The -arian epidemic

“The solution to our epidemic of chronic disease starts with helping everyone understand the difference between real food and manufactured calories”, in such a way Roxanne B. Sukol - medical director of the Cleveland Clinic’s Wellness Enterprise – wisely concludes her article “Why ‘healthy’ food is a bankrupt concept”. 

Roxanne's articles deserves to be read together a  humorous  article on “Climatarian, vegavore, reducetarian: why we have so many words for cutting back on meat” published by Kate Yoder in Vox. In her article, Kate describes the  -arian epidemic, a concept that she  borrows from Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at UC Berkeley, who wrote that -arian suffix has many uses but that the relevant meaning today is a "true believer in a cult or doctrine”. Kate amusingly draws the reader’s attention on the multiplications of – arian words in the description of our food choices. We increasingly live in a world (at least the affluent world) in which food choices have become a matter of identity, with different tribes facing each other with suspicion. 

The medical scene is not free from this bad habit.  The endless quarrel between supporters of “diets low in carbohydrates and high in fat”, “diets low in fat and rich in carbo”, “high protein regimes”, “whole food diets”, has been just revived by the update of the definition of "healthy food" recently issued by the US Food and Drug Administration and by the a recent report published in UK by the National Obesity Forum. This "war of diets" would be just ridiculous, if it were not also misleading and dangerous for consumers and patients. The point is much easier, we simply eat too much, while other world regions eat too less.

In this very moment more than 31 million people in southern Africa need urgently food because of one of the serious global food crisis of the last 25 years. The scale of the crisis unfolding in 10 or more southern African countries has shocked the United Nations, which says that the number of people threatened by starvation is expected to rise to at least 49 million by the end of 2016. Malawi, Mozambique, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Madagascar, Angola and Swaziland have already declared national emergencies or disasters, as have seven of South Africa’s nine provinces.  To this incoming crisis, one should add at least 12 million more hungry people in Ethiopia, 7 million in Yemen, 6 million in Southern Sudan and more in the Central African Republic and Chad. 

This might remind another period in which “Arian” words were in fashion. Ironically enough, the Nazi regime was obsessed by healthy foods, whole food diets, alimentary purity. Sometimes it comes to my mind the suspect that there could be  something more than merely ridiculous  in our exaggerated worries about food and diets, but most certainly it’s me to be too sensitive.