Hard pill to swallow

A couple of days ago I was told by a flying bee on TV that I might need to buy some allergy medicine. Abe Lincoln and a beaver came on a bit later, touting the wonderful sleep I would get with their pill, the name of which I forget, because I was trying to understand what a beaver and Lincoln have to do with sleeping pills. (What person dreams of beavers and Lincoln?) \nBut hey, why not? This is the world of pharmaceutical commercials, and in this world where restless legs are a bad thing and people routinely run through wheat fields, nothing really needs to make sense.\nThe utter prevalence of medicine commercials is very telling of our culture, however, and is perhaps a warning to all of us that something needs to change. We need to ask ourselves: Why do we need all this medicine? According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, America spends a whopping 15.3 percent of its gross domestic product on health care costs. The rest of the OECD countries spend an average of only 9 percent on this, yet they still have a longer life expectancy than we do. The U.S. ranks at about 40th in the world. Perhaps one reason we spend so much on health care is that we ignore preventative medicines and diets. We focus instead on supposed quick fixes after the fact. There are not many commercials focusing on proper diet to prevent diseases like diabetes or heart conditions, but we have plenty that promote pills to help with them once they have developed.\nIn many ways, we, as a country are shooting ourselves in the foot with our diet and drinks. We are a society that runs on unhealthy food, and we eat way too much of it. \nIt’s not entirely perplexing why this is happening – after all, bad food is everywhere. It is advertised on TV, has colorful boxes and preys on our busy schedules and inability to spend time cooking. But we are not children anymore, and we are by and large educated enough to realize that routinely eating a sandwich called the “Baconator” – as delicious and bacony as it might be – isn’t the wisest of moves. \nBut how does our nation solve this problem? A recent report by the Trust for America’s Health reported that 81 percent of Americans think government should play a role in addressing the obesity epidemic – and it is an epidemic. But if ever there were a problem that could only be addressed socially and not by government, this is it. Increased diet and health education in primary school along with increased park space and footpaths would be a wise investment of government resources. But even more education and more paths will not solve this problem because, as in all places, our food is a deep-rooted part of our culture. In the end, however, our society needs to understand the consequences of our actions, and unfortunately for us, those consequences cannot be fixed by a pill.