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June 2, 2005
We Need To Get Our Heads Out Of the Sand And Deal With It
I was just listening to "Fresh Air" with Terri Gross, the excellent NPR show that is taped in Philadelphia, and the last line of an interview floated out to me as a good headline. Of course the interview had nothing whatsoever to do with CR, but has that ever stopped me before?
My mother picked me up from work and we travelled out to pick up our dry cleaning (I still don't have a car. Ugh. Fought with insurance companies all day.) and she told me about an interview she had heard with Bill Clinton on the Larry King Live Show. Mom told me that President Clinton spoke some about the obesity epidemic, and pointed out that low income people have very few choices in terms of food because many poor areas don't have real grocery stores. So people are forced to eat at MacDonald's or buy their food at convenience stores. So the poor have no access to healthy food, and the obesity epidemic becomes worse. Then the uninsured need health care for the inevitable results of a life time of bad eating.
Who has any interest in dealing with this problem? Public health authorities are rarely models of what they preach, even with access to the best of information and all the trips to Whole Foods a tenured professor's salary can buy. The food industry makes money off people's addiction to sugar and fat. The weight loss industry makes money off people's desperation (though I believe that there are many, many in the weight loss industry who really do want to help people.) Who is going to step in and say enough?
It has long been my prayer that as our health care system lurches closer and closer to collapse, the giant health insurance companies would finally decide to do to obesity what they did to smoking: all but destroy it. If health insurance companies and HMO's with all their power were to go up against the food industry the way they went up against the tobacco industry, I think we would see some change in the food offerings that we have access to. Just like state governments offer free, accessible assistance to people who want to stop smoking, they should offer help to people of all economic levels who want to end destructive eating habits.
The problem of obesity seems simple -- just eat less, right? But the fact is, most people don't have even the vaguest idea of how to truly eat healthily, how to control their appetites, how to cook a decent meal for a family. These skills aren't taught in schools, and parents these days have no idea how to put anything other than pizza on the table. The roller coaster of high carb, high saturated fat food is addictive, just like cigarettes or alcohol. People deserve a fighting chance to claim their own health. It's not just about willpower, it's about tools and skills.
Our culture is so filled with tempting, inexpensive gak foods that trying to lose weight and get healthy while living in the real world is like trying to quit smoking if you live in a smoke filled bar with all your friends begging you to have just one cigarette. No one would do that to a smoker who was trying to quit without incurring the wrath of all public health minded folk everywhere. Yet, it's considered somehow pathological and weird to refuse to eat even one bite of gak. In a rational world, MR would be the norm. But no, we all have to prove we're "normal" by taking a bite of this and a bite of that, tempting our old addictions to carbs and fat and making ourselves feel like crap.
We need to get our heads out of the sand and deal with it.
I don't know how you parents do it. Keep fighting the good fight... and I will keep being grateful that I have no children and that my Orange One doesn't want them either. I have enough trouble keeping my cat from totally pigging out on Science Diet Light for Hairball Control.
Today was another day where my original plan was subverted, but to good results. A co-worker asked if I wanted to grab lunch at the place with the excellent salad bar, so I agreed. I ate a salad of lettuce, beets, tons of olives, about a cup and a half of cottage cheese, tomatoes, onions, and balsamic vinegar and about a fourth cup of delicous chickpeas. Beans are such a treat! I was so stuffed that for dinner I barely wanted anything, but I've gotta get my nutrition back up after this last week, so I just dissolved my two tablespoons of brewers yeast in a cup of chicken broth and drank it, along with an icy cold beer left over from my recent trip to North Carolina. Here's the nutritional info for today. Isn't it great to be back to my DWIDP???
DATE : 06/02/05
Num. Foods : 14
Food #1 : Egg, white, raw, fresh 1 cup
Food #2 : Flax 2 teaspoons
Food #3 : Olives, ripe, canned (jumbo-super colossal) a lot
Food #4 : Cottage Cheese Lowfat Light and Lively a cup and a half
Food #5 : Chickpeas (garbanzo beans, bengal gram), mature seeds, canned 1/4 cup
Food #6 : Lewis Labs 2 tablespoons
Food #7 : Soup, chicken broth or bouillon, dehydrated, dry 1 cup
Food #8 : Alcoholic beverage, beer, regular 1 bottle
Food #9 : Tomatoes, red, ripe, raw, November thru May average 130 g ish
Food #10 : Lettuce, cos or romaine, raw about a cup
Food #11 : Beets, canned, drained solids a lot
Food #12 : Coffee, brewed, prepared with distilled water a lot
Food #13 : Grape juice, frozen concentrate, sweetened, diluted with 3 volume water, with added vitamin C 1.0 servings
Food #14 : Wheat bran, crude 5 g
NUTRIENT TOTALS:
Abs. Values %RDA/SA
Calories 1080.24__cal 54%
Protein 72.61__gm 132% RDA
Total Fat 41.65__gm 64%
Sat. Fat 14.21__gm 71%
Mono. Fat 19.92__gm 69%
Poly. Fat 5.49__gm 82%
Carbohydrate 91.96__gm 31%
Fiber 21.89__gm 73%
Cholesterol 91.17__mg 30%
Vit. A 2581.08__IU 52% RDA
Vit. B6 1.03__mg 65% RDA
Vit. B12 0.66__mcg 33% RDA
Vit. C 41.26__mg 69% RDA
Vit. E 9.33__mg 117% RDA
Thiamine 1.10__mg 100% RDA
Folacin 233.31__mcg 130% RDA
Riboflavin 2.59__mg 200% RDA
Niacin 11.26__mg 75% RDA
Panto. Acid 1.76__mg 35% SA
Calcium 903.51__mg 75% RDA
Copper 1.01__mg 51% SA
Iron 15.47__mg 103% RDA
Magnesium 172.36__mg 62% RDA
Manganese 1.64__mg 55% SA
Phosphorus 693.50__mg 58% RDA
Potassium 2106.52__mg 105% RDA
Selenium 119.58__mcg 217% RDA
Sodium 4156.63__mg 173% SA
Zinc 3.53__mg 29% RDA
Tyrosine 1.56__gm 162% RDA
Lysine 2.96__gm 411% RDA
Phenylalanine 2.52__gm 262% RDA
Leucine 3.95__gm 411% RDA
Valine 2.87__gm 341% RDA
Methionine 1.38__gm 461% RDA
Cystine 1.00__gm 333% RDA
Tryptophan 0.72__gm 400% RDA
Threonine 2.05__gm 428% RDA
Isoleucine 2.58__gm 358% RDA
P:C:F = 27:38:35
Terri Gross just finished an interview with a woman about whom a book called "The Prison Angel" was just published. That's a nice title. I wonder if I should start calling MR The Nutrition Angel. That has a nice ring to it.
Love angel music baby... blood sugar, sex, magick... eggwhites brewers yeast flax oil mustard greens.
Maybe someone did design the universe after all.
Posted by april at June 2, 2005 8:24 PM
Comments
Boy, we were on the same wavelength today! - since I decided to talk about my prevention idea on my blog. Yes - we must do something. People need information. People need options. People need encouragement.
Posted by: Mary at June 2, 2005 6:27 PM
JADP: I live in a small rural town in one of the poorest parishes in Louisiana, and do 99% of my grocery shopping at Wal-Mart. Decent food is available, but it's sure as heck a lot more expensive and time-consuming than filling up on white rice and pork ribs. Many people around here do work that involves hard physical labor (or live with someone who does), working 12 hour days out in the fields, 7 days a week, in brutal weather conditions. Also this is Catholic country, so it's not uncommon for families to have 10 or 12 children to feed. Imagine trying to adhere to the kinds of diets we eat in a situation like that, on an extremely limited budget, in a poor rural area where the literacy rate is less than 70% and there's no such thing as a health food store. It's a whole nother universe, for sure.
-Liz
Posted by: Elizabeth at June 3, 2005 5:09 AM
Hi Liz!
Does JADP mean "Just a different perspective?"
I actually don't think we're disagreeing at all: access to healthy, low cost food is a serious problem, and more so in rural areas or in poor urban areas. I used to live in one of the poorest neighborhoods of New Haven, Connecticut, and the last grocery store, which was pretty horrible but at least had some food, closed down. So people without cars have absolutely no access whatsoever to real food. None! Of course, I'm an old lefty, but I really think that government needs to step in to help with this problem with subsidies for inner city and rural grocery stores. Burlington, Vermont did so by footing the bill to locate an excellent grocery store right downtown. If the state that is about to make Bernie Sanders a Senator can do it, shouldn't we all?
a
Posted by: april at June 3, 2005 8:31 AM
The problem of poor access to decent food is also present in Canada. MR's youngest brother, DPSG (Super Genius), has just moved into a little house close to his work. Seemed like a good idea, right? It's located in an old area of the city that is in the midst of a huge transition from poor working class to very trendy. People in the art & design fields and other young professionals are buying up many of the little houses. They are then either doing major renovations or completely demolishing the homes and constructing new, fairly expensive houses on the properties. However, there is no proper grocery store anywhere within walking distance (or even one bus ride) for any of the residents of this community, nor has there been for at least 5 years! There are two little convenience stores that sell only gak and a bit of overpriced fruit and several restaurants offering take-out. Without a car, it's a 1/2 day project just to shop for the basic necessity of life -- decent food! Something is definitely wrong with this picture. JD
Posted by: Judith at June 3, 2005 12:01 PM
Oops, sorry, JADP = Just Another Data Point. No disagreement! The transportation problem is very serious here too with absolutely no public transportation, not even taxis, plus no sidewalks. It's especially hard on the elderly and the obese, when the heat is usually up over 100 degrees.
-Liz
Posted by: Elizabeth at June 3, 2005 12:18 PM