This is a quote from Ralph Winter’s “Reconsecration to a Wartime, not a Peacetime, Lifestyle”.

“America today is a “save yourself” society if there ever was one. But does it really work? The underdeveloped societies suffer from one set of diseases: tuberculosis, malnutrition, pneumonia, parasites, typhoid, cholera, typhus, etc. Affluent America has virtually invented a whole new set of diseases: obesity, arteriosclerosis, heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, venereal disease, cirrhosis of the liver, drug addiction, alcoholism, divorce, battered children, suicide, murder. Take your choice. labor-saving machines have turned out to be body-killing devices. Our affluence has allowed both mobility and isolation of the nuclear family, and as a result, our divorce courts, our prisons and our mental institutions are flooded. In saving ourselves we have nearly lost ourselves.”

Being wealthy isn’t all it’s cut out to be. I was just reading a study put out by the World Health Organization (Global cancer rates could increase by 50% to 15 million by 2020), and it’s talking about the skyrocketing cancer rates in developed countries. Wealthy countries have a much higher cancer rate than the underdeveloped countries. Here’s a snippet from it:

The Western lifestyle is characterized by a highly caloric diet, rich in fat, refined carbohydrates and animal protein, combined with low physical activity, resulting in an overall energy imbalance. It is associated with a multitude of disease conditions, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, arterial hypertension and cancer.

Malignancies typical for affluent societies are cancers of the breast, colon/rectum, uterus (endometrial carcinoma), gallbladder, kidney and adenocarcinoma of the oesophagus. Prostate cancer is also strongly related to the Western lifestyle…

Well at least we have iPods.