Starting upstream of chronic health conditions would save money through reduced healthcare costs

Food, access to food, food security, and food consumption patterns interact with health on many levels. On a basic level, we need food to survive. Beyond that, we need a variety of healthy food to obtain optimal health. To some extent, food is a choice, but to what extent can or should we legislate individual food choice behavior? Are we willing to pay more in healthcare costs, so people have freedom to choose behaviors which produce chronic disease? I would argue that we need to go further upstream to the stage before food becomes a personal choice. We need to work on the structure and powerful economic interests that control our food supply and local access to healthy food.

Access to food is not homogenous across the United States. A 2020 opinion piece points out that “Poor diets kill nearly 320,000 Americans a year” (Holmes, 2020). In a 2019 study by Calise et al., people’s perceptions of social cohesion, crime, and neighborhood walkability in their own neighborhood were examined to determine if those people have access to fruits and vegetables, and low-fat foods. While this study makes a valuable contribution to the issues of access to food, there are some problems. One measure, “perceived access to low-fat foods,” might be too ambiguous a term to assess if people have access to healthy food. Fat-free, high-sugar cookies are available in most supermarkets yet would not be considered a health food. Perceived availability of fruits and vegetables…