Why Is Wellness So Late To The Party?

When I decided to blog daily, and share some of the information that I’ve been collecting over the past couple of years I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be! As you can see from my previous entries I haven’t figured out how to condense it down…suggestions would be appreciated!

Before digging into possible reasons & solutions for many of the health issues people face today, I feel that its necessary to look at where the wellness industry has been and “why” the wellness industry has come so late to our food and medical industries. Why is it taking so long for people to catch on?

Our wellness industry today exists in large part thanks to a historic battle won in the 1970’s by the one of the greatest wellness revolutionaries of our time: the late J.I. Rodale, founder of Prevention Magazine and Rodale Press (Men’s Health, Runners World).

How Rodale Paved the Way for the Wellness Revolution

In 1954, entrepreneur and author J.I. Rodale had a lot to lose. His company, Rodale Press, was just getting his fledgling Prevention Magazine off the ground. Prevention was dedicated to teaching readers how to prevent disease versus just treating the symptoms of disease.

Rodale had concluded that eating large quantities of red meat and dairy products dramatically increased the risk of heart disease and that physical activity actually decreased the risk of having a heart attack. This was at a time when the U.S. government was spending millions encouraging Americans to eat more red meat and dairy products at every meal, three times a day. Doctors were telling patients with heart disease to reduce or eliminate physical activity entirely.

Rodale wrote about his new findings in two books: How to Eat For a Healthy Heart and This Pace is Not Killing Us. He was convinced that this information could save millions of lives. But, like many writers in the 1950’ he was not on an approved list drawn up by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee, so his publisher refused to publish his new books.

Long story short, he published his own books, was ordered by the FTC to cease and desist from claiming, directly or indirectly, that readers of any of his publications would improve their health. His legal battles with the federal government raged for almost two decades, at times putting his entire personal net worth at risk. In later years some of the same leading medical experts that the government had originally used at the initial FTC hearings almost 20 years earlier, one by one refuted their original testimony, claiming they “didn’t know back then,” and admitted that many of Rodale’s original claims had since become established medical facts.

Despite the hardship, Rodale refused to back down unless the FTC agreed to acknowledge that the First Amendment prohibited them from regulating books and printed material. Soon after Rodale passed away, the U.S. government reversed its position, stating that the FTC would no longer require advertisers of information-based products to establish the efficacy of their claims.

One of the greatest challenges facing Rodale, and facing many wellness advocates today, is human rejection of the new or unknown, especially when the new ideas and technology forces people to rethink established beliefs.

**FTC commissioner Elman wrote in his dissenting opinion: “It is the glory of a free society that a man can write a book contending that the earth is flat, or that the moon is made of green cheese, or that God is dead, without having to ‘substantiate’ or ‘prove’ his claims to the satisfaction of some public official or agency. It is arrogance to presume that in any field of knowledge, whether dealing with health or otherwise, all the answers are now in.”

Bravo, Mr. Elman!

Information taken from the New Wellness Revolution by Paul Zane Pilzer

I too, believe that information available today, not only could, but would, save the lives of millions of people, if they would simply look at statistics and see that doing what you have always done, will give you the current results...2/3 or more of the population dying of a disease that could have been prevented.