Food as health cures is as old as culture. Any thoughts? What does big pharma say?
What should big pharma say - do you think big pharma is hiding “solutions” for many medical issues and don’t want people to be healthy so that they can sell more drugs which help nobody (sorry, your question sounds very much what I hear to often that the pharma industry has actual drugs against any cancer but doesn’t want that anybody finds out so that they can sell more of their “useless” cancer drugs)
Also, the publication cited in this article is a simulation run by some academic research groups which is based on relatively little real world data. Would better nutrition/meals help to keep more people healthy - yes. Would it be a breakthrough “therapy” which would solve many diseases - very unlikely
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This “study” epitomizes what my dissertation advisor repeatedly told me.
Torture the data enough, and it will say anything you want it to say.
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I’m not sure big pharma will be bothered. They probably know the big food corporations that peddle cheap junk food will ensure this never comes to fruition. The order of the day also seems to be power to the populists so no government is going to take on the task of prescribing meals to people. There is already an element of this in the UK’s relatively socialist health service - I think pregnant women and certain economic demographics can get vouchers for fresh fruit and vegetables and access to classes to learn to cook healthily. However, the reality is very different. The number of women with BMIs of over 40 at the point where they are booking their pregnancy has shot up in the past decade of government austerity. I live in a deprived part of the country and shop across a wide range of supermarkets - it is certainly much much easier on a limited budget to fill your belly with cheap, processed crap than it is to buy fresh fruit, vegetables, eggs and meat to cook from scratch at home. McDonald’s and fried chicken shops are always busy.
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As you noted, eating healthy has always been an underpinning of good health, and yet we haven’t been able to rely on that for decades (probably even centuries, if not since the start of time). It’s a nice theory, but something I can’t see implementable in current realities. Medicine and pharmaceuticals will always have their place with acute illness and issues that may arise, even if they don’t like that lifestyle improvements would eat into their cut of health issues exacerbated by our lifestyle choices and socio-economic realities.
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