Food for Thought

As I've said before, I love food. Everything about food. I watch the Food Network while I'm at the gym. I read Food and Wine magazine. I have a cadre of recipe websites that I check daily. I shop at farmer's markets and purposely buy something random and then try to find a way to use it in a recipe. I test said recipes on my poor unsuspecting husband. For example, over the weekend I decided to make my husband a vegan chocolate avocado cake with avocado buttercream frosting. My husband is neither a) vegan or b) a fan of cake or avocados. But, it seemed like a great idea at the time. The result resembled 2 soil-colored discs with a sinkhole in the middle covered with a gelatinous supernaturally green ooze. Picture asphalt covered in the "ectoplasmic residue" made famous by the movie Ghostbusters. Go ahead, i'll wait. Got it? My dear husband gamely ate a slice and then said "Well, I think I'm put off food for the next couple of days." Eh, you win some you lose some.

Because of this divine appreciation for all things edible, it becomes necessary for me to remain physically active virtually everyday. Lucky for me, I like exercise. BUT, as I get older my metabolism tends to go on holiday more and more often (I fear the day it retires) and this combined with the looonnng Chicago winters finds me digging at the bottom of my motivation well more often than I care to admit. So, in a moment of wisdom I bought a treadmill! I want to name him, because I have a feeling he and I are going to become good friends, but I haven't thought of anything suitable yet. My theory was that if the opportunity and means to exercise was sitting right in my apartment, how could I ever resist? Because it was available to me, I would use it more. Right?

Ok, I admit it. I trapped you a little bit. Did you think this blog post was just going to be about me and my treadmill and avocado cake?! The reasoning I used above can actually be extrapolated to demonstrate a theory called "moral hazard". Moral hazard, in the context of healthcare, is an idea that economists put forth to postulate that health insurance can change the behavior of the person being insured. I liken this to an all-you-can-eat buffet. Have you ever seen the waste that goes on in those places?! Just because we can? In other words, if universal health insurance were provided, the citizens of the US would just use healthcare willy-nilly. Thus, the "lack of enthusiasm" some display for universal healthcare. To look at it another way, those who are un- or under-insured are actually efficient users of healthcare. Make sense? No, I don't think so either. This presumes that people will treat healthcare like they treat a buffet. And have you ever known anyone who would rather check themselves into the hospital for a host of painful and invasive tests than go to the beach? Or wait in the waiting room of an ER instead of watching a movie on the couch with popcorn? Just because it's available? Me either. Here's a link to an article that describes this myth much better than I.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/08/29/050829fa_fact

Food for thought. Food for thought.