, and all the systems he examined were
struggling with rising costs. But countries with universal coverage differ from the
U.S. in a striking way—they accept that everyone has a right to medical care
and, out of fairness, one system should apply to all. America must ask itself, Reid
writes: "Should society guarantee health care the way we guarantee the right to
think and pray as you like, to get an education, to vote in free elections? Or is
medicine a commodity to be bought and sold?"

Health care and food care are intimately related. We can’t get healthy in
a system set up to make big profits on being sure we are stuffed, starved, and ill
informed.

2. Regardless of how we decide to pay for health care, real health comes
from what and how we eat.

In his book Stuffed & Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food
System, author Raj Patel says, “Today, when we produce more food than ever
before, more than one in ten people on Earth are hungry. The hunger of 800
million happens at the same time as another historical first: that they are
outnumbered by the one billion people on this planet who are overweight.”

He goes on to say that the reason the world is both “starved” and “stuffed”
is social rather than personal. “Global hunger and obesity,” he says, “are
symptoms of the same problem, and what’s more, the route to eradicating world
hunger is also the way to prevent global epidemics of diabetes and heart
disease, and to address a host of environmental and social ills.”

2. Big profits are made getting us to go from blue to red.

The Center for Disease Control has a color coded map showing our
increasing obesity levels.
Percent of Obese (BMI > 30) in U.S. Adults

Percent of Obese (BMI > 30) in U.S. Adults

<previous next> play stop
3. The non-white population is particularly vulnerable.

White Non-Hispanic

Hispanic
 Black Non-Hispanic

4. Diabetes and Obesity go together.

County-Specific Diabetes and Obesity Prevalence, 2007

Wide sections of the Southeast, Appalachia, and some tribal lands in the West
and Northern Plains have the nation's highest rates of obesity and diabetes. In
many counties in those regions, rates of diagnosed diabetes exceed 10 percent
and obesity prevalence is more than 30 percent.

Eighty-one percent of counties in the Appalachian region that includes Kentucky,

Tennessee, and West Virginia have high rates of diabetes and obesity. So do
three-quarters of counties in the southern region that includes Alabama, Georgia,
Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina.
Obesity
Diabetes

5. We’re fattening our kids for the kill.

Rates of obesity have tripled among kids ages 12 to 19 since 1980, with one
third of America’s youth now overweight or obese and almost 10 percent
of infants and toddlers dangerously heavy.

If current trends continue, nearly one in three kids born in 2000—one in two
minorities—will develop type 2 diabetes in their lifetime. The disease is
linked to hear attack, stroke, blindness, amputation, and kidney disease.
Is this what we want for our children?

Solutions Are 90% Social and 10% Personal.

Most people do everything they can to lose weight. Each year we make
resolutions to get fit and lost weight. We are successful for a short time,
but then the weight of the world comes down us and we are back where
we started.
 Dr. David Kessler, the former head of the FDA, argues that the fattening of
America has happened by design as food companies intentionally
manufactured irresistible cocktails of sugar, fat, and salt. We wouldn’t
allow drug pushers to sell drugs to our children, why do we continue to
allow food pushers to addict our kids?

According to Kelly Brownell of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and
Obesity, “The country defaults to giving industry the benefit of the doubt.
Industry says you don’t need to regulate us; we’ll police ourselves. The
tobacco industry abused that with God knows how many lives as a
consequence. To expect the food industry to be different may be wishful
thinking.”

It’s helpful to remind ourselves that the food industry and the cigarette and
alcohol industry are really one in the same. Most people have heard of
the cigarette company Philip Morris. It is now part of the benign sounding
company called Altria. Among their brands are the following:

Ste. Michelle Wine Estates

Miller brewing company
Kraft foods (includes Oscar Meyer hotdogs, Philadelphia cream cheese, Maxwell
House coffee, Nabisco, and Oreo).

You can bet that they will use the same kind of promotions that have been
effective in getting people hooked on tobacco and alcohol to get us addicted to
their “food” products.

We can eliminate a lot of the problem if we buy real food made as close to
home as possible. You won’t find Big Food at your local Farmer’s market or in
your back yard garden.

Drop me a note. I look forward to hearing from you.

www.MenAlive.com or Jed@MenAlive.com
Obesity and Diabetes

By Jed Diamond, Ph.D

For more information Contact: Jed@MenAlive.com or www.MenAlive.com

Oprah is mad as hell and she isn’t going to take it anymore. Once again she lost a
bunch of weight, looked good, and felt great. And once again she put on a bunch of
weight, looked fat, and felt awful. She’s certainly not alone. Studies show that in our
lifetime 7 and of 10 women and 9 out of 10 men will become overweight. We’ve all
been on the latest diet, taken off some poundage and promptly put it back on again. But
if Oprah, with all her high-tech trainers can’t keep the weight off, what hope is there for
us?

I was watching Larry King the other night as Oprah’s personal “dream” team of
experts talked about the courage Oprah has shown in being open about her weight gain
and frustration that “weight” is still an issue for her. We heard from her personal trainer,
Bob Greene. We heard from her personal physician, Dr. Mehmet Oz. We heard from her
personal spiritual advisor Michael Bernard Beckwith. All three are absolutely tops in
their field. If this team can’t help Oprah keep her weight under control, two conclusions
seem logical.

First, weight-gain is inevitable and we should stop trying to lose weight and accept the
fact that we’re all destined to become fat.

Second, the dream team is missing the real reason Oprah, you, and I keep getting fat in
spite of all we do to lose weight.

I’m convinced that the second conclusion is the right one. The key to understanding
what’s been missing is to take a closer look at the approach that Oprah, you, and I have
been taking to weight gain and weight loss. We all believe the problem is “personal.”
Since Oprah can afford the best help money can buy, she is able to hire the best
“personal” physician, the best “personal” trainer, and the best “personal” spiritual
advisor. For those of us on a more limited budget we settle for the latest “personal” diet
program.

But what if the real problem we face is “social” not “personal”? What if all our
personal efforts will be for naught, without a change in our social understanding of food?
What if the missing person on the dream team is a London born economist who worked
at the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and the United Nations? His name is
Raj Patel.

I first met Raj in Mendocino, California when he was on tour for his book, Stuffed &
Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. Though he started out as a card-
carrying member of the corporate-dominated economic system, he has since become an
outspoken and noted critic of all of these organizations, and has been tear gassed on four
continents protesting against his former employers.

Patel believes that the reason we are overweight has less to do with our personal
practices as it has to do with corporate practices. And there’s something we can do about
it. Here’s how he begins his book:

“Today, when we produce more food than ever before, more than one in ten people on
Earth are hungry. The hunger of 800 million happens at the same time as another
historical first: that they are outnumbered by the one billion people on this planet who
are overweight.”

He goes on to say that the reason the world is both “starved” and “stuffed” is social
rather than personal. “Global hunger and obesity,” he says, “are symptoms of the same
problem, and what’s more, the route to eradicating world hunger is also the way to
prevent global epidemics of diabetes and heart disease, and to address a host of
environmental and social ills.”
 If you’d like to learn more about the real reasons Oprah, you, me, and 1 billion others
are getting fat, I suggest you check out Raj Patel at www.rajpatel.org or
www.StuffedAndStarved.org.

To receive my free e-newsletter please visit me at www.MenAlive.com

Your comments are appreciated.

Contact: Jed@MenAlive.com www.MenAlive.com