Weird Science

I hit on this a few mos ago bc I was spending so much on food. who knew a candy bar or donut for breakfast has less sugar and calories than the average fiber rich cereal recommended by the average rd? THANK YOU Professor for injecting common sense back into your profession. No one is listening to RDs anymore they give us strange food phobias and make ppl afraid to eat.

I started eating junk food daily b/c I realized that my maintenence plan was low in calories. I had to have the trade off of liking what little food I could have. If you have done the pyramid over and over w/o success, I recommend the junk food route. I look forward to eating now–no more egg white omlettes! R U with me?

Wow. This person is seeing legitimacy in Haubs diet, which Haub himself says he would not necessarily recommend to anyone because while it made him healthier, it did not make him healthy. No kidding, Sherlock. Haub is not a bad person for this project, but he strikes me as a little irresponsible. As a nutrition professor, his job is to advance the science of nutrition (which the convenience store diet doesnt really do), not to set eating policy for America. But come on. When you publicize your diet on Facebook and get CNN to cover it, you know the book deal is maybe six months out. And as obesity levels show no signs of going down any time soon, its clear that our countrymen are more interested in finding reasons to maintaining their unhealthy lifestyles than they are in doing the hard work of getting healthy and staying healthy. The first step is admitting there is a problem. The second is learning how to be healthy again. This junk food diet nonsense does neither.

A bit of personal disclosure: Six months ago, I was categorically obese. I am 57 and I weighed 206.4 lbs. The funny thing is, by today’s standards, one would have looked at me and thought overweight, sure, but obese? Naw. But I was. The rest of my family was in a similar situation, so collectively, we adopted a vegan diet (we had been ovo-lacto vegetarians before, but we still ate way too many pizzas and French fries) and we began taking martial arts classes at a terrific local dojo. (Note: Our dojo is very familiy oriented, which made it about a million times easier for us to all get fit; taking your health seriously is best done as a group effort.) At the time of this writing, I am down to 171.1, and my wife and kids have shown similar results. I have lost only a little more weight than Haub, but Ill put myself up against him for fitness and overall health any day of the week, because we sought a nutrition-rich diet and an exercise-heavy regimen to get healthy. I didnt do it to look good; I did it because I watched my father fight cancer for the fourth time, and dammit, Im not going to go down that same route. Right now, Im healthier at 40 than I was at 20. And it wasnt Twinkies that got me here.

The point of this story is that good health is not easy to come by in a modern society of sedentary white-collar work, a food industry dedicated to producing high-salt, high-fat, low-nutrition food, and a news media willing to publish stories about schlock-science diets that give people permission to continue pursuing their own worst eating habits.

These foods are consumed by lots of people, Haub said to CNN about junk food. It may be an issue of portion size and moderation rather than total removal. I just think its unrealistic to expect people to totally drop these foods for fruits and vegetables. It may be healthy, but not realistic. And this is coming from a nutrition professor. I reject Haubs logic, and so should the rest of the life & health insurance industry. After all, its this very industry that is paying up front for the health cost of obesity (namely heart disease and Type II diabetes) as well as for lower margins on life insurance thanks to early departures (thanks again to heart disease and obesity-related health problems). The life and health industry has a clear and compelling reason to get America healthy, and yet we dont see any efforts that really make waves. Why not?

The CNNs of the world are dying to publish jokers like Haub and his ridiculous diet because Doritos-munching readers cant wait to click on those stories with their dusty, orange fingers. But shame on both Haub and CNN; in an age where our national obesity rate has become an honest-to-God health crisis, the experiment and the coverage its gotten are more than a waste of time. They are irresponsible, for they both endorse in their own weird way, the self-destructive food that we have become addicted to as a people.

Its hard to get people to want to learn about getting healthy with the same passion as they have for researching the merits of junk food, but the life & health industry needs to take up the challenge. It needs to do it with a unified voice, and with all of the resources it can muster. Readers of this blog have chided me on a number of occasions over the supremacy of the free market to address our largest concerns, rather than waiting for the government to get involved. I agree. And here is a golden opportunity for the market to stand and deliver.

While I cannot imagine healthcare reform gives insurers much room to maneuver when it comes to underwriting obese policyholders appropriately, insurers can provide stronger and more visible incentives for getting and staying healthy. Insurers keep some incredible records on claims and underwriting data; what if the 10 healthiest policyholders each year got a new car? Or what if the biggest weight loss earned a free trip around the world? These things are expensive, but so is an angioplasty. Come on, guys. Do the math and weigh in on this. Your policyholders need it, even if they dont realize it.