Getting fresh fruits and vegetables into low-income neighborhoods doesn’t make poor people healthier...No, food deserts aren't the problem. And inflammation isn't the problem. And poverty isn't the problem.
Why, then, do campaigns like the Healthy Food Financing Initiative persist? The push for fresh food is usually considered a progressive cause, connected as it is to criticisms of processed foods’ effect on health. And the most prominent voices against the fresh-food push have been conservative, from Rush Limbaugh to Reason magazine. But look a little closer, and fresh-food financing initiatives are a pretty conservative idea. They offer a market-based opportunity for individuals to make better choices about health, leaving the impression that people living in poverty get sick for reasons that are within their control.
...Bruce McEwan, one of the pioneers of research in the biology of health inequality, coined the term “allostatic load” to describe the cumulative wear and tear of stress reactions over time. Stress reactions, like floods of adrenaline and cortisol and increased blood pressure, are helpful as short-term reactions to dangerous or challenging situations. But if stress reactions are constant, they create physiological conditions that damage the body. “One of the things having an elevated sympathetic response is that you have an inflammatory tone in the body,” McEwan explains. “Inflammation underlies all of the diseases of modern life—from cancer to depression to neurological diseases.” Those diseases of modern life also include heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes—illnesses we typically associate with poverty.
But the implication of McEwan’s research—that poverty itself is making people ill—is not one that Americans are prepared to accept. Instead, we build supermarkets, finance green grocer carts, and teach former inmates about fennel, feeling like we’re promoting a progressive effort to improve the plight of the disadvantaged. Meanwhile, poor people are living shorter, sicker lives, with no helpful new policy in sight.
The problem is erroneous medical information. Which is only perpetuated in this article.
Fruits and vegetables are not a solution to obesity or diabetes. Infection causes inflammation and chronic illnesses and stress. And illness results in poverty.
They've got it all backwards.
Damn I'm tired of living in this mirror.
