Analysis Of What You Eat Is Your Business By Radley Balko

In the reading “What You Eat Is Your Business” Radley Balko states “For decades now, America’s Healthcare system has been migrating toward socialism. Your well-being, shape, and condition have increasingly been deemed matters of “public health,” instead of matters of personal responsibility.” (467) which shows this writer’s view that it is a problem of discipline and a person’s own personal choice to be unhealthy. “That means freeing insurance companies to reward healthy lifestyles, and penalize poor ones. It means halting plans to further socialize medicine and health care. Congress should also increase access to medical and health savings accounts, which give consumers the option of rolling money reserved for health care into a retirement account.” (468-469) This would also indicate he wants the government to reward the good choices and healthy lifestyles of those who kept to a reasonable diet, further supporting his argument of personal responsibility in the matter.
How might we plot our escape from the nutritionist and, in turn, from the most harmful effects of the Western diet? To Denis Burkitt, the English doctor stationed in Africa during World War II who gave the Western diseases their name, the answer seemed straightforward, if daunting. “The only way we’re going to reduce disease,” he said, “is to go backwards on diet and lifestyle of our ancestors.”” (423) Which sums up fairly well that this point is that the problem is more about our current social structure when it comes to food. “For most people for most of history, gathering and preparing food has been an occupation at the very heart of daily life.”