MNN - Mother Nature Network

Michael:  Healthcare crisis. Well, since 1960 when I was a boy, spending on healthcare as a percentage of GDP has gone from 5 percent to nearly 18 percent today. We will not be able to insure everybody in this country unless we get a handle on healthcare costs. And when you look at those healthcare costs, as the CDC has done, you discover a rather alarming fact: that of the two trillion dollars we’re spending on healthcare in this country now, that’s 17 percent of our GDP, fully 1.5 trillion, they estimate, is going to treat preventable chronic disease, the great majority of which is linked of course to diet and the way we’re eating. Four of the top ten killers are linked to chronic disease. 70 percent of us will die from diet-related chronic disease. 

 

It is no coincidence that in this period when our healthcare costs were going from 5 percent of our income to 18 percent, our spending on food was plummeting from 16 percent to now under 9 percent. Is there a connection as those two lines crossed? Of course there is. Could we reduce our healthcare spending by spending a little bit more on healthy, quality food? Without a doubt.