Modern Health and Disease

Dieting has become deeply integrated into the American culture. Many people in the U.S. are on a diet in one way or another, whether it is counting calories or checking waistlines. Diet names such as “Weight Watchers”, “Atkins Diet”, and “South Beach Diet” become familiar to our every day language and are recognized because we begin to hear them all the time. One modern approach to an ancient way of eating is the “Paleo Diet”.



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The “Paleo Diet” is considered to be a way of eating, rather than dieting, and dates back to ancient times, before many of us existed. This diet is based upon the types and quantities of foods that hunter-gatherers once ate. This diet consists of lean meat, seafood, fruits and vegetables. The “Paleo Diet”, which has been adapted through evolution and natural selection, imitates the diet of our hunter-gatherer ancestors—a diet high in protein, fruit, and vegetables, with moderate amounts of fat and high quantities of omega-3 and monounsaturated fats. By modifying our modern ways of dieting to be adjacent with our ancestors’ ways of eating seems to provide health benefits.

In the article “Globalizing the Chronicities of Modernity”, Dennis Wiedman reflects on the responses to the chronicities of modernity. Wiedman portrays the major changes in health by stating, “For most of human history as hunters, gatherers, and agriculturalists, humans maintained an active physical lifestyle that varied with seasonal resources and promoted cardiovascular and metabolic fitness. But for the past five hundred years, since early European imperialism, there have been major changes in everyday life and, in consequence, in health” (38). The author addresses the concept of chronicity, an idea used to explain individual and local ways of life, question public health discourse, and consider the relationship between health and the globalizing forces that influence and/or shape it. Wiedman’s main argument is the “theory of chronicity”, which is developed to “reconceptualize and explain the global pandemic of MetS, by arguing that its underlying cause is the dramatic shift from ‘seasonality’ of hunters, gatherers, and agriculturalists to the ‘chronicities of modernity’” (38). With modernity, we see more results of chronic conditions. Wiedman discusses the association of diabetes with the metabolic syndrome (MetS), and how these chronic conditions have become increasingly prevalent in developed and developing nations. The article documents the effects of modernity by “reflecting the rapidity of the demographic and cultural transition” and how it “portrays the critical juncture of modernity as populations transition from subsistence agriculture to a cash economy, from self-produced foods to store-bought foods, from vigorous household chores to the comforts of household appliances, and from actively walking to riding in cars and trucks” (Wiedman, 42). Contemporary examples of modern lifestyles display the connection between the chronicities of modernity and the increased prevalence of chronic diseases such as diabetes and MetS. Wiedman’s article also discusses the health consequences in relation to globalization. Wiedman describes globalization as the “intensification of worldwide social relations”, in which “production, distribution, transportation, communication, and financial systems link the local to the global” (45). The “aspects of globalization”, in which individuals interactions and social structures become “more uniform”, are said to “jeopardize health” (Wiedman, 45-46). This article explores the unequal impact of chronic illness and disability on individuals, families, and communities in diverse local and global settings.

Here is a link to a video by Dr. Oz on “The Healthiest Diets”:

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/sharecare-videos.htm

This video looks at diets from around the world, why they work, and how to bring them to your own lives and home. Dr. Oz was featured as the “health expert” on the “Oprah Winfrey Show”. In this video, Dr. Oz proposes that certain countries, which diets consist mainly of whole-grain and legumes like beans and rice, in addition to fruits and vegetables, have the best health. The combination of whole, natural foods found among other countries diets, are suggested to provide better nutrition and lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic conditions.

Food practices vary from country to country. There are obvious social, cultural, political, and economic factors that influence our perspectives on health and disease. The article “Chronic Conditions, Health, and Well-Being in Global Contexts” , claims that approaches to health should provide “a more powerful appreciation of context—that is, how environments are shaped by physical, geographical, social, cultural, political, ethno-racial, gender, economic, and class-based systems of enablement and oppression” (238). If we take a critical standpoint and look at these multidimensional factors of social, economic, and political conditions that influence and affect health, we are able to understand these conditions and improve the lives of people with chronic conditions. The ideologies of health and disease have affected the relationship between food and our bodies. Nutritionism has become a nationally accepted paradigm as to how we view food and what we should eat. Scrinis argues that the “focus on nutrients has come to dominate, to undermine, and to replace other ways of engaging with food and of contextualizing the relationship between food and the body” (39). Scrinis states, “Over the years categories and subcategories of nutrients and biomarkers—such as different types of fats and types of blood cholesterol—have proliferated, promising ever more precise and targeted knowledge and dietary advice” (41). We turn to “functionally marketed foods” that “can be defined as foods that are directly marketed with health claims. These include any marketing claims that refer to the relation between a food or nutrient on the one hand, and a bodily process, disease, biomarker, or state of physical or mental health on the other” (Scrinis, 45). Nutritional reductionism becomes a “kind of nutritional determinism, in which nutrients are considered to be the irreducible units that determine bodily health” (Scrinis, 41). This contextualizes the problem of nutritional reductionism and the limitation of peoples social, spiritual, and gender identities in relation to food.

We need to take a critical standpoint in our views of health, well-being, and disease. There needs to be a shift away from medical approaches and public health morals of blaming and victimizing individuals for their “choices” or actions taken, to an approach that examines the larger social, cultural, and global factors that influence health. Wiedman claims that “efforts at multiple levels should empower communities and leadership” with knowledge of health and disease that is “presented in understandable and culturally appropriate ways to (a) influence accessibility to affordable and healthy choices of foods in local communities; (b) enhance activity levels with designs of transportation systems, work, exercise and recreational facilities; and (c) promote the redevelopment of local food production lifestyles in communities that want to farm, garden, ranch, hunt or fish” (Wiedman 53). This would promote “healthy communities” and address “the necessary structural changes”, in order to “reduce the pandemic of chronic diseases associated with industrial lifestyle” (Wiedman, 53).


Works Cited:

Dennis Wiedman, 2010. “Globalizing the Chronicities of Modernity: Diabetes and the New Metabolic Syndrome.” In Chronic Conditions, Fluid States: Chronicity and the Anthropology of Illness. Lenore Manderson and Carolyn Smith-Morris, eds. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Pp. 38-53.

Gelya Frank, Carolyn Baum, and Mary Law. 2010. “Chronic Conditions, Health, and Well-Being in Global Contexts: Occupational Therapy in Conversation with Critical Medical Anthropology.” In Chronic Conditions, Fluid States: Chronicity and the Anthropology of Illness. Lenore Manderson and Carolyn Smith-Morris, eds. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers university Press. Pp. 230-246.

Gyorgy Scrinis, 2008. “The Ideology of Nutritionism.” Gastronomica 8(1): 39-48.