Blame Big Food and Pharma - Village Magazine

62May 2015

CULTURE Food

Blame

Big

Food

and

Pharma

Capitalism and history

are bad for Irish health.

By Frank Armstrong

OU know you are in trouble

when the Minister for Health

boasts about taking out

health insurance although

the Programme for Govern-

ment stipulates a “universal,

single-tiered health service, which

guarantees access based on need, not

income”. In his cheery way Leo Var-

adakar was eﬀectively admitting that

the provision of public health care will

remain unﬁt for purpose and that the

poor are not enjoying the same level of

treatment as the rich. If his British

counterpart were to make the same dec-

laration there would be an outcry over

the denigration of a national institution,

the (national) health service. No-one

seems to care that those who cannot

aﬀord medical insurance (otherwise

known as the poor), are going to be sub-

jected to inferior treatment in two tier

Ireland.

But Ireland’s Left is bedevilled by

petty squabbles and attachment to

nationalist aggrandisement.

Moreover, the media are uninterested

(the principal shareholder of Independ-

ent News and Media recently acquired a

private hospital). The commodiﬁcation

of healthcare may also have sinister

consequences even for those who can

aﬀord it. Put simply: if a private client

doesn’t get sick then the medical profes-

sional doesn’t earn a living. Treatment

of disease becomes the raison d’etre of

the system. What motivation is there for

the doctor to prevent disease by advo-

cating the kind of lifestyle changes that

promote health before they encounter a

medical professional? And Big Pharma

just wants to sell medicines.

That is not to impugn the reputations

of individual doctors, nor to question

the validity of evidence-based medicine,

although the work of Ben Goldacre has

shown just how corrupt the system can

be.

The Big Food

lobby has

been highly

successful in

telling people

that without

consuming

meat and

dairy we’ll

collapse with

anaemia and

osteoporosis

“

May 2015 63

Of course it goes beyond Big Pharma

and their sinister machinations. It

extends to Big Food and all its wretched

emanations. We know that large compa-

nies actually work to engender

compulsive eating. Quite how our laws

permit this is staggering. Big Tobacco is

getting its comeuppance but we have a

long way to go before Big Food execu-

tives are hauled before the courts.

In Ireland the Big Food lobby has been

highly successful in telling people that

without consuming meat and dairy we’ll

collapse with anaemia and osteoporosis.

This is achieved through extensive lob-

bying, skilled manipulation of media,

and the funding of studies and confer-

ences where evidence-based methods

are manipulated to draw favourable

conclusions.

Most startling has been the success of

the dairy industry in promoting baby

cow food as necessary for preventing

osteoporosis. This ignores that human-

ity domesticated cattle less than ten

thousand years ago. Clearly we have not

evolved a dependence in such a short

time, and in any case most of humanity

is still lactose intolerant: the independ-

ent Harvard School of Public Health

argue that there are better sources of

calcium especially green leafy

vegetables.

Also occluded from most of the Irish

population is the ﬁrm evidence from

most long-term epidemiological studies

(from Okinawa to China and on to the

Mediterranean) which show that pre-

dominantly plant-based diets rich in

wholegrains and vegetables promote

longevity and reduce disease risk.

Sadly the medical community in Ire-

land which should be making

nutritional arguments are structurally

deterred from doing so. Often it’s easily

ridiculed practitioners of complemen-

tary medicine that are putting these

points across.

And so the health of the Irish popula-

tion deteriorates and we may be

reaching a point where, despite

advances in vaccinations and life-saving

antibiotics (notwithstanding their over-

use) today’s parents will enjoy greater

life expectancies than their children.

This, at least, was the ﬁnding of one

recent US study and Ireland seems to be

converging with US norms.

At least many educated people are

ﬁnding out about the beneﬁcial eﬀects

of dietary change for themselves, but

those without the educational capability

(another sector underpinned by ine-

quality) many are unable to untangle the

cacophony of nutritional advice. Obesity

is now, paradoxically, linked to food

poverty.

Across the water some months ago a

Tory peer by the delicious name of Gayle

Hunnicutt got into a spot of bother

when she suggested that those availing

of food banks simply had poor cookery

skills. “We have lost a lot of our cookery

skills. Poor people do not know how to

cook” Hunnicutt said. “I had a large

bowl of porridge today, which cost p. A

large bowl of sugary cereals will cost

you p”.

Predictably a wave of revulsion

greeted the dame’s remarks, especially

drawing attention to how cookery facili-

ties are often lacking in impoverished

circumstances. But she does have a

point. Poor immigrants arriving in Ire-

land from countries whose food cultures

amount to more than meat and two veg

display far greater dietary range and

acquaint their children with diﬀerent

ﬂavours at an early stage in their

development.

Ireland seems to have an even more

dysfunctional relationship with food

than its nearest neighbour and one UN

agency recently predicted that Ireland

will soon have the highest rate of obes-

ity in Europe. Of course the origins of

obesity are multi-factorial and include:

the stress of living in a competitive capi-

talist society; urban environments

unfavourable to walking, cycling and

public transport; and the over-use of

antibiotics. Nonetheless the absence of a

resilient food culture drawing signiﬁ-

cantly on native crops rather than

foodstuﬀs skillfully marketed by a capi-

talist system at a relatively advanced

post-industrial stage is apparent. The

convergence of Irish diets with those of

the wider then United Kingdom at the

end of the nineteenth century has had a

lasting eﬀect.

Improvements in diet through the

development of alternative agriculture,

especially fruit and vegetable cultiva-

tion, could help confront the obesity

pandemic through the appeal of

increased variety, freshness and a

reduction in cost.

Imbalances in the present system are

revealed in the  healthy-eating

guidelines of the Food Safety Authority

of Ireland (FSAI), which found that

foods high in fat and sugar were gener-

ally a far cheaper source of calories and

that fruits and vegetables were in the

most expensive category. Damningly,

the report noted that “healthy eating

was less aﬀordable for families depend-

ent on social welfare”. The authors

identiﬁed a need “for more work to be

carried out on how families on limited

incomes can best put healthy eating into

practice”. They argue that this “should

focus on developing advice on healthy

eating using cheaper food options, e.g.

) pulses (peas, beans and lentils) and

eggs, as a cheaper alternative to meat

and ) using fruit and vegetables in

season”. But the authors note the diﬃ-

culty of achieving this “due to lack of

familiarity with, and the acceptability

of, these food options”.

Sadly, the aspiration of shifting diets

towards a greater consumption of plant-

based ‘alternatives’ identiﬁed in the

authority’s guidelines are not shared by

another government agency: An Bord

Bia’s website contains no category of

plant-based recipes.

The challenge of shifting diet is also

associated with the inheritance of a food

culture. In childhood we are habituated

to the taste of certain foods. The sociol-

ogist Pierre Bourdieu claims that “it is

probably in tastes in food that one

would ﬁnd the strongest and most indel-

ible mark of infant learning”. It never

ceases to amaze how many Irish adults,

especially men, don’t eat vegetables.

Turning that around is a signiﬁcant

challenge.

But it is questionable whether a

system where the wealth and inﬂuence

of Big Pharma and Big Food are largely

unrestrained will allow a food culture

that is connected to human health, envi-

ronmental sustainability and respect

for other animals to emerge. As the

anniversary of  approaches it is

worth exploring whether another upris-

ing is required. •

Health

deteriorates

and we may

be reaching a

point where,

despite

advances in

vaccinations

and life-saving

antibiotics

today’s parents

will live longer

than their

children

“