One of my favorite movies is the very underrated Avalon, from 1990. The film tells the story of an immigrant family in Baltimore, from their arrival around the time of the first world war up through several generations, until around the late 1960s. The family is fictional and from somewhere in eastern europe (I got the sense watching the film that they were probably a Jewish family from Poland, though I don’t recall that their background was ever definitively specified), but their experience could easily stand in for millions of Americans, no matter the ethnic or religious background.
At first the family are poor and work menial jobs as they struggle to acclimate to life in America. But as the years pass and successive generations take over, they climb the ladder, achieving the American Dream of middle class affluence: better jobs, a big home in the suburbs, automobiles and televisions. However, there is a price to pay for this success, as the close family cohesion that they share at the start of the film begins to dissolve. By the film’s end, the members of the family are well assimilated into American life and much more prosperous, but also lonelier and less happy.
It’s a very beautiful film and if you take nothing from this blog post other than that you should see Avalon, then I’ve done something good for the world today. But of course, I didn’t create today’s post just to share my taste in cinema with you.
Something in the air or water? Nope. The towns immediately next door to Roseto who breathed the same air and drank the same water had normal rates of heart disease
Less smoking? Nope. The residents of Roseto – like most Americans of the time – smoked heavily
More exercise? Nope. The folks in Roseto were no more or less active than people in other similar towns
A healthier diet and slimmer waists? Again no. Many residents in Roseto were obese, and the local diet was heavy in pasta, bread, sausages, ham, beef, cheeses, and desserts.
Genetics? Nope. When researchers found relatives of the Roseto residents who were living elsewhere, they did not experience the great health of the Rosetans.
The best that the researchers could come up with was that Roseto was a very tight-knit community of families who had immigrated from Italy. Most of the inhabitants lived in big extended families, knew their neighbors well, and were very engaged in their church and in various civic organizations. Picture the sort of town where grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles are all regular guests at the dinner table, and where the children roam the neighborhood freely knowing that the neighbors will look out for their safety, and you have some idea of what life in Roseto was like.
In effect, researchers concluded, the inhabitants of Roseto were healthy DESPITE being overweight, smoking, and eating a relatively poor diet, because their sense of purpose and social connection protected them against disease. It’s a phenomenon that came to be known as the “Roseto effect” and it has been widely discussed over the years, including in Malcolm Gladewell’s book Outliers, as well in several documentaries (click here for one such example).
Sadly, the town of Roseto began to change starting in the late 1960s, with young people moving out to find better jobs elsewhere, and the breakdown of close knit community ties as the older generations passed on. When researchers went back in the 1980s, they found that people in Roseto were no longer healthier than people in other towns.
This brings me to a theme I’ve hit on in a number of prior posts. We all know that throughout the Western world – and especially in the United States – we are experiencing a decline in health and an unprecedented burden of chronic illness. Rightly so, much of this has been blamed on our highly processed fast-food diet, our sedentary jobs, and our disrupted sleep. And certainly these are all crucial pieces of the puzzle, with diet, exercise, and sleep remaining some of the most powerful tools each of us possess as individuals to improve our own health.
But social connections are also vital to our health, both as individuals and collectively. I do not believe we will ever fully tackle our chronic disease crisis unless we can find a way to restore the social ties, mutual trust, and pride of place that once defined American life, but which have almost completely evaporated over the past few decades.
