Healthy Eating

I just read about a Vanderbilt University medical students who had to go 5 days eating on the amount of money the average person on SNAP (aka: food stamps) receives (about $3/day or $1/meal) - but they also had to track calories and nutrition online to be sure they were also eating healthy. "The purpose of this experience is to help medical students better understand the patient's perspective on the challenges he/she faces to maintain a healthy lifestyle given certain financial restraints," says Lynn Webb, assistant vice chancellor for health affairs.

I think that this challenge would also be beneficial for our government officials to undertake. A large reason why our health care costs are so high in this country is because our country is overweight and eats horribly. Part of this is due to cost and convenience barriers to eating healthy. You can propose all the health care reform in the world, and you are not going to lower health care costs if you do not address this issue. It's great that Vandy med students will be sensitive to the challenges that their patients face, but how about getting politicians to do something to change those challenges rather than just having sensitive doctors?

(Note: I recently had a conversation with one of my supervisors at the hospital where I work who noted talk about unhealthy eating/lack of exercise/obesity being one of the biggest reasons health care is so high. The other reasons? Expenses for care of elderly and terminally ill patients. And medical malpractice. These reasons are not data-driven, by the way. Just based on conversations with hospital administrators.)