After my mother died in the late 1980s, I was afraid that my father wouldn't be able to cope. But he surprised me. Pleasantly. For a number of years he lived in the same house, taking care of it (even mopping floors on his hands and knees) and the yard, traveling with his brother and seemingly doing well. But eventually (as expected) it became more than he could handle so he ultimately sold it and moved into a relatively small condo. It was hard on him and me.
In the condo over a few years, things deteriorated, and his mental capacity began to slip. Normal, right? By the time he died in 2002, he had some form of dementia, had lived four years in a nursing home and had progressively less and less quality of life.
When I first noticed the decline, I also noticed that he had stopped cooking for himself and had taken to getting Meals on Wheels, a well intentioned, likely chronically underfunded service that dropped off meals designed to fill people up as cheaply as possible. That meant lots of processed carbs, processed meats and relatively few if any fresh fruits and veggies, I found the meals abhorrent and tried to intervene to get better meals to my father, but he protested that they were too costly, even though I had paid for them. Not eating well was something my mother would not have stood for. And for her, eating well involved her making most things from scratch.
In today's New York Times, Mark Bittman discusses the possible link between poor diet (heavy carbs like my father got in his delivered meals) and Alzheimer's with the possibility that it is an extension of the varieties of diabetes - Type 3 to be specific. We have known for a long time that the SAD (standard American diet, to use Bittman's term) is not healthy, leading to obesity, diabetes and more. Now it appears that it may wreak even further havoc on the end of life. How can it be that companies can continue to make money while making us sick? There is something so very wrong with that. And I'm paying for this tsunami of illness in my insurance rates. Less than those with the illness to be sure, but paying none the less. And if Bittman's article is correct, we stand to see costs rocket to the further stratosphere in the future, putting even more strain on families and stressed health care providers.
I believe it is immoral to continue to produce foods that are literally killing us. And if you want to say the data isn't all in, or it's wrong to regulate what people eat, then I respectfully ask that for insurance purposes we split into two risk pools, those people who aren't convinced that certain foods and behaviors are the enemy be in one pool, continuing to do what they do. Then those of us who believe that that food - it's type, quality and variety - matters be in a second pool. You can continue to eat what you want and I won't be paying for it.
To read a summary of the research behind Bittman's article, click here.
