Startling, New Revelations

"We heard that the biggest barrier to good health is poverty. It really hit me in a visceral way when we did those town halls."
"The cost of inaction is higher than acting."
"This report does not point fingers. Canada is a prosperous country and can do better."
"If we could eliminate child poverty, we could go a long way to improving health."
"We represent over 78,000 physicians. We actually have a fair amount of political leverage. It behooves us to start looking at these things."
Dr. Anna Reid, president, Canadian Medical Association

The Canadian Medical Association has issued a report based on conclusions that resulted from public consultations taking place at six "town hall" meetings in cities across the country during the spring and the winter before. The report points out that poor housing, lack of access to healthy food and early childhood programs have their detrimental effect on health outcomes. Truly an amazing conclusion.

Does it acknowledge that many parents refuse to permit their children to receive health-mandated inoculations against childhood diseases, some of which can have disastrous outcomes? Even though school attendance requires that all Canadian children receive these free inoculations in a country where medical treatment is built into a universally accessed system, many parents believe them to be harmful, against all scientific assurances to the contrary.

Does it acknowledge that it is not only people living in what is termed in Canada underprivileged conditions, but the middle class as well who commonly set their mealtime tables with fast food? Which is to say 'food' whose nutritional quotient has been impaired by processing. Food that appeals to a majority of the population. Food whose fat, salt and sugar content is beyond what any healthy diet should include, and whose nutritional component is sadly lacking.

Dr. Reid insists that it is the responsibility of federal, provincial and territorial governments to render top priority in the development of an action plan for the elimination of poverty. A worthy, if somewhat Utopian goal. Governments at every level run public relations campaigns to impress upon people the necessity of providing healthy food for themselves and their offspring. None of which appears to alter the public's preferences for fast food, devoid of whole-food nutrition.

One hears repeatedly that people on limited incomes cannot afford other than junk food, or haven't access to healthy food. Whole foods are no more costly than processed foods. But they do require thought and dedication to the idea that food preparation will be involved in their presentation. People are largely disinterested in preparing their own food from scratch; it is simply too time-consuming and inconvenient, as far as they're concerned.

Discipline and planning ahead would make it far less so, however. The skills to learn how to manage an elementary working kitchen, to stock a refrigerator with decent food, to take constant inventory using up perishables before they lose their nutritional value and become stale, to provide good alternatives to what is called junk food, is achievable, but people must decide this is what they want to do for themselves.

It is somewhat absurd for the Canadian Medical Association to call upon its members to become more active in this sphere. Medical practitioners themselves are no different than any other segment of the population, knowing little about what constitutes useful food choices, opting for convenience rather than troublesome food preparation.

We live in a busy world, where people are distracted by a variety of competing interests. So when convenience foods are so widely and appealingly available, they are chosen.

Most schools do a fairly good job of teaching children to navigate their way around food choices. But if children have their first choice, it is what tastes good to them, having become accustomed to sugar, salt and fat in abundance. And parents are more than willing to accede to their choices, since it simplifies their own responsibilities. Convince parents in general that they are responsible for their children's health through introduction to whole foods and this goes beyond income levels.

There will always exist, in every society, no matter how advanced, people who live below the poverty line. And that poverty line is a moving target. What was taken to be poverty at one time in the not too distant past hardly resembles how most people now live taking for granted ownership of and exposure to consumables that people knew once was available only to the wealthy. And that was before the advent of universal medicare.

People are, generally speaking, capable of being more responsible for themselves, taking it upon themselves to make more intelligently useful choices. Persuasion is perhaps the problem, how to achieve the goal of convincing people that it is their responsibility to look after their health outcomes and that of their children that is important, not entertainment, not fleeting pleasures, not celebrity watching.

Try it on for size.