Announcing Food and Health Facts

Greetings. You may have noticed that The Geonomica Brief went on hiatus two years ago. I was consumed with a book project that didn’t leave much time for other projects. But I am pleased to report that the book, written with the Dean of Stanford University’s School of Medicine, was published earlier this year. The title is Discovering Precision Health: Predict, Prevent, and Cure to Advance Health and Well-Being.  With the book complete, and with individual health taking on renewed importance throughout the country (and the world), I am also pleased to report that I’m launching a newsletter: Food and Health Facts. What follows is the rationale behind the newsletter, which you should start receiving soon. In the United States, we are in the final days of a presidential campaign in which there has been extensive discussion of, and debate about, health care policy. But neither party has been focused on the underlying issue: the poor health of the American people.   By many measures, the population of the United States is the unhealthiest of any developed country in the world, despite spending much more, as a share of our economy, on health care. The incidence of chronic disease is much higher and life expectancy is much lower. Today, more than 42 percent of American adults qualify as obese (meaning a body mass index of 30 or higher). That is the world’s second-highest obesity rate, after Kuwait (not counting a few tiny Pacific island nations). Covid-19 has brought the nation’s poor health into sharp focus. Those who contract the virus and who are afflicted with chronic diseases (such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer) are much more likely to be hospitalized – and to die – than those who are in good health. An October 14 CDC report showed that 94 percent of those who have died from Covid-19 were afflicted with an average of 2.6 additional conditions. Is it any wonder that a recent report (published in the Journal of the American Medical Association) found that the U.S. per capita death rate from COVID-19 and other causes was the highest among 18 other high-income countries? The Dean of the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science has aptly captured the public health climate today: “So very few of us are actually healthy, and Covid-19 is basically like pouring gasoline on a smoldering fire.” The intersection of food and health is a fraught topic, filled with misinformation, which results in many people simply tuning out the topic altogether. That is one reason among many why the obesity rate in the United States has been steadily rising for the past 40 years. Throughout this period, obesity has been largely absent from the national public policy agenda. Having observed this inaction for several years, and with the consequences magnified by Covid-19, I decided to launch the newsletter. It will be focused on concise tidbits of information, drawn from authoritative sources. It will initially be published three times per week – with only one fact per newsletter. Each fact will also be distributed via Twitter (@foodhealthfacts) and be catalogued on a companion website, www.foodandhealthfacts.com. While financial markets won’t be covered (though I’m still following them), I hope you’ll nonetheless be willing to give Food and Health Facts a try. If you have questions or comments in the meantime, feel free to contact me at [email protected] or reply to this email. Matthew Rees