Expected lifespans are plateauing worldwide, suggesting that life-extending advances in medicine, food safety, and plumbing may have gone as far as they can to preserve humanity’s ability to prolong the inevitable. This news dampens techno-mystical fantasies of using science to achieve immortality and slip the surly bonds of death. Yet this is old news for Americans, whose lifespans began to decline before the rest of the world and before the pandemic.
Social Justice Die-off?
Such issues are complex and subject to politicization. Disparities in black or Native American populations are instantly highlighted as “inequitable” while the long-observed disparity between men and women is not – women have always lived longer than men on average, and it is not credibly attributable to “maternalistic oppression.” Interestingly, “paternalism” is now widely defined as “action that limits a person's or group's liberty or autonomy and is intended to promote their own good,” and “maternalism” is “the public expression of domestic values associated with motherhood. It centers on the language of motherhood to justify women's political activities, actions and validate state or public policies.” Today’s society has polluted language to inhibit critical thought – next, they will say only white people can be racists.
This diversion serves a purpose here – Americans of all colors, genders, sexual preferences, and ages are dying earlier on average. Racism, sexism, and transphobia are not the bogeymen Americans should be looking at here. The biggest culprits seem to be ultra-processed foods and a decline in exercise. Perhaps Asian Americans live much longer (83.5 years compared to 76.4 years for whites and 70.8 for blacks) than other US citizens for reasons other than their wealth or oppression of marginalized communities.
These common-sense observations are hardly as politically palatable as blaming others for one’s ill health, but the truth will set us free (from premature aging and death). In the near term, COVID-19 and the opioid epidemic are rightly faulted for the sharp disparities emerging between Americans and other populations regarding lifespans. Yet this trend preceded those crises.
Americans Are Getting Sicker
The American medical system has implicitly, if not explicitly, promised Americans ever better health and ever longer lives, but it can only do so much to rescue consumers from self-inflicted illnesses. It is a better health solution to avoid self-sickening diets and behaviors rather than become dependent on hypertension, diabetes, or chemotherapy treatments that enable those behaviors to endure without death – for a while, at least. Likewise, time at the gym or walking in the evening is an obesity preventive, rendering Wegovy, stomach surgeries, and insulin unnecessary interventions. This may be unpleasant news for those preferring a pill prescription over a StairMaster, but it is hardly fatphobic.
Yet this is not always what the politicized talking medical heads instruct. S. Jay Olshansky – of the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health and lead author of a recent study of global life expectancies – explained that reducing risk factors, working to eliminate disparities, and encouraging people to embrace healthier lifestyles can be the key to living longer and healthier lives. “This is a glass ceiling, not a brick wall,” he told US News. “We can push through the glass health and longevity ceiling with geroscience and efforts to slow the effects of aging.”
A 2022 Harvard article similarly concluded that “lower life expectancy in southern states raises the possibility that politics, vaccination policies, pollution, climate, or other variable factors may contribute to discrepancies in life expectancy.”
Processed Foods and Exercise are Key
The unnamed “other variable factors” excluded from this list are exercise and healthier diets. A 2024 Discussion by the Mayo Clinic, titled “What’s behind the decline in American life expectancy?” is more forthright:
“[I]n 2014, U.S. life expectancy peaked at 78.8 years. ... [T]he U.S. outspends every country in the world in healthcare. Yet, people in the U.S. still live shorter lives than do people elsewhere in the industrialized world.
“Some people might blame those disparities on the U.S. healthcare system, but such a conclusion is overly simplistic. After all, The drop in U.S. life span occurred as eating habits shifted away from minimally processed whole foods and toward ultraprocessed foods like sugary breakfast cereals and toaster pastries.
“The consumption of ultraprocessed foods grew from 53.5% of calories in 2001 to about 57% of calories in 2018, according to an analysis of the eating habits of 41,000 adults in the U.S. ... More recent research has linked higher consumption of processed foods to an increased risk of death from cancer and heart disease.”
The Mayo Clinic also noted that “people in the U.S. are becoming more sedentary,” which research has linked to “cardiovascular disease, obesity, high blood sugar and cancer.”
This is an intervention that Americans can embrace without the need for a trip to the doctor. In order to respond effectively to any crisis, a proper identification of the true problem is essential to fashion effective interventions. Organic foods counteract chemical toxins in the body and enhance natural immunity. Exercise eliminates toxins and combats deadly obesity. Surviving COVID-19 is more likely if the real underlying pandemic of Americans is truthfully confronted: skyrocketing obesity rates caused by unhealthy, toxic foods and a sedentary lifestyle.
That may not be a message that consumers – or the corporations profiting off their illnesses – are itching to hear.
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