Poor diet costs Americans trillions in medical bills. Courtesy | Facebook
While Associate Professor of Politics Kevin Slack ate Cheez-Its and drank Kool-Aid for breakfast as a kid, he doesn’t recommend students in his new class follow his example.
The new class, called the Politics of Health, introduces students to health issues and how government policies affect them, according to Slack.
“On the topic of diet, Americans are extremely unhealthy — 70% are overweight, and 40% are obese, up from 3.4% in 1962,” Slack said. “Americans pay $3.7 trillion a year in direct and indirect health care costs to treat illnesses connected to their diets.”
Slack said he assigned books like “Food Fix” and “The UltraMind Solution” by Mark Hyman, a medical doctor critical of federal food policy.
“He challenges both the Democrats’ idea that Medicare-for-all will solve the problem and Republicans’ idea that our poor health is simply a matter of individual choice,” Slack said.
Senior Konrad Verbaarschott said he reached out to Slack and Chairman of Politics John Grant and petitioned the politics department to offer the class, the first of its kind, this semester.
“Young people on the right are starting to get wise to the state of our food system,” Verbaarschott said. “It’s corrupted in a particularly insidious way that threatens not only the physical but psychological and political health of our polity. Dr. Slack was already talking about that in some of his campus lectures, so I reached out.”
Other topics in the class include the relationship between food and sexuality, which Slack said is an essential part of human health. To address this topic, Slack has assigned Shanna Swan’s book “Count Down,” which addresses declining fertility in both sexes.
“Testosterone levels and sperm counts have plummeted in the last 40 years,” Slack said. “Some of what we call ‘gender fluidity,’ Swan argues, is correlated to actual biological changes we see with the ubiquitous presence of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, including phthalates and flame retardants.”
Slack said the greatest threat to human health is the destruction of relationships, particularly among family and friends.
“Psychiatric disorders affect 26% of American adults and more than 20% of children,” he said. “Despite the essential role played by both mothers and fathers in children’s physical, mental, and moral development, those functions will be provided by bureaucrats or ‘Child Care Inc.’”
Senior Jonah Apel said he was excited to take the class and found studying people’s views on human nature and health interesting.
“The course has been excellent,” Apel said. “After the first days of class, a bunch of people must have heard about it, because quite a few people joined the course.”
Twenty-one students are currently taking the course, with several others auditing it, Apel said.
Slack said the best way to address the health-related issues covered in the course involves Americans standing up to corporate interests.
“There is no reason for Americans to tolerate the current level of corporate influence in their food production and consumption policy,” Slack said, “nor to tolerate the corruption of the revolving door, in which the very agencies that are supposed to ensure their health are compromised by corporate interests.”
