Prevention and Health Care Reform, Part 1

As the debate about health care reform continues, I'd like to post some thoughts about healthy living and its possible role in health care reform, not just from a policy perspective, but a personal reform as well.

I recently read an interview conducted by Dr. Dean Ornish, Founder and President of the nonprofit Preventative Medicine Research institute, and Democratic Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa about Senator Harkin's views on health care reform.  As an aside, Dr. Ornish has done fantastic research about the role of healthy living in overall physical and mental health and has proved it possible to actually reverse heart disease through healthy diet and exercise.

A quote from Senator Harkin in the interview: "To date, prevention and public health have been the missing pieces in the national conversation about health care reform. It's time to make them the centerpiece of that conversation. Not an asterisk. Not a footnote. But the centerpiece of health care reform."  This interview was published December 28, 2008, nearly one year ago.  Hopefully I'm keeping up to date accurately on the health care reform debates, but I haven't seen prevention and public health take the stage in enough limelight yet.

This morning I was watching CNN's "American Morning" while peddling on the elliptical machine at the county rec center and saw an interview with Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) regarding the "House Calls" she has been ordering to protest health care reform.   In a recent appearance on the Glenn Beck show, Bachmann called health care reform "the crown jewel of socialism," and told Beck: "the only thing I know what to do at this point to kill this bill is to ask and plead for real freedom-loving Americans to come to the steps of the U.S. Capitol tomorrow....[Health care reform] will be a disaster. It is unconstitutional. But we need the help of the American people."

When I heard Bachmann talk about "freedom-loving Americans" this morning on CNN, my blood pressure rose.  My first source of angst was that Bachmann's interview sounded disturbingly like some of Sarah Palin's interviews and news show appearances during the 2008 Presidential Campaign, which I deemed anti-feminist, anti-intellectual, and anti-community.  Upon deeper consideration, I came to think that "freedom-loving Americans" need to use their valued freedom to get a little more education on the health care issue and what we can do to help ourselves keep our own costs--and our country's costs--low.

We can't deny that our health care system is broken and corrupt.  As Dr. Ornish said in his most recent Huffinton Post op-ed, "Of course, we need to provide coverage for the 48 million Americans who do not have health insurance. It is morally indefensible that we have not already done so.  Obviously, the Americans without health care need a reasonable, affordable, and effective solution so that when they do need help, they can get it without sacrificing their budget.

But much of our current health care system is one of band-aids.  We treat heart disease, type II diabetes, high cholesterol, and other lifestyle-related illnesses with drugs and surgeries that treat the symptoms but do not address the causes.  While there are people who need--and should not be denied--proper treatment for any number of conditions, I can't help but imagine a world in which we did far fewer reactive surgeries or prescribed fewer drugs to mask symptoms of poor lifestyle choice.

If we could reduce the number of people afflicted with lifestyle-related conditions, we would reduce the percentage of our personal funds and tax dollars spent on health care.  We'd live longer, feel healthier, and be happier overall.  And, it's way cheaper to get educated about lifestyle reform, eat healthier, and join a local recreation center than it is to pay for prescription drugs and surgical procedures.  It's cheaper for us individually, and it's cheaper for us as a nation.

But these changes cannot occur without a great deal of education and advocacy on how we can change our lives for the better.  It's difficult to change, even when we know we are engaging in unhealthy behaviors.  It's difficult to think about the consequences of an unhealthy lifestyle because symptoms may not occur until much later in life.  Not to mention that eating healthy and exercising regularly requires a commitment of time, energy, money, and planning.  For the next few blog entries, I would like to make it my goal to provide vegan perspectives on health care reform and some easy ways to incorporate healthy changes into our daily lives.

Health care reform is certainly long overdue.  But I urge us to think about how we can prevent--and in the spirit of Dr. Ornish, reverse--some common medical troubles we may run into as a result of a poor diet and lifestyle.

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

Another recipe for your vegan sweet tooth.  This cookie recipes is similar to the Vegan Peanut Butter and Jelly Cookies but are chewier and richer due to the chocolate chips and lack of oats.

1 1/4 cups unbleached flour
1/2 cup oat flour
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 cup agave nectar (or other natural sweetener, such as pure maple syrup or unrefined sugar)
2 T non-hydrogenated vegetable spread (such as Earth Balance)
2 T oilve oil
2 T peanut butter
1 banana, mashed and blended with 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 cup vegan chocolate chips

• Preheat oven to 350. 
• Combine flours and baking soda in a medium bowl.  
• In a large bowl, beat agave nectar, vegetable spread, olive oil, peanut butter, and banana mixture until smooth and fluffy. 
• Beat flour mixture into the wet mixture until well blended.  Add chocolate chips.
• Scoop dollops of cookie mixture on to a greased cookie sheet.  If you prefer thinner cookies, flatten the cookie dough scoops with a fork or your fingers.
• Bake for 10-12 minutes or until cookie dough just begins to brown on the bottom.
  
• Cool on cookie sheet for 5 minutes and then finish cooling on a wire rack.
• Enjoy!

I'd love to hear about any recipes, comments, or questions you have about vegan baked goods.  Here are a few tips from my experiences:

• Combining a solid vegetable oil or fat (such as Earth Balance or peanut butter) combined with a liquid vegetable oil (such as olive oil) works better than just using one or the other.  
• Natural sweeteners are usually liquid, which usually means adding more flour.
• Using fruit as an egg substitute is great, but don't forget to add 1/2 tsp. baking powder for every egg you are replacing.
• Oat flour seems to produce better baked goods than whole wheat flour.  Combining a whole grain flour with an unbleached white flour is a good way to transition to whole grain baked goods.

Thanks again for reading!

The costs (more ways than money) of food

One of my Facebook friends just posted this graph on his wall and I couldn't help but write a blog entry about it: 

I think in our most common experiences and from the media's perspective, this is basically true.  

Consider a few examples.

The following is on the Dollar Menu at the McDonald's closest to my apartment:

Small Fries: 230 calories, 11 g fat, 160 mg sodium

McDouble: 390 calories, 19 g fat, 920 mg sodium

McChicken: 360 calories, 16 g fat, 830 mg sodium

Hot Fudge Sundae: 330 calories, 10 g fat, 180 mg sodium

Some special deals at my nearest Kroger supermarket this week:

White Bread: $1/20 oz. loaf

Cream Cheese: $1/8 oz.

Coke products: 79 cents/2-liter bottle

Fruit Snacks: $1.49/box

Frozen Hash Browns: $1.67/30 oz. bag

Keebler Fudge Shoppe Cookies: $1/12 oz. package

Cheez-It Crackers: $1/10 oz. box

Frozen Pizza: $1.99/30 oz. pie

***If shoppers buy 10 of the above--or other not listed--featured items, they will save an additional $5!***

By comparison, at a recent trip to Whole Foods, I spent the following:

Organic Blue Corn Chips: $2.50/10 oz. bag

Pure Organic Maple Syrup: $9/12 oz. jar

Organic Cinnamon: $3.39/2 oz. jar

Butternut Squash: $4/4-lb. squash

Organic Spring Mix Lettuce: $4/5 oz. package 

Unsulphured Blackstrap Molasses (I use it for baking; it's an excellent source of calcium and iron): $4.39/15 oz. jar 

By eating off the dollar menu at McDonalds or shopping the discounts at Kroger, we save some cash.  Choosing healthier options at fast food establishments is more expensive.  Eating at Ann Arbor's vegetarian restaurant Seva can earily cost $30 for a dinner for two; eating at Ann Arbor's Eve, a slow food restaurant that uses only local organic meats and produce can easily cost $40 per person.

But there must be a way to eat in a way that is healthy and cost effective.  Below I will offer a few justifications to spending more money on food and buying organic, and a few tips to keep food costs down.

Perhaps Americans need to get used to spending more money on food.  If it is true that "you are what you eat," wouldn't you want to invest in food, if it is ultimately an investment in yourself?  

Our food choices contribute to our overall health and well being.  According to Michael Pollan, in 1960, Americans spent 17.5% of their income on food and 5.2% of the national income on health care.  The numbers have nearly reversed since then.  Now, we spend 9.9% of our income on food and 16% of our national income on health care.  Other healthier countries spend much more on food costs.  The Italians and the French spend 14.9% and the Spanish spend 17.1%.  

It's not too far off to think that we spent more money on real healthy foods (not the foods labeled with fictitious miracle health claims), we might spend less money on examinations, procedures, and medications for health-related complications such as heart disease, diabetes type II, and obesity.

Benefits of buying organic foods:

• They contain more nutrients.  Grass-fed animals are better for us to eat than grain-fed animals.  Organic chickens and their eggs are healthier for us than cage-raised chickens.  Similarly, fruits and vegetables grown in organic soil contains many more nutrients--and many more times the amount of antioxidants--than produce grown on industrialized farms.
• They don't contain pesticides.  Yes, we eat pesticides regardless of whether we wash our non-organic produce.
• Don't support industrialized farmers' rapid destruction of our environment.  Large farms quickly and easily wear out the soil they inhabit by growing few different types of crops.  Runoff from fertilizer contributes to dead zones in the oceans, which suffocate wild fish and other sea creatures that are healthy parts of our ecosystem.
• Organic food tastes better.  This is something you can't truly understand unless you try it.

What about the higher costs of eating organic?  Here are some tips that have saved me money at the grocery store without compromising my quality of eating:

• Look for deals in weekly ads at markets that sell a lot of organic products, such as Whole Foods or coops in your town.  In addition to running weekly sales on products, Whole Foods, for example, publishes a monthly newsletter called Whole Deal that includes valuable coupons, weekly meal plans for singles, couples, and families, and recipes for meals that only cost a few dollars per serving.
• Buy produce that is local and in season.  It's cheaper and it tastes better.  It also didn't travel as far to get to the grocery store, so it's fresher.  You'll also help support local farms and a friendly environment this way.
  
• Buy foods in bulk.  Organic markets and coops often sell flours, pastas, grains, cereals, seeds, spices, and even natural cleaning products by the pound.  Not paying for packaging will save you a more than you may think. 
• Don't shop at the grocery store.  If you can grow some of your own plants--even spices in containers--you'll find that it's rewarding and tastier than food from your supermarket.  Check out your neighborhood's farmers' market or join a CSA.

Thank you, as always, for reading.  I'd love to hear your thoughts on these ideas.  Please comment!