What Distinguishes the Rich from the Poor Today, Part I

In Part II of this series, I’ll be covering education. In Part III, I’ll be covering something I call “structural pliancy”. —GL

One of my brothers-in-law, C., is moving from Chile to America to take over a fairly large corporation. He is a highly educated, highly successful guy in his late-thirties—a big strapping guy of about 6’3”, a former rugby player, big on golf, with four small kids and a tall willowy wife who looks like a model.

[Originally a picture of a two-headed chicken.
I didn’t have the ©, so Blogger blocked it.]
Yeah, it has two heads—but it was
raised organically. So it’s safer 
than your lunchtime Chicken McNugget.

Though he’s been to the United States many times, for business and pleasure, he’s never actually lived there. So over a Sunday lunch, we talked about his first impressions about daily life in America—and what struck him was the food:

“It has no taste,” C. told me. “Or rather, supermarket food has no taste: Beef, fish, chicken—it all tastes bland and watery.”

He told me how vegetables too tasted oddly bland, and on top of that, he and his wife were worried about what is actually in the food.

The reason they’re worried about American food is because of the size of American children in his kids’ new schools:

“Our kids were among the tallest in their class in Chile—but they’re among the smaller kids in their U.S. classroom. On top of that, the girls in my older daughter’s class are starting to menstruate—and they are nine years-old! That’s not normal.”

C.’s conclusion: “It’s the industrially processed foods—God knows what they’re sticking in it. But we’ve got four children—and we want them to be healthy. So that’s why we started buying all our food at organic markets. The food bill is triple what it would be, but I don’t care, I can afford it: I want my family healthy.”

That—in a nutshell—is what will begin to distinguish rich people from poor people in the XXI century, as it has for millenia before: Diet.

But what kind of diet is the issue.

If in ages past, the diets of the wealthy had more calories, in this century and the future, the diets of the wealthy will have less chemicals and hormones.

And as in the past, we will see the difference in their children.

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