Building H #68: Putting Food Issues on the Table
Life expectancy in the US is down again, according to a new report released by the National Center for Health Statistics. Overall life expectancy dropped nearly three years – from 79 to 76 – over the last two years, the largest two-year drop in 100 years. Not that it was unexpected – we have of course been going through a deadly pandemic – but the declines came not just from COVID, but also from a continuing opioid crisis and increases in deaths from heart disease at younger ages. The drops in life expectancy varied by race, with Native Americans and Alaska Natives losing a jaw-dropping six years of life expectancy – from 71 to 65 years of age. That particular drop surprised and dismayed experts, who had noted strong adoption of COVID prevention measures in Native American and Alaska Native communities. The sharp drop is likely tied to the ways in which COVID has tended to amplify social inequities, such as unequal access to care, and exploited underlying conditions such as diabetes and obesity, both of which are much more prevalent among Native Americans and Alaska Natives than the general population.
A key driver of the underlying conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity, that have led to some of the drops in life expectancy is diet. Diet now outranks tobacco use as the leading cause of death and is thought to be responsible for half of all deaths from heart disease – accounting for nearly 900 deaths a day in the U.S. And our diets are increasingly artificial: buried in a story below on the links between ultraprocessed foods and cancer are the stats that US adults get 58% – and children get 67% – of their daily calories from ultraprocessed foods.
Against this backdrop comes the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition & Health, to be held on September 28. This is the first such White House conference in more than 50 years – the last one, in 1969, led to the major changes such as extensions to SNAP (aka food stamps) and the school lunch program, the creation of the Women Infants and Children (WIC) program and improvements in food labeling. This year’s conference has as its goal: “End hunger and increase healthy eating and physical activity by 2030, so that fewer Americans experience diet-related diseases like diabetes, obesity, and hypertension.” In the run up to the conference, ideas are being generated, positions are being taken and new research continues to inform. Our focus for this edition is on food.
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