What do Michael Pollan, Obama and Big Insurance have in common?

Health Care. In Michael Pollan’s latest editorial piece for the New York Times he discusses the role of the food industry in shaping our current health crisis, and the role changing the food industry must thus play in improving health care. Pollan articulates that a growing portion of the money we spend on health care — including $263 billion each year to treat obesity and diabetes — can be attributed to chronic diseases that are the result of our unhealthy Western diets. He writes, “Why the disconnect? Probably because reforming the food system is politically even more difficult than reforming the health care system… There’s lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes.”

The good news in all of this? Pollan says that if health care reform is successful in getting insurance companies to cover everyone, including those with pre-existing chronic diseases who are often denied coverage today, then they will have a much bigger incentive to utilize preventive medicine and perhaps target the unhealthy food system currently causing so many of our health problems. “When health insurers can no longer evade much of the cost of treating the collateral damage of the American diet, the movement to reform the food system — everything from farm policy to food marketing and school lunches — will acquire a powerful and wealthy ally, something it hasn’t really ever had before.”