The link between the food you eat and complications with COVID-19 is based on whether your dietary pattern is helping you to prevent or promote chronic diseases.
“It’s so clear that the overwhelming weight of serious disease and mortality is on […] those with a serious comorbidity: heart disease, diabetes, obesity…”
Anthony Fauci, MD
As I covered in a previous article, increased prevalence of chronic health conditions contribute to disproportionately high mortality rates from COVID-19 in black communities.
COVID-19 has caused us to reflect on the roots of our cultural eating habits. Even rethink the relationship we want with food going forward. Because COVID-19 is chronic disease-risk based, not race based.
Is health really wealth?
It’s common knowledge that a plant-based dietary pattern is protective against food-related chronic diseases. America has long been ranked among the wealthiest nations in the world. We have been blessed with an abundance of natural resources. Fruit and vegetable production occurs throughout the United States. When our season ends, production shifts to Mexico and Central and South American countries. This allows us to enjoy many fresh produce items year-round.
And yet
- Americans consume less than half of the recommended minimum of five servings of fruits and vegetables per day.
- Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries.
- More than 37 million people struggle with hunger in the United States, including more than 11 million children.
- According to the CDC, six in ten Americans live with at least one chronic nutrition-related disease. Namely, obesity, heart disease, stroke, cancer, or diabetes.
- These and other chronic diseases are the leading causes of death and disability in America. They are also a leading driver of health care costs in a country where an estimated 60% of all bankruptcies are the result of a medical incident.
If health is wealth and we’re among the sickest countries — how can we also be wealthy? More on this later.
Analysis Paralysis
Of course, the fact that people are still going hungry, getting sicker, and dying at a younger age in one of the world’s richest countries is not news. In fact, the many studies, documentaries, and movements intended to wake people up about the need to fix our food distribution and health care system may sometimes impede action.
Yes, backlash against healthier eating habits is led by a legion of corporations and governmental offices with a lot invested in the status quo; they have the money, power, and know-how to spin the facts as necessary to protect their interests.
But ordinary Americans share the blame for inaction. Ironically, constantly hearing conflicting messages about what to eat, how to cook, what will make us sick, and how to manage those illnesses is so overwhelming that a lot of us turn to our extra-sweet, high-calorie, cheap and easy-to-obtain comfort food in order to cope.
When the problem seems so big and ingrained into society, most of us don’t really know where to begin to make a change. Even though when cooked from scratch — beans, whole grains and vegetables are widely available and affordable for most. It can come down to choice.
But the fallout from COVID-19 may help.
It makes the problem real and tangible.
Even when you know the statistics about food in this country, it’s relatively easy to ignore them. While the idea of over 11 million American children going hungry is upsetting, we have an estimated 74 million children overall and we lose sight of the ones suffering. Unlike other countries, where you may be exposed to groups of people living in obvious squalor and children forced to panhandle for food, poverty in the US—and the health effects that come from cheap, overly processed, and unhealthy foods—can be comfortably overlooked: it’s hiding in plain sight.
Premature deaths are harder to ignore.
Yes, we all must die. And when it seems as if every day, experts declare that one more thing is going to kill you, it begins to feel like everything in society will kill you eventually. But COVID-19 is killing people now. And as testing progresses and the ERs and morgues visibly fill up, you have to be willfully blind not to recognize that fact.
The threat is specific, indiscriminate. . .and responsive.
Even as media, politicians, and decision-makers cater to the human instinct to find a pattern—the virus is more likely to affect old people, black people, poor people—facts show that this virus is contagious and can impact any and everyone. Yet science has identified factors and behaviors, including:
- Successful mitigating behaviors—like washing hands, wearing masks, and social distancing—that stem the spread of infection
- Proven risk factors—like diabetes, heart disease, and cardio-respiratory issues—that increase the risk of fatal complications
Crisis has increased engagement.
This leads to awareness. The pandemic has created a worldwide crisis. It’s providing everyone a rare opportunity to witness how different countries protect their citizens and economies. As America fails to compare well with our peers, people are increasingly questioning the way we provide basic, fundamental services like policing, education, healthcare, and nutrition. And many are unhappily surprised by the status quo.
The reasons for this state of affairs in one of the richest countries on Earth are convoluted and complex. But the underlying causes are simple and straightforward.
Power and Profits—This IS America
In her influential book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander successfully tied suppression of voting rights to the development of the prison industrial complex. In the process, she clearly illustrated how this suppression of civil rights was effectively—and profitably—monetized.
It hasn’t been exposed yet, but there is an equally macabre origin story for the flawed food policy system that pours unhealthy, high-calorie foods into grocery stores throughout America, contributing to the rise in chronic illness throughout the country.
And just as with other scandals, even if the basic facts are discovered and exposed, the perpetrators, benefactors, and willing enablers will be equally hard to pin down, the legacy of the damage equally enduring, and an effective resolution equally elusive.
Even when we are not fully aware of our motivations, people do what they do for a reason. A short timeline of events that have impacted food production and distribution in America. This helps shed light on the origins of our present food distribution policies.
Your Body, Your Choice
As our brief timeline of the history of US food production clearly illustrates, commercial food production is no easy task. And these are only the facts surrounding farming concerns. We haven’t even considered other ethical, environmental, and economic concerns like:
- the living conditions of those who harvest the crop
- sanitary practices and procedures of livestock and food processing companies
- environmental impacts of animal agriculture, food packaging and distribution efforts
- the economic influence marketing and advertising experts have on our buying decisions
This does not mean that capitalism has disempowered us. In a system designed around profit, our spending money gives us some leverage in determining what products come to the market.
Simply put, they can’t sell what we won’t buy.
Our greater interest in and understanding of nutrition’s many affects on our overall health has already had an impact. There are an increasing number of plant-based options on the market today, some more healthy than others. The more consumers demand healthy options, the more corporations will respond to the opportunity to increase profits by supplying them.
With continued education, open conversation, time, and determination, our buying habits will eventually alter the focus of our now faltering food distribution policies, one meal at a time.
About the Author
Alissa Nash is a published author and founder of ThatIsWhatIDo.com, a strategic marketing firm for small business owners. Ms. Nash started her career as a Diversity Specialist. She is former VP of Learning & Development. She spent nearly 30 years gaining knowledge and insight into effective methods to influence human behavior. Ms. Nash firmly believes in promoting the best of both conservative and progressive philosophies. She believes the community needs the change management, knowledge transfer, brand development and strategic thinking skills of a variety of professionals to help communicate and implement the ideas and solutions championed by our sociologist and political scholars.