Health for Sale

It seems like everywhere I turn these days health is for sale. Take Airborne, the self-described “effervescent health formula” that purports to “boost your immune system to help your body combat germs.” The product’s claims (though recently outed as overblown) are all about the preservation of pristine health: Every time you’re about to get on a plane or go to show-and-tell at your daughter’s germ-infested kindergarten, goes the message, Bam!, down some Airborne and you’ll be immune to colds, the flu, and, implicitly, every other manner of illness and disease. Then, of course, there are the “probiotic” yogurts, which are said to boost the immune system and aid digestion, about a billion other fortified foods, and still other "edible food-like substances" as Michael Pollan describes them. Now welcome the rise of immunity-boosting restaurants (?!), toss in a feng-shui styled McDonalds (meant, I guess, to promote serenity and better digestion while you slurp down fries), supersize yourself a fortified soda that millions of lobbying dollars fought to get into your (and your elementary school children's) hand, and you’ve practically got picture-perfect health being handed to you in a bag at the Drive-Thru window. It’s as though a critical mass of companies finally caught on that more and more consumers are concerned about health, so they’re packaging up the promise of it, slapping on a shiny label, and selling it back to us at 100-times the price of the exponentially healthier experience of, say, walking through the woods while drinking filtered tap water with a slice of lime. (Cost of entire adventure? Around $.15 for the lime slice.) Even some of the sacred territory in the legitimate health-food matrix — the idea that whole, real, organic, local, foods are the true best friend of good health — is quickly, if silently, eroding. Large corporations are waking up to the power of the “local, organic” brand to sell products and are buying up small farms [Check out this amazing and scary interactive graphic (courtesy of a professor at Michigan State University) that shows the corporate buyout of organic products. For more specific info on which dots mean what, click here]. What these giant companies are destroying in the process are the very real health, environmental, cultural, social and economic benefits inherent in locally-produced food. Who am I to say that "fortified soda" isn't a health panacea? (Okay, well, I AM a health editor so I think I do get to comment. And my comment is: “Of course they’re not!” followed closely by, “Blech!” And if you aren’t willing to take my editorializing as evidence, check out this recent study on the link between diet sodas and metabolic disease.) But the packaging up of health seems a phony and misguided endeavor because health, by it's nature, can't be sold. It isn’t a thing you can buy, it is a pursuit, a way of living, a set of choices and conscious decisions. It runs deeper and wider than eating yogurt that supposedly helps you poop. Here's Pollan again in an interview with Tara Parker-Pope on the better way to think about food and health:

"I think health should be a byproduct of eating well, for reasons that have nothing to do with health, such as cooking meals, eating together and eating real food. You are probably going to be healthy, but that is not the goal. The goal should just be eating well for pleasure, for community, and all the other reasons people eat. What I'm trying to do is bring a man-from-Mars view to the American way of thinking about food. This is so second nature to us — food is either advancing your health or ruining your health. That is a very limited way to think about food, and its's a very limited way to think about health. The health of our bodies is tied to the health of the community and the health of the earth. Health is indivisible."

So while we're free to buy all the "health in a bottle" we want, its not likely to do us any significant health favors in any real and lasting way. What good WILL buying all these products do? Make this guy rich.