Legislating The Morality of Health

How important is diet and exercise to a healthy life? Everyone knows, of course, that it
is very important. You can change your life by ending unhealthy eating habits and by
starting a program of moderate exercise.

Everybody knows this, but is it true?

TechCentral Station’s
Sandy Szwarc
and now
John Luik have been pulling out some research that says “not so fast.”

For instance, we all know that thin is healthy. But is it? Luik cites longitudinal research that
says that thin is dangerous:

Take, for example, one of the most extensive and publicized efforts in health
promotion of all time, the Mr Fit (Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial) which was
specifically designed to establish the truth of health promotion by showing that heart disease
and cancer could be reduced through reducing blood pressure, cholesterol, and smoking. After
sixteen years of study, the intervention groups, which had received extensive assistance with
exercise, changing diet and smoking cessation, had results which were not significantly better
than the group that had received none of these "health promotion" interventions. Indeed, the
intervention group, despite lower rates of smoking, actually had higher rates of lung cancer.
What MR Fit showed was precisely how lifestyle interventions failed to reduce
mortality from multifactoral diseases like cancer and heart disease.

Then there is this:

Consider the Framingham study. Begun in 1950 as a longitudinal investigation of the
causes of cardiovascular disease, some 5,209 men and women aged 30-59 were followed for 30 years on
the assumption that those who were thinnest would have significantly lower risks for heart disease.
But in 1979 when three of the study’s lead researchers published their data it was found that for
men the highest risk -- that is the worst life expectancy -- was for the thinnest men; men who were
25-40% fatter than the ideal weight were living the longest. For women,
mortality was elevated only for the very thin and the very fat.

The bigger problem is that the health promotion movement is advancing a moral idea under the
color of science, the idea that longevity is a good thing. But is it? Is it worth adding a few
years onto your life by, for instance, avoiding spicy and fatty foods?

If, indeed, it is hard to
show that diet and exercise have much of an influence on longevity, then why should the government
be getting into the business of health promotion?
“When those in favour of getting the State involved in the lifestyle intervention
business begin to speak about what to do about these claims, they cease to speak as
exalted scientists and become simply moralists.” Or, as the left likes to say, they are legislating
morality.

And that assumes that a long life is a good thing. Is it?