World Bank Versus World Health

[Guest guest]

By Neal D. Barnard, M.D.

http://www.pcrm.org/health/Commentary/commentary0001.html

 

The World Bank has proved again that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.

The sword—a scythe harvesting the traditional grains that have kept China free

of the heart disease and cancer epidemics plaguing Western nations—was defeated

December 22 by a stroke of the World Bank's pen, which signed a $93.5 million

check to build 130 feedlots and five processing centers for China's nascent beef

industry.

 

The World Health Organization would have had it differently. Its figures show

that the traditional Chinese diet, rich in rice and vitamin-rich vegetables,

with little meat and virtually no dairy products, has kept Western diseases at

arm's length. An improved food distribution network has eliminated the shortages

that have plagued some other Asian countries. Per-capita food intake is actually

higher than in the U.S.

 

Unfortunately, Western eating habits had already gained a foothold in some parts

of China without support from the World Bank. Health researchers from Cornell

and Oxford, along with the Chinese government, had lamented how fast food,

steak, and cheese were starting to replace traditional rice and noodle dishes.

Those Chinese counties with the most aggressive Westernization of their diets

have shown the highest rates of western-style medical problems. As William

Castelli of the Framingham Heart Study said, " When you see the golden arches,

you're on the road to the pearly gates " — all too true in China.

 

Ironically, it is just as America is recognizing the need to " Easternize " its

own diet, with rice, soy products, and more and more vegetarian and vegan

options, that World Bank bureaucrats decided to promote a Westernization of

China's diet. Instead of supporting the use of grain as a cholesterol-free

dietary staple for humans, the myopic enterprise will feed grain to cattle to

produce meat loaded with fat and cholesterol. From Bank headquarters in

Northwest Washington, they will never see the myocardial infarctions in Beijing,

hypertension in Shanghai, or diabetes in Chungking these eating habits will have

caused.

 

It is a model, not just of poor health, but of incredible inefficiency. Kilo

after kilo of grain proteins fed to cattle yield only one-tenth this amount of

protein as meat—exactly the kind of fiasco Frances Moore Lappé described in Diet

for a Small Planet in 1971, as President Nixon prepared to visit China. With a

burgeoning world population, she wrote, it is grain and vegetables that will

sustain us, and a meat-based diet that will steal these simple foods to fatten

cattle.

 

In building a network of feedlots, one has to wonder if the World Bankers even

bothered to consider what feedlot runoff does to rivers and streams in the U.S.

Of course, the World Bank's efforts to help China make a killing in cattle

farming is aimed not at good health or a clean environment, but at economic

investment. No doubt, it will pay off for some cattle ranchers in China, who

will edge out vegetable and rice acreage. And, almost as if they planned it that

way, there will be a bright future in China's medical industries. In the decades

ahead, as heart attacks become the order of the day, the World Bank can invest

in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry. It, of course, will have to do battle

with surgical suppliers, to see if the prescription-writing pen is mightier than

the coronary bypass scalpel. The power of a healthful plant-based diet will have

long since been forgotten.

 

(Originally published in edited form in the New York Times)

 

http://www.pcrm.org/

 

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