Jane Brody of the New York Times has it right when she calls out obesity and Type-2 diabetes for being high risk factors for severe cases of COVID-19. This has been known since almost the beginning of the pandemic. What she doesn’t get right unnecessarily blaming meat.
Of course, in recent decades many of the policies of the department Mr. Vilsack now heads have contributed mightily to Americans’ access to inexpensive foods that flesh out their bones with unwholesome calories and undermine their health. Two telling examples: The government subsidizes the production of both soybeans and corn, most of which is used to feed livestock.
Not only does livestock production make a major contribution to global warming, much of its output ends up as inexpensive, often highly processed fast foods that can prompt people to overeat and raise their risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and kidney disease. But there are no subsidies for the kinds of fruits and vegetables that can counter the disorders that render people more vulnerable to the coronavirus.
New York Times
It’s not meat that is the problem here. It’s the highly processed foods, sugars, and other excessive carbohydrates that we pump into our bodies. She does talk about the rest of the bad things in the average person’s diet later in the column. But I think those things should have been mentioned first because beef, chicken, and pork will not cause a person to become obese.
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