Majority of US Healthcare Costs Are Caused by Bad Eating Habits • Hacker News Board

Re: Majority of US Healthcare Costs Are Caused by Bad Eating Habits

#31

Post by christofd » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 10:19 PM UTC

thesecret wrote: post #13

I work in healthcare and this is my understanding from the responses of patients that I encounter - fast food is cheap. One of the families I work with, both parents are diabetic and the children are all overweight. I asked them about their eating habit and the answer was : McDonalds for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Why? Because it's cheap to eat at McDonalds for a family of 4 than it is to buy vegetables at the mar…

Don't agree! I've cracked down on eating out for a month and lived off pasta and vegetables. You can't get a meal for $3 at McD. but you can eat for $ 1 for the day making your own food. It's an interesting experiment!

This excludes meat and dairy products though.

Re: Majority of US Healthcare Costs Are Caused by Bad Eating Habits

#32

Post by hughprime » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 10:25 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #19

awt wrote: post #16

Doesn't everyone die? If so, isn't the question what diseases take the longest time to cause death, and thus require the most medical expenditure? Wouldn't medical expenses be lower if everyone died of a heart attack at 55? That would certainly be cheaper than living till 70 and treating cancer, bone loss issues, bladder issues, and cholesterol issues over a period of several years.

If so, isn't the question what diseases take the longest time to cause death, and thus require the most medical expenditure Not exactly. You're missing two variables. The rate of infection in the population as a whole, and the rate of expenditure to treat the disease.

How so? The argument is that eventually everybody dies of something, so avoiding one fatal disease only shifts your death to another disease at some point in the future.

I really think it's quite likely that fat people, on average, cost less in health care over their lives than thin people. I don't have any numbers to back this up, but every person who dies suddenly of a heart attack saves an awful lot of money by not dying of cancer, or worse still some degenerative disease.

Re: Majority of US Healthcare Costs Are Caused by Bad Eating Habits

#33

Post by rglullis » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 10:29 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #18

thesecret wrote: post #13

I work in healthcare and this is my understanding from the responses of patients that I encounter - fast food is cheap. One of the families I work with, both parents are diabetic and the children are all overweight. I asked them about their eating habit and the answer was : McDonalds for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Why? Because it's cheap to eat at McDonalds for a family of 4 than it is to buy vegetables at the mar…

The big problem is farm subsidies for corn and soybeans. If they transferred those subsidies to produce we could make it significantly cheaper to eat healthy. However, if you are smart it's possible to eat much cheaper than McDonalds and almost infinitely healthier. The secret is just eat like they do in poor countries. Start with bulk quantities of some basic staples. I'm Brazilian, so for me it's rice and beans. Th…

(OT, but your profile info does not have an email.)

From reading that, it seems that you are living in the US for quite some time. As a Brazilian living in Cambridge, MA, may I ask you where do you live now? There are lots of Brazilians in Mass, but I'm yet to find a fellow Brazilian hacker.

Re: Majority of US Healthcare Costs Are Caused by Bad Eating Habits

#34

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 10:35 PM UTC

hughprime wrote: post #4

The headline "Majority US Healthcare Costs Are Caused by Bad Eating Habits" is not the headline of the article, nor is this supposed fact stated anywhere in the article. I very much doubt it's true, and I don't think it's well-defined enough to even be false.

(...) the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the most efficient health care system that the administration could hope to devise would still confront a rising tide of chronic disease linked to diet.

This is a key argument in the article and the headline seems like a reasonable paraphrase of that.

Re: Majority of US Healthcare Costs Are Caused by Bad Eating Habits

#35

Post by wallflower » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 10:39 PM UTC

A retired gastroenterologist once told me his personal theory: Every human can consume a finite amount of sugar in his/her lifetime - once you exceed that limit, you die. The theory is a bit flimsy but it makes you think about cumulative nutritional choices.

Re: Majority of US Healthcare Costs Are Caused by Bad Eating Habits

#36

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 10:44 PM UTC

awt wrote: post #16

Doesn't everyone die? If so, isn't the question what diseases take the longest time to cause death, and thus require the most medical expenditure? Wouldn't medical expenses be lower if everyone died of a heart attack at 55? That would certainly be cheaper than living till 70 and treating cancer, bone loss issues, bladder issues, and cholesterol issues over a period of several years.

Well, when a lot of people are obese hospitals need to be able to accommodate them even before they die. Consider the cost of beds, wheelchairs, examination and operating tables, and so on. All that equipment has to be reliable for intensive long-term use; if patient's hospital bed collapses underneath them they would sue and almost certainly win.

Now, bearing in mind that this basic-but-necessary equipment is not cheap to start with, making sure that it can handle the weight of an obese person gets quite pricey.

Re: Majority of US Healthcare Costs Are Caused by Bad Eating Habits

#37

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 10:49 PM UTC

vijayr wrote: post #2

Isn't it the same everywhere (assuming there is no war or natural calamity etc like situation)?

Not necessarily. For example: http://library.thinkquest.org/16665/causes.htm <- leading causes of mortality in ~20 countries. Look at how big the variations between different countries can be even for coarsely-grained statistics.

Re: Majority of US Healthcare Costs Are Caused by Bad Eating Habits

#38

Post by wallflower » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 10:56 PM UTC

thesecret wrote: post #13

I work in healthcare and this is my understanding from the responses of patients that I encounter - fast food is cheap. One of the families I work with, both parents are diabetic and the children are all overweight. I asked them about their eating habit and the answer was : McDonalds for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Why? Because it's cheap to eat at McDonalds for a family of 4 than it is to buy vegetables at the mar…

> both parents are diabetic and the children are all overweight

As an interesting factoid:

Pre-late 1800s per-capita Sugar consumption: 1 lb/person

Today: 150+ lb/person

The paradigm-busting, pivotal event in the late 1800s: the invention and introduction of Coca-Cola. Once Coca-Cola started putting sugar into American diets, the door was opened for sweeteners.

"According to health officials at this ancient pueblo, where the Zuni have hunted and farmed for perhaps 800 years, diabetes is now the single leading reason for Indians to seek hospital treatment."

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/02/18/us/surge-in-indians-diabet...

Re: Majority of US Healthcare Costs Are Caused by Bad Eating Habits

#39

Post by bokonist » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 11:09 PM UTC

* and hundreds of billions more to treat cardiovascular disease and the many types of cancer that have been linked to the so-called Western diet. *

Cancer and heart disease are fundamentally diseases of age. Everyone will die of one or the other eventually. The links to certain dietary elements are almost all a result of a data mining.

Re: Majority of US Healthcare Costs Are Caused by Bad Eating Habits

#40

Post by dasil003 » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 11:09 PM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #33

dasil003 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big problem is farm subsidies for corn and soybeans. If they transferred those subsidies to produce we could make it significantly cheaper to eat healthy. However, if you are smart it's possible to eat much cheaper than McDonalds and almost infinitely healthier. The secret is just eat like they do in poor countries. Start with bulk quantities of some basic staples. I'm Brazilian, so for me it's rice and beans. Th…

(OT, but your profile info does not have an email.) From reading that, it seems that you are living in the US for quite some time. As a Brazilian living in Cambridge, MA, may I ask you where do you live now? There are lots of Brazilians in Mass, but I'm yet to find a fellow Brazilian hacker.

Actually only half-brazilian. Born and raised here in Minneapolis, MN then moved to Santa Fe, NM and now Mountain View, CA, mas também passo bastante tempo em Brasília.