In the past generation, medical ethical issues about what you eat have finally bubbled up to the surface of public attention. The high status that doctors enjoy in society has thwarted attention to this vital topic. So has the sheer expertise doctors enjoy, which grants them an authority that is usually well deserved.

As with nearly every other field concerning the mastery of the material universe, medicine has grown in sophistication at breathtaking speed in modern times. The greatest part of this growth has been in the cultivation and production of newer and better drugs. It is unreservedly wonderful to live in an age when so many age old ailments have been reduced to relatively minor problems, and people quite naturally hope for still more progress.

Such progress is a mixed blessing, and the problem lies in the very nature of these medicines, which is not typically to prevent but to cure disease. Had the public been as concerned with prevention, untold millions of people would probably have never gotten ill at all. There is little doubt that the population, generally, would be significantly healthier were it to adopt such an approach.

There is another benefit to a prevention first approach, which is related not to health as such, but to cost. In almost any situation imaginable, it costs a lot less to prevent a disease than it does to cure it. But there is an important corollary to this truth, which is that there is much more money to be made in making curative drugs than there is in preventing disease.

There is no doubt that pharmaceutical companies have provided thousands of life saving new drugs. But this means that these companies have a profound interest in continuing to do so, and emphasizing disease curing. This would not be a problem in and of itself, except that this industry collectively has the resources to unduly influence the practice of medicine.

Of prevention oriented approaches to health, the Paleo Diet, known in some quarters more colorfully as the Cave Man Diet, is growing in popularity. The core idea behind the Paleo Diet is that modern man's hunting and gathering ancestors ate much more healthily than most people do in the modern world. A lot of the ills that befall modern people could be best avoided by taking the modernity out of the diet, and returning to a more primitive, if limited, cuisine.

There are a few different versions of this diet, but the basic concept is to remove processed salts and oils, refined sugars, and all dairy from the food eaten each day. Nor would legumes grace dinner tables, nor grains for breakfast or any other meal. Instead of these modern foods, people are now to dine exclusively on grass fed beef, nuts and fruit, mushrooms and fungi based foods, and lots of fish.

Within that range of food, one can eat whatever one wants. There is some controversy surrounding this diet, but that is inevitable when stepping on the toes of such a big industry. Medical ethical issues about what you eat seem to be everyone's concern today.