NPR’s Guy Raz: What if health care is overhauled and it doesn’t change the American diet in any way?

Michael
Pollan: We’ll go broke. If we don’t get a handle on these health care
costs, the new system or the old system, we’ll go broke. And that’s why
I think that really food is the elephant in the room when we’re talking
about health care.

First in
The New York Times last week and then on NPR this weekend, Michael Pollan made that point that if we want to fix our health-care system, we have to fix our food system.

From his op-ed in the
Times:

[T]he fact that the United States spends twice as much
per person as most European countries on health care can be
substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. …

That’s
why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately
depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on
and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry. …

Cheap
food is going to be popular as long as the social and environmental
costs of that food are charged to the future. There’s lots of money to
be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food
causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has
become patients for the American health care industry.

But even with that grim diagnosis, Pollan is optimistic about the
future, arguing that if insurance companies are required to accept
everyone, as called for by even weak health-reform legislation now in
Congress, then the insurance industry will become a powerful ally in
fight for better food and against the agribusiness lobby.