Fuzzy Food Math
Food writer Michael Pollan typically counsels readers to make their food decisions based on politics as opposed to what their bodies actually need. But math, unlike science, is more black-and-white. In a New York Times op-ed today, Pollan engages in some addition trickery as part of his attack on the way we eat.
Pollan claims obesity costs the American economy $147 billion each year. Plus $116 billion for diabetes. Plus “hundreds of billions more” on heart disease and cancer.
Jacob Sullum at Reason magazine debunks:
Pollan does a lot of double counting when he totes up the medical expenses attributable to overeating … [T]o the extent that the latter three conditions are associated with obesity, the first number already accounts for them. Pollan uses the additional numbers to reinforce his claim that “the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained…by our being fatter.” But in this context they are big fat red herrings.
According to the study that generated the $147 billion estimate, obesity accounts for about 10 percent of health care spending, which hardly makes it “the elephant in the room” of health care reform, as Pollan claims. But even this figure is misleading …
It seems quite apparent that Mr. Pollan is, indeed guilty of some pretty “fuzzy food math”. Could it possibly be due to an agenda regarding a gov’t health care take over?
