Proving miseducation is not confined to stereotypical regions of the United States and isn’t limited to specific hot button issues vaccinations, abortion, politics of climate change, religion but health too, to the detriment of everyone globally.

Current Trends by Natasha Sapp

Those, first portion of the title responses are the kinds of answers you get from people who have microphones shoved in their faces for American late night or daytime talk show segments, a-la Jimmy Kimmel channeling his predecessor Jay Leno’s Jay Walking, suddenly asking them about their eating habits; guilty or self-conscious about what their nutritional food consumption reveals, predictably unable to think critically about their eating, adequately remember healthy choices made on the spot, asked to give answers in a seriously short amount of time, saying does such and such, i.e. French fries, count. In no way do they believe French fries should count as healthy, be considered a vegetable, comment indicating their embarrassment not their health ignorance. Next there’s how much they care, likely don’t, about the answers given knowing it isn’t the SAT, ACT, an IRS tax form, employer form W4 or similarly important document, isn’t the medical history potion of a doctor’s office form for them, their children or spouse, so they throw out an answer moving on, say something totally absurd hoping it will be aired on TV; hmm, we wonder if that was a phenomenon behind Jay Leno’s wackiest answers causing us to marvel at ‘American stupidity’ while getting a good laugh in the process? Middle portion a tactic by resisters to reforming school lunch programs fighting to claim the tomato products in both catsup and pizza sauce counted as a vegetable, clearly having their own agenda; largely their unwillingness to spend more school budget money on higher quality food for students, not wanting to lose their lucrative deal with vending machine makers/suppliers, companies giving them bulk deals on frozen pizza, tater-tots, chicken nuggets, having begun to cooperate with Obama era lunch reforms upset at seeing the vast quantity of food students throw away because they don’t want it/won’t eat it. Again they don’t really believe named items should be classified as vegetables, be deemed the healthiest things lunch programs can offer kids but are using it to push for their position at worst, at best feel themselves between a rock and a hard place if they are offering better food but kids won’t consume it; of paramount importance in the lingering debate is, the kids themselves don’t believe it, going by a much simpler metric of what does or doesn’t taste good, what they can get at home that tastes better to them less because it’s unhealthy frozen pizza, fast food from any of the famous named places, is fried and filled with loads of fat, calories and grease but precisely because it’s mom or dad’s special recipe for—fill in the blank, only mom or dads way of cooking vegetable X, making fruit medley Y makes it taste good, is the only way I want to eat it. Confusing is why entities commenting on either average citizen groups’ answers or school officials views on quality of food given to students are surprised, don’t seem to see what is happening; few must have kids because they don’t comprehend it as normal child behavior they will grow out of as they age if offered a variety of foods over their young lives. Last section of the title actually the point of the second referenced article below, but because the author led with the history of Mountain Dew’s creation on Tennessee, Appalachia’s eventual oral health, readers who, for the sake of time and busy schedules, might not have gotten the very end missed the larger picture, which was our nation’s backward approach to dental care; access to advanced dental procedures that would save damaged teeth not necessarily needing to be pulled except housing convenience for dentists and lessening exorbitant, from the get go, cost for patients, to lagging advancements in saving, even re-growing natural teeth through stem cells instead of improving dentures, partials, bridges, dental implants the cutting edge procedure in tooth replacement, push to replace metal based fillings with amalgam, leads to people losing their teeth and with them social status, chances at jobs, subject to shame they lost said teeth in the 21st century regardless the cause. Too many people getting their information about the nation’s health, obesity rates and causes, dynamics not only from nightly national news blurbs encompassing little depth but coupled with reality TV programs centered around weight, weight loss or rare disease; coming away having internalized the wrong message reinforcing ingrained cultural stereotypes about fat people, they spend their days constantly stuffing their faces with everything we are told we should avoid in massive quantities, everyone who is obese are like those featured on programs such as My 600 Pound Life called crazy, delusional painting the doctors as heroes, the only ones willing to help them, those who’ve created ways to help them where others don’t even bother to know how. Clapping back on another of their misnomers commented on, no a majority of people don’t think they can eat whatever they want and compensate with elevated amounts of exercise; statements often made by actors when explaining how they prepare for roles that mandate dropping pounds or beefing up, answering questions about how they maintain their figure/physique usually only applying to men, centering too on only one aspect of health, weight, not numbers on blood pressure, cholesterol, risk for heart disease, cancer, stroke, things they sounded off on. Yes it matters what we put in our face holes, aka our mouths, for people unfamiliar with that term, and yes what we put in our face holes can drastically affect our health for better or worse; it also matters a great deal when, especially independent media, buys into negative narratives on health that do nothing to tell us how to solve the problems as individuals or larger society actually helping to spread misconceptions about health, wellness and food, if not downright misinformation. How you present the information is also just as important giving it to the public; every video segment discussing food trends, health, obesity in particular, is always done, mainstream media or independent varieties either one, against a back drop of piles and piles of burgers, hotdogs, French fries, ice cream, fast food wrappers reinforcing an idea all of America A- eats non-stop and B- eats that stuff in massive quantities for every meal, not true; every segment discussing health and weight features a panoramic of a busy city area or beach showing a majority of obese people, when still shots/photos are used for news segment related graphics it’s obvious they took the most extreme examples. Whereas I, in a position to do a lot of people watching always on the lookout for my bus or cab, relative giving me a ride because my from birth disability makes getting a driving license extra complicated and financially a car isn’t an option, look around my community and I don’t see an inordinate number of people who look like that; other segments on other topics, aspects of health even, display a different panoramic using more normal, average size people with no weight problem. Secondly is the age of the persons depicted during the ‘obese America’ panoramic easily a year or two shy of middle age at minimum, most readily identifiable as 40 plus translating their obesity less into a health crisis and more into middle age spread, an old age weight gain issue, achieving the perception distortion they appeared to be aiming for; going back to my community, majority of the ‘fat’ people I see are in this category or burly, not fat, sports players complete with uniform coming in to say a Wal-Mart buying quick eatable protein and Gatorade, vitamin water in prep for practice, just after. Comment from the face holes The Young Turks video link outlining a military recruitment problem tracing back to the nation’s obesity and abysmal fitness for service prone to injury for low overall/years long physical fitness if not obese. “The thumbnail of this video looked like a pregnant woman,” illustrates what the blog is getting at, and it probably was understanding the history of before and after photos for weight loss programs, diet shakes/formulas, exercise equipment/regiments that they did take women who were pregnant and picture them before and after the birth of their child touting it as weight loss results from their product alongside other dirty tricks on par with airbrushing magazine photos used to sell clothing, clone, even burgers or cause magazines to fly off the racks, make everyone like, follow, retweet your Facebook, twitter and Instagram photos; if it’s not that it’s a CGI, computer manipulated estimation of what an obese person in a military uniform would resemble, because they don’t make military clothing in that size, created by The Young Turks’ production team or pulled from the internet stock photo section to accompany the story as a graphic. Whichever one undermining whatever factual information, insightful analysis you’re giving; lastly on side by side before and after pictures accompanying weight loss plans, diet formulas, exercise machines, we should be skeptical of anything that shows people going from a size 22 to a size 2 as if that’s normal, going from looking like an average person in their age bracket to supermodel on a magazine cover, social media phenom, that these commercials, infomercials are on late at night, early morning, only allowed on then might have been the first clue. Regular media determined to shift off its axis people’s comprehension of what they are being told bending over backwards to appear neutral and balanced, the UberEats story link below was about the changing face of the restaurant business in a major American city, a man who being willing to change how he did things, no eat in customers, a silent phone in favor of online/app orders, a pizza joint willing to make/sell what his neighborhood wanted, in his case fired chicken, was able to surpass survival to thriving managing 8 restaurants out of a lone brick and mortar space. Cue the health side of it when NBC interviewed the former head of the UN world food programme chattering about the side effects of providing more convenience to bad food choices “giving people efficiency of bad food choices;” missed is people ordering from a restaurant, seeking fast food delivery on the whole aren’t normally looking for healthy food, UberEats doesn’t have a monthly subscription fee like a magazine so it’s pay as you use, order what you want meaning people can use it as often or not as they like, not necessarily increasing their ‘bad food’ consumption just using a new vehicle to get it—oh. Whereas there are certain subscriptions and promotional programs for frequent users to avoid quickly accumulated delivery and/service fees if you plan to use it often, don’t mind the fixed monthly expense over randomness of fees based on what you order, where you chose to eat at a given time; defending both people and the business model, offerings are based on what area locals have asked for, if they desire more healthy options, say for those more frequent users, they will provide them, they are open to alerting local eateries of an unmet need for healthier foods. Consistent eat-outers already go to more traditional restaurants Applebee’s, Chilies exc., previously responding to consumer demand for healthy options; perplexing no one, not her, not NBC asked why the people in the neighborhood were hunting fried chicken versus say KFC, they went to one man’s 8 virtual restaurants not an overview of the entire UberEats menu, facts holding post her comment. Neither is the ‘providing efficiency to bad food choices’ exclusive to UberEats, Door Dash, Gurbhub and Postmates does the exact same thing giving standard delivery once only at the discretion of individual restaurants commonly used with pizza, sub sandwiches and Chinese food a modern tech upgrade, argument to be made it can spell better long run health by increasing variety of availability; so why pick on UberEats, why bash a business model that has the potential of saving, been in business for years restaurants, and providing jobs for delivery drivers? Restaurants that may not be around according to trend watchers thanks to millennials eating more at home, depending on delivery; entities like Applebee’s introducing an order pick up service app permitting you to order on your phone and have workers run it to your car. Were she as intelligent as she thinks she is compared to where she use to work, the nice woman would forgo comments on efficiency of bad food choices and demand regulation e.g. the posting of calorie counts mandated for brick and mortar eateries be placed on the app for each place’s menu items, she would recommend or devise a guide directing people toward the heathiest menu offerings for each eating establishment distributed to each restaurant delivery service entity giving people the appropriate data to make an informed decision. Testimonial time again for the author, I recently joined Door Dash, Grubhub and Postmates, late to discover they operated in my midsize Midwestern town after the Burger King went out of business at the local Wal-Mart I go to monthly to shop and grab lunch, usually bringing home the weekend’s dinner on my way out, said closure robbing me of one of my 2 fast food guilty pleasures; I had long thought about trying one of them if they ever came to my area to give me more variety in my occasional fast food dinning besides pizza, subs and mediocre wings- the only things doing delivery the traditional way- and burgers I can take home after my Wal-Mart jaunt, the Subway in the same strip mall where I get my hair cut roughly 4 times a year. Joining all of them not to pig out on endless fast food but to enhance my variety at times when I would normally eat out, to access loved places I hadn‘t been to in years because it was nonsensical to take a $4 round trip on the bus for essentially take out; awkward getting on and off in select locations with the handicap lift in parking lots/spaces built well before the Americans with disabilities act and no thought to embarking and disembarking from that kind/size vehicle. The only local participating Sonic listed on Postmates, my local KFC on Grubhub has their potato wedges as an individual item to order in various sizes versus part of a combo on Door Dash, identical delivery fee, participating Taco Bells on Grubhub also include Nacho fries as a single item not just part of the cheaply priced box, providing pictures of foods/combos so people can better ascertain what they are getting. Now all that being said, laid out in detail is, at the same time, no excuse for the politicians misleading people, poor regulation of seen in grocery stores everywhere foods, subsequent food makers to properly label their products so consumers know what they’re buying nationwide, what is in the food they are ingesting possibly bought attempting to be healthier; slow or downright refusing to remove known harmful additives, preservatives and chemicals from foods as they have done throughout other developed countries, government willing to kowtow to big conglomerate food makers desires. Nor is it an excuse for the food deserts popping up around the nation where there are a wealth of convenience stores, selling cheap, unhealthy foods, fast food restaurants on every corner with 1$ menu items providing a quick, inexpensive ‘alternative’ to overworked, achingly tired people who don’t have the energy to go shopping, then cook meals day in day out; less due to their poor diet compromising their health, and more attributed to manual labor jobs and exhaustive work hours, working 2-3 jobs to make ends meet. But redundancy setting in before concluding paragraph 1, that isn’t all or so much as the biggest problem; when 4% of the world’s cancer is linked to obesity and reporters are reiterating researchers’ shock, 6.9% of the United States’ cancer linked to obesity and in both cases they are acting as if they said 40 and 69% instead, facts worthy of panicking, running around hair on fire. The words slow your roll, calm the heck down must be employed, when summarizing research data and comparing America, a westernized nation, with Ethiopia and India, nations who struggle to feed themselves, posting cancer rates of 1% or less, mentioning non-westernized nations Egypt and Mongolia hold high rates of obesity caused cancer leaving off percentages; chief problem in Ethiopia blindness caused by poverty, poor nutrition and their proximity to the sun brought to our national attention when an American ophthalmologist fine-tuned an inexpensive procedure that could restore their sight removing cataracts. Droves can’t see but they don’t have to worry about obesity related cancer, hurray; they combat related malnutrition in Rwanda today (5 years after the Ethiopia story was done by Nightline) growing orange sweet potatoes, introduced by aid workers, and making them a diet staple focusing on children battling stunted growth and vision problems stemming from not enough vitamin A. No one attributing Mongolia’s high cancer rates to their frightful air quality, are they sure some of the cancer they are attributing to obesity wasn’t metastasized from the lungs or migrating to weak points in the body due to breathing in that pollution for decades? The shock belongs in poor reporting, incomplete data given by scientists not in the percentages themselves, ours, the western world’s compared to indigenous parts of the globe; it wouldn’t dawn on researchers their low cancer percentage is due to the food struggling who don’t live long enough to be effected by cancers hitting during your golden years, a genetic immunity to cancer, select types, or a lacking weakness toward the disease as a whole, those we attribute to obesity regardless sufferers size. Ignored some of these elevations in cancer rates linked to the availability of calorically dense food (food with a high calorie content) could be called a sign of progress nations once barely capable of feeding themselves have reached a new phase, they have a middle class, have people who can afford small luxuries, even confined to those in the food market, no longer consigned to a subsistence living. ‘Shocking’ findings followed up by, seeing a pattern here, another study highlighting U.S. cancer deaths had fallen for the 25th year in a row citing decreased tobacco use mostly among men, improved cancer screenings and treatments; negatives found ones plaguing us for decades, coincidentally having nothing to do with lifestyle, disparities between black and white cancer patient deaths through shrinking the disparity between rich and poor American cancer deaths increasing, an access to care issue. Yes our oral health and the things we do to protect and preserve our teeth/gums matter but are no substitute for proper access to dental care to maintain mouth hygiene or treat bad teeth, cavities when small so you don’t lose entire teeth, having quality water not exacerbating tooth decay and types of gum disease; structures we don’t have on the latter end just as detrimental as our love affair with soda, high sugar diets, if not more negatively impactful. Where there is legitimate confusion on healthy diet, obesity, catch phrase, lifestyle related illnesses, or your dental health, held up alongside embarrassed, possibly even flippant answers, it isn’t singularly coming from a government colluding with giant food corporations to distribute the food pyramid that was everything from a 1950’s educated guess to a conspiratory joke (according to given independent media group) by the government and the food companies to get people buying their processed food products regardless nutritional content. Isn’t the government in a double whammy slow to change food labels to include information like added sugars instead of listing sugar all as one entity, adjusted to how people actually eat/drink say a 20 oz. soda or small bag of chips; the whole thing not stopping at 8 oz., the 2 chip/2 ½ cookies listed as constituting a serving size according to the company, beside things you need a specialized degree to pronounce forget understand what they are. Hardly the work of school officials holding their own motivations totally divorced from best interests of children in growing numbers depending on school breakfast and lunch, education we don’t provide students required to take a health class, though forcing some students to calculate their BMI (body mass index), other schools weighing grade schoolers essentially shaming them, sending nasty letters home to their parents using a flawed metric akin to the BMI only measuring weight in ratio to height not muscle mass versus visible fat, a child who is taller or shorter for their age, the information we don’t provide the public when scientific, medical and nutritional knowledge significantly shifts. Rather the biggest culprit is one they fail to mention, the very information meant to enlighten us on how to take care of ourselves, broader the way we’ve elected to disseminate topic information to the masses; in short the endless revolving door of studies reported on by national news not complete if they aren’t contradicting each other and a third saying something utterly out of left field on the identical issue, see the 2 cancer stories above as only 1 example. Independent media seemingly deliberately conflating, superimposing ignorance and ambivalence, the difference between not knowing and not caring; the perspective they blatantly don’t have on things as simple as there are multiple reasons people are deemed unfit for military service on physical grounds, they talk about the obesity epidemic try the autism epidemic effecting boys more than girls rendering service developmentally impossible for hundreds of thousands of prime age young men. People born with everything from cystic fibrosis to cerebral palsy incapable of joining the military, Americans born with heart conditions, kidney, liver conditions not connected to what they are or aren’t shoving in their face holes, what their parents let them eat all their childhood. Much fun has been made of the 5 deferments president Trump received from Vietnam including the one for alleged bone spurs in his foot, he can’t recall which one, not hindering him from walking, spending weekends playing golf, but did keep him from a warzone where others served and died; however, my uncle’s flat feet legitimately kept him from the army when he turned 18 in the early 70’s. Not physical but unquestionably relevant the number of people rejected from military service, police academy and other such programs for psychological problems, known conditions or psychological profiles indicating they are unfit, remember Jared Loughner was rejected by the army for his recent drug use, the officer who shot Tamir Rice fired from his previous job for inability to manage stress and poor weapon handling; blog, author the least of persons clamoring said entities use psychological tools at our disposal to weed out such persons from police departments, critical in the military seeing soldiers who have shot up civilians thinking them the enemy, the PTSD and other mental health problems they come home with, many taking their own lives. Perspective forefront again in the unabashed reality, metric numbers on both obesity and BMI indexes, on top of the inherent calculation pit falls and what they do or don’t indicate about any persons health, were arbitrarily adjusted down within the last 5 years suddenly within 5 pounds naming people overweight, obese, morbidly obese who believed themselves albeit on the high end of normal; catapulting hundreds to thousands of Americans either into panicking about their health to not listening when there are things they should know explaining the ambivalence. Select portions of that same nonchalance toward health can be attributed to youthful foolishness I’m young, I’m healthy, I feel fine, I’m not tired, only tired from partying or cramming for tests, I’m rarely sick, not obese what do I need to worry about all these health stories for? Still another portion watches their national and local news, pays marginal attention to the weight/health stories presented concluding from a laymen’s eye the medical and scientific communities can’t make up their mind, they can’t give definitive answers so they, the citizen, will go back to what they know, practice what they believe to be moderation enjoying the occasional movie theater popcorn, ballgame hotdog, home super bowl party with family recipe dip, the occasional meal at McDonald’s, Burger King, Sonic, Five Guys, White Castle, Jack in the Box, KFC, Taco Bell, Dairy Queen, the erstwhile office or family birthday cake or bowl of ice cream, won’t live their life fearing the doughnut. Independent media rails relentlessly on the ‘mainstream,’ ‘corporate media’ for lying to the general public about what is happening in our politics, so entrenched in their status quo/establishment bias they frame conversations on criminal justice, healthcare, president Trump, the Trump administration exc. in ways ultimately deceiving the public never realizing they’ve fallen into the same trap parroting health stories from the admittedly somewhat more reliable, in their estimation print media; don’t put together the correlation between the hamster wheel of contradictions good for you foods, bad for you foods, how much is too much of popular foods, coffee and beer accounting for people’s shoulder shrug attitude encountering news given health information, the latest statistics. Demonstrating obesity isn’t ‘ridiculously deadly’ The Young Turks is merely ridiculously prone to its own bias and inability to glean solid information on a topic they took on from the wrong angle, an angle out of their depth.

http://www.salon.com/2017/06/20/the-tragedy-of-mountain-dew-mouth-and-the-u-s-s-insane-approach-to-dental-care_partner/

http://www.salon.com/2017/04/15/challenging-the-so-called-health-challenge-our-obsession-with-the-before-and-after-body-transformation/

https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/health/2018/12/13/shocking-study-links-obesity-4%25-cancers-worldwide/38730343/

http://www.salon.com/2017/09/02/americans-are-confused-about-food-and-unsure-where-to-turn-for-answers-survey-shows_partner/

Perhaps the gang at TYT, as they are known for short, should stick to politics, social justice in terms of criminal justice reform, calling out schools for the insane things adults and administrators have done to kids in the name of either instilling law and order or to eliminate distraction, mirroring this blog who told Arthur Chu to stick to beating Jeopardy and not wade into the gun debate if his theories on how we handle race of the shooter was all he had to offer. Regardless which of the 3 presented videos you view almost everything said by the hosts/panelists is either horribly misleading or has an easily rattled off counterpoint providing much needed context, honestly a record for footage lasting well under an hour; having debunked citizen ‘understanding’ about what does and doesn’t count as a vegetable, blog and author have detailed extensively the problem with school lunches including the canned pears students were throwing out by the large garbage can full and how maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing when the best you can get them in is lightly sweetened water versus syrup, happening after implementation of the new ‘healthier’ guidelines. Never mind the chief complaint is things that didn’t look like food and that they remained hungry after eating due to calorie restrictions by age/grade level pre-k elementary, middle/junior high, high school, a bad precedent when continuing and growing percentages of students nationwide depend on school breakfast and lunch programs to eat, the majority of students qualify for financial lunch assistance; at least the buddy pack and adjacent programs focus on nonperishables, canned goods to send home with kids on weekends they know may not be getting consistent meals outside school, homes that may not possess a refrigerator to put perishable items or the electricity to run it. Fast forwarding to present day, sorry no, Betti Wiggins is not a hero independent her laudable intentions and tireless effort because you cannot just dump raw, vegetables especially, onto a plate and expect kids to eat them, model eating them and try to con them into thinking they taste good when their taste buds are telling them the exact opposite, ply them with the ‘when you’re older and refine your taste buds it’ll taste better to you’ line on par with the writer who suggested we needed to relearn what was good for us while sporting cover art for the article betraying their point vividly. Smart schools, parents and persons would get Jessica Seinfeld’s book, related cookbook types and call it the new healthy way to prepare meals ‘sneaking’ vegetables into foods to where they don’t taste like vegetables, lower calorie substitutions using apple sauce instead of oils to make brownies; enter the debates about full fat yogurts, milk in childhood that lead to less overweight adults, speculation the full fat milk satiated children who didn’t seek out unhealthy snacks. Decadent desserts placed at the head of the cafeteria line rather than the end chosen by meal goers prompted healthier choices for other items stabilizing weight, stimulating weight loss; welcome to the conundrum vortex known as the best way to reach or sustain a healthy weight. Additionally addressing the glut of dollar stores ‘invading’ communities again it does zero good to have standard grocery store/super centers in neighborhoods if the people can’t afford the offerings versus foodstuffs, like everything in a dollar store costing a dollar or less, have to save money were they can meaning buying the dollar store consumables; discarded completely the very concept the person who went into the dollar store and came out with cheap snacks went there precisely for that, holding a super bowl or other game party, seeking inexpensive memorial day barbecue sides. Personally I’ve talked at length in various articles over the decade about my school lunch experience apples that sound like rubber when chewed and taste terrible, sour oranges, canned vegetables when I knew I could get frozen, better tasting ones at home; relatedly I’ve talked about the frustrating, disappointing instances of buying, fruits in particular, at superstores like Wal-Mart; one week the apples and oranges are sweet, ripe and worth the dollars you’re asked to spend, the next week or month, same brand, and they’re sour, bitter and not worth eating. Which beyond what’s the point of having more brick and mortar grocery stores with fresh vegetables, meats and so called recognizable healthy foods if the quality of those items turns residents away when cost does not, how necessary is it when both those dollar stores provide frozen food options by customer demand followed by pharmacies a-la Walgreens offering family table staples such as milk, bread and juice plus increased variety of frozen food choices? Now should they replace frozen pizza and breakfast burritos with frozen veggies, fruit platters in a refrigerator section, frozen fruits sure, but like school lunches, if people won’t buy it what’s their motivation for stocking it? Speaking of the quality of fresh foods in grocery stores not on either coast of the United States, throughout land locked areas in America the time spent in shipping them from the part of the United States where they can grow to the rest of us explains the poor quality, fruits and vegetables picked not yet ripe so it doesn’t spoil on its way or while sitting in the grocery store serving the year round availability need sacrificing taste; refrigeration’s effect on the ripening process or preventing it from rotting in a few short days also leaching taste. Signaling before shouting at people to upend their eating habits, learn to love kale, become an expert at cooking eggplant and artichokes, creative things to do with asparagus and spinach without ruining the benefits with cheeses and grease, excess ‘empty’ calories we need better storage and preservation methods, subject only brought up in improving our infrastructure, true to pattern only half the problem; cost to ship said foods from the coasts or to import them from their global natural growing region then distribute them to mentioned land locked parts of the population accounts for the skewed, backwards pricing of our food system where healthy food costs more than junk food, chips, candy, cookies and soda just as much as government/food conglomerate collusion to keep people eating their packaged, preservative ridden, processed crap with chemicals, additives laced through it to make it addictive, the latter debatable. Again concepts not new to the blog but apparently new to The Young Turks; sometimes enfolded in their economic inequality debate that if we curtailed corporate greed thus granting everyone a living wage, the problem would solve itself, not without fixing the quality aspect. Studies suggesting making healthy foods cheaper would amount to essentially saving lives are in circulation, however ideas on how to do that are one dimensional advising a government subsidy for healthy fruits and vegetables versus soda taxes that are easier to put in place, soda taxes rarely working long term, recall once upon a time mayor of New York city, Michael Bloomberg, earned the nickname ‘nanny Bloomberg’ post his big gulp ban banning sodas over a mandated size; adjacently a 2008 south LA ban on new fast food restaurants backfired spectacularly, updated on in 2015, new eateries exploiting a loophole targeting stand-alone restaurants by putting them in strip malls other small eateries and restaurants with limited seating equally unaffected, obesity rates ticking up. Soda a much admonished source of empty calories, processed sugar hastening diabetes, diet sodas thought to ruin your diet making you eat more, possibly linked to dementia, rumored to be a part of the president’s own, on national display supposition cognitive decline induced erratic behavior. Avid soda drinker here, unlikely to give up my ‘addiction’ less because I don’t understand the health implications, because I defiantly chose not to care but because no one has offered me, anyone a healthy alternative, equivalent taste with at minimum reduced health effects; epitome of irony Jillian Michaels, after her show was canceled and brought local sheriffs to the ranch they used, seeing her admitting her hard line stance on the beverage was a tad counterproductive hocking Soda Stream on TV with sparkling water type flavorings giving people that same fizz minus the sugar. Forgetting apparently you can get the same flavor formulas for all your soda favorites to make at home doing an end run around giant beverage companies; weighing down the bad news, pun intended, prominent sparkling water company LaCroix, sparkling water called the new soda as early as 2015, busted for it’s ‘natural’ label sporting ingredients that weren’t remotely natural still not solving the tasty drink dilemma for people who want beverage choices beyond milk, water or alcohol, juice called just as bad for its sugar content. Continuing, the very idea America has exported fast food and made the rest of the world fat is ludicrous on several levels not the least of which chronicling though the restaurant may say McDonald’s on the outside offerings aren’t the same, many have regional fair that is just as unhealthy as traditional menu items or far worse; meal compositions change depending on where you are on the globe, in China you’re likely to see a big mac served with a side of corn, in Demark it’s chili cheese balls as a side, visiting Germany try the curry beef burger washing it down with the staple drink beer, fish bites in oriental areas, fish burgers/sandwiches as a main meal component at Asian Mickey D’s, poutine in Canada is popular that’s French fries slathered in gravy and cheese curds, the bagel burger in France and cheeseburger on rye a-la Finland, Australia holds the big Brekkie burger with cheese, egg, whole hash brown and bacon on top that thick beef patty, cheese stuffed breaded bites in Morocco. The chicken mega mac in Saudi Araba is sure to raise doctor eyebrows; their variation not ours, fried shrimp in Switzerland seen provoking the same reaction, Israel’s corn sticks resemble in appearance something Americans might try at the county fair. Thirdly are things people wouldn’t associate with America or McDonald’s, Americanizing, westernizing food marketed on the globe as a status symbol, a McAloo- tikki burger in India vegetarian patty with local spices, fries with various shake on flavorings, Thailand has the McKao krapao crispy chicken- chicken with basil leaves, rice and a fried egg, Japan sports the teriyaki McBurger-pork burger with teriyaki glaze, Taiwan has shake, shake chicken-chicken bites with seaweed powder, Costa Rica serves a platter of eggs, rice, tortillas, plantains, custard, patty, nearly identical fair in Guatemala just add pork sausage, refried beans, salsa and take off the custard, Mexico bread with beans, cheese and salsa served in lieu of a sandwich; touring Indonesia, it’s chicken porridge, Malaysia has a different kind of porridge on their menu. Green tea lattes in Korea arguably healthier than an American latte not gotten off a specialty Starbucks menu; it’s chicken pita sandwiches in Pakistan, Turkey (the country) serves platters of cucumbers, olives, tomatoes, feta cheese, eggs and toast, Gazpacho present in Spain McDonald’s. And America isn’t the cheapest place to buy fast food McDonald’s signature big mac is the cheapest in Ukraine actually; yet, we’ve made the globe fat exporting our cheap fast food forgoing apparently China sees KFC as a luxury treat rather than a fast meal, don’t take my word for it but the person who lived there speaking to video compilers. McDonald’s struggles in the Philippines not for health reasons, lacking a market, people too poor to afford it, but from local, national favorite brands who know their market and have the love of the people; it failed in Iceland after an economic crisis and high tariffs made importing ingredients opposite of coast effective, health not a factor there either. KFC is also loved in China for its American status symbol and trustworthiness, chicken the preferred meat of Chinese citizens over American’s love affair with beef; typical of American franchises gone global adapting menu choices to incorporate adored regional dishes. Far from defiant if not ignorant to global obesity, they opened a healthier restaurant serving exclusively Paninis, salads and juices; supporting a comment on one of the TYT videos above, “People blaming diets either don’t know the American diet well, or don’t know the diets of other countries so they can’t compare them. From having lived in south America and Europe for years, I can tell you that our diets here are not significantly different than those of most other developed countries. People in Spain, France and Germany eat a ton of processed, fatty and sugary food, they also drink a lot of wine and beer which pack a ton of sugars and starches, and in South America isn’t much different. The biggest difference in habits, is that Americans are extremely sedentary and rely exclusively on personal vehicles to go anywhere. In other countries people walk a whole lot more, use bicycles and it seems that in general you see people outside considerably more playing sports, walking to the store or the shopping centers, etc.” [Sic] Mesmerizing the supposed concept Coca-Cola’s infiltration into Mexico is contributing to their ‘slow death by junk food’ when Geobeats did a video in 2015 touting 10 things Mexico does better than America highlighting soft drinks made with natural cane sugar versus the engineered high fructose corn syrup and it’s derivatives, followed by Hassan Piker of TYT circa 2016 explaining why America was so fat Mexico ‘huffing and puffing’ into a close second, Salon’s article detailing ‘American’ junk food’s contamination of Mexico’s cultural identity spring of last year underscoring things like NAFTA, marketing to kids early and breakfasts of bacon wrapped hotdogs washed down with a coke where it used to be corn, beans an zucchini; except, NAFTA was in 1994 and the glut of crappy convenience store food must have reached epic proportions after 2015, pretty big gap to be blaming ‘America’s bad food.’ Further we know that corn is a starchy vegetable acting in the body more like carbs found in bread, taking indigenous people’s word for it corn once grown in Mexico had several types and is different from what they get now from overseas, i.e. us, beans too have the same effect we know from the Sir Mix A Lot song about women’s posteriors if nowhere else; carb rich diets too lead to obesity, diabetes, heart disease translating to an early death. Interestingly the guy in video 23 below enumerating things Americans do that confuse the rest of the world stumbled on to something important when talking about the excess salt and sugar in our food, he called it excess flavoring strengthening blog’s informal theory Americans are not ‘addicted’ to fat salt, sugar or grease they are ‘addicted’ to taste; lost in the debate on what does and doesn’t constitute healthy, parameters of moderation Americans purportedly don’t know how to practice, independent obesity being a global problem minus Americanized fast food, is food is supposed to taste good, be flavorful, bland food here or abroad doesn’t do it for people. The Mexican quoted in Salon on people’s reaction to indigenous diet staples, his choice beans, they now throw out in favor of frozen pizza, American fast food hamburgers, convenience store chips, candy, cookies, soft drinks, educated guess lacking any added flavor/seasoning; getting past the original topic in the video following the Salon link you see the comparison to bland potato salad boldly proclaimed not seasoned right by someone proudly from the Dominican Republic and Porto Rico, the latter holding a unique heritage simultaneously being a U.S. territory. Not elaborated on if she meant seasoned spicy hot, tangy spice, sweetened spice, specific spices she likes in potato salad, mentioned cultures, her family always put in potato salad but it does provide evidence Americans aren’t alone in their quest for adequate flavor in their food. Closing thoughts on indigenous cultures, ethnicities that struggle with the American, westernized diet from native Americans who can’t process carbs correctly to what Salon exposes is happening in Mexico, at what juncture should we/they expect evolution, adaptation to kick in as they continue having children, generations span the decades, when will their bodies adapt to the available food stuffs; Americans not of a unique heritage known to have problems, battle obesity or possess sensitivities to individual foods increasingly finding themselves eliminating whole food groups to maintain a healthy weight, stop horrible acne, commonly dairy, the question why never answered, the concept when you have to remove whole food groups from your diet the problem is with the person not the food supply. But we need to stop putting junk in our face holes then we won’t all be obese a cross between imitating weeble wobbles and the worst parts of the movie Wall-E; injecting some practicality into how the commenter quoted above suggests other nations avoid obesity en mass (by walking and biking versus driving), question how do fellow citizens, in these areas treat individuals not singularly with from birth disabilities meaning they could never walk, slowly lost their ability to be ambulatory, fighting to fit in with a ‘walk everywhere, bike everywhere’ culture dominating Europe, but ones garnered from rugby, soccer, car accidents, any number of the survivors of terror attacks involving vehicles barreling into a crowd of pedestrians who will never walk the same again, terror bombings, gas explosions like the one blowing out a restaurant and neighboring building in France, destroying a hotel somewhere else on the globe, people rendered para or quadriplegics from diving accidents, failed rock climbs and so forth? Populations utterly dismissed when yammering about America’s ‘car culture’ and our refusal to walk anywhere, people with pins and plates, screws holding together bone, joint replacements prone to ache, swelling and forcing low impact exercise and limiting mobility sans pain; heaven help us the notion weight gain was the end result not the opposite way round, if the story of the UK’s little Adam Payne and his mother’s fight to find accessible living space in their variation on public housing for her wheelchair bound, rod in his back, multi-disability child is any indication, these persons too would be shamed along with gluttonous overeaters, an indictment of their culture as obesity is on ours. Attitude detrimental scanning age demographics in say Germany where auto manufactures had to tweak their working environments to keep older workers on the job, many standing on cushioned mats at their work stations among other adjustments; probable catalyst for moving part of BMW, a famous German car’s, manufacturing to South Carolina as chancellor Angela Merkel brilliantly schooled Donald Trump on at the Munich security conference; why the chic new idea to combat the problems of an unhealthy weight, ‘deadly effects of sitting too much’ that exercising can’t reverse shouldn’t be ‘make obesity the new smoking,’ because it will inevitably socially shame people who can’t do anything about it. Circling back fully to America, who precisely is eating out at all these fast food joints, getting their meals via an app/online delivery service, comprising from convenience stores/dollar store contents when millennials are using meal prep delivery services like Plated and Blue Apron, Home Chef, Freshly, Every Plate where premeasured ingredients and a recipe come to you and you follow the directions giving you a meal in 30 minutes to an hour, able to choose based on family size to bypass the grocery store because they don’t like the ‘big food’ corporate feel, can’t find what they are looking for, seeking gourmet cheese over Velveeta or processed American cheese slices, are offered customized variety directly to their door circumventing the hassle of going to the store, multiple stores to get what you need, perfect for busy professionals striving to get that start up off the ground; why casual dining restaurants might not last even with delivery of their foods direct to your home/office. Once in the store they are finding hope in the frozen food aisle small-batch soufflés and Parisian lamb served with herb inflected demi-glace at Trader Joe’s, Eggo Waffles reimagined into the Kashi whole grain blueberry kind (whatever that means from a fellow millennial who is not a food snob) steamed chicken soup dumplings from the same supermarket; when tracking fresh vegetables and fruits opting for things from the farmer’s market, creating agrihoods a neighborhood co-op paying dues to participate and reap the benefits of being in nature and locally grown sustainable produce, but childhood obesity rises yearly among millennial offspring and gen Z. Planning a diet designed to keep you healthy and aide the environment, low in meat to curb CO2 emissions from cows, number of the animals used to meet the world’s meat consumption demand, heavy on vegetables because they are good for you and less taxing on the environment, beans and fish for the Mediterranean feel also stated to be the most healthful, might wanna hold off on that; sad news for vegans, vegetarians who simultaneously think they are saving the planet, turns out it takes more natural resource energy, critical substances like water to produce lettuce and other vegetables than it does to take meat from farm to table or manufacture a host of processed food products. Certainly the findings may well be thanks to big industrial farms and how we produce our vegetables, yet if we don’t have a planet to live on it doesn’t matter; on the subject of the environment, it may hold the key to why the globe not singularly America is steadily getting fatter, struggling with heart disease showing climate change is making grown fruits and vegetables more carbohydrate rich concurrently depleting vitamins and minerals like zinc creating a different kind of food insecurity. It would line up with findings from the following year demonstrating persons living during the 1980’s found it easier to be skinny and lose weight, Americans eating the same percentage of carbs, dairy and protein, other food categories packing on the pounds and unable to take them off, help explain the 1-10 people on earth total who are obese according to 2017 numbers. Above remaining just a theory extrapolated from given research, increasingly clear amidst the information fog, overloaded confusion is, no matter your health approach, not choosing one at all, you can’t win for losing; going vegan, exploring vegetarian it isn’t just the most up to date list of the dirty dozen vegetables to avoid due to pesticides, reminders to wash thoroughly it’s the ones capable of causing kidney stones, worsening arthritis, giving your body a jumpstart on gout. Vegetables with low nutrient value consisting of mostly water lettuce, cucumber, celery, that last one seen as a vehicle for much more unhealthy dips, those that cause inflammation a key component in heart disease, diabetes and general body sickness think peppers of all shades, bell peppers can impede nerve function long term; exotic, no-non-native fruits and veggies, fiber rich plant foods can cause thyroid disruption, mean gut irritation; throw out using diet changes to treat IBS, Crohn’s disease we guess. You can’t win for losing when there’s always a new thing found in food, a new thing to avoid eating be it pesticide or organic compound mandating you cook say cashews to remove the poison, the low level cyanide in almonds; newest thing on the healthy no-no list lectins small plant proteins one doctor linked to inflammation, gut problems and auto immune disease fast debunked by the medical establishment, keep an eye out for the book in a year or thereabouts. So called keto and paleo diets run you the chance of developing heart issues namely an irregular heartbeat linked to a higher risk of stroke, blood clots and heart failure by reducing your good carb/overall carb intake too much, based on 22 years of data; intermittent fasting diets no more results oriented than their traditional counterparts. Cleaning up your eating habits may be good millennials but don’t think just because it’s organic it can’t wreck your health- ice cream is still ice cream and chips are still chips regardless their lack of additives, preservatives or chemicals. You can’t win for losing when bagged salads are a great short cut to healthy losing none of the nutrient value but risk contamination as if the cantaloupe listeria mess wasn’t bad enough and there is one of those every few months; oh and whatever happened to big techs wonder meal replacement hoping to end world hunger, provide food for prisoners someday, the big idea of making eating solely a recreational activity backfired when the ‘food supplement’ Soylent, what an ill-fated name, began making people sick forcing it to be yanked off the market lightning fast. You can’t win for losing if probiotics aren’t what they are cracked up to be and vitamin supplements are virtually useless, your first and probably your last spin class can put you in a walker; hunter gatherer societies were great for born healthy able bodies but we can’t go back there leaving a great big… as to what it’s supposed to tell us about or current now, battles we’re facing, waste of paper much? You can’t win for loosing when researchers find a correlation between grilled meat and high blood pressure absent explaining if that’s because of the coating on the grill, the chemicals in the charcoal (where applicable) or fire’s interaction with the charcoal, individual types or if it has to do with the molecular ‘damage’ done to meat cooked by fire at temperatures above X; winning the weight, health or ‘lifestyle related illness’ battle is not anywhere close to on the table when the American Heart Association similar to BIM and obesity indexes revised down blood pressure numbers calling 130 over 80 high when it used to be 140 over 90. Move made to get people to rethink their health choices, change their lives however doctors were quick to lambast the guidelines citing risks of dumping up to 100 million Americans onto blood pressure pills and low value care based on sparse evidence and overly broad conclusions. The big one related to TYT’s comments and the research they found, different studies found being moderately overweight spells a longer life span especially if you are aging and have heart disease, kidney disease, heart failure potentially true for diabetics as well; study out of Beijing calls it the obesity paradox, that’s one word for it. Yet they marvel at the fatalistic approach Americans take to health, weight loss, diet and exercise, almost no one else does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoUxNkn7CoA

https://www.salon.com/2016/02/21/we_must_relearn_to_eat_heres_how_we_teach_our_kids_and_ourselves_to_find_pleasure_in_whats_good_for_us/

https://www.salon.com/2018/04/04/the-coca-cola-invasion-is-causing-mexicos-slow-death-by-junk-food_partner/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIVrbOuqO28

https://www.buzzfeed.com/patricksmith/how-one-mother-took-on-the-system-for-her-disabled-son-and?bfsource=bbf_enus&utm_term=.iclkBNLDa#.eimg54v9w

http://www.salon.com/2017/09/17/sitting-too-long-can-kill-you-and-exercise-wont-help_partner/

https://www.salon.com/2017/10/21/bring-on-the-libertarian-paternalism-diet-make-obesity-the-new-smoking/

https://www.salon.com/2018/06/06/millennials-are-finding-hope-up-the-frozen-food-aisle/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KkgQc7W9CE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8qOxFbXalM

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/07/climate-change-food-crops-nutrition

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/09/why-it-was-easier-to-be-skinny-in-the-1980s/407974/

https://www.salon.com/2018/05/29/evidence-mounts-that-vitamins-might-not-do-anything-for-your-health/

https://www.cookinglight.com/eating-smart/nutrition-101/are-bagged-salad-kits-healthy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wyx-Vlglj7E

https://www.salon.com/2018/12/30/new-research-into-hunter-gatherers-has-surprising-implications-for-diet-and-exercise-choices/

https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/new-warning-on-link-between-high-blood-pressure-and-grilled-meat-1191659587844

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxS7LDH5TYI

Irrevocably health in the 21st century has become the latest incarnation of a class status symbol you get more social points if you are buying organic vegetables, free range meats and are going for so called ‘clean foods’ absent pesticides, preservatives, processing, are following the latest diet fad meant to help people lose weight, supposedly maintain a healthy weight, return to more natural diet from humanity’s past, have a gym membership, are using an apple watch to count your steps or a Fitbit, brushing off all too blithely known medical conditions effecting weight and health. Judgements coming down from on high by Americans who are nowhere near obese, do not have any obese family members apart from their slightly pudgy 75 year old grandma, who suspiciously doesn’t count in their eyes, all signaling a genetics, metabolic deck stacked in their favor above anything else and are well off, middle class enough to chase all these trends, buy the most expensive foods; ironically no more health knowledgeable than the rest of us ‘poor, fat slobs.’ Worth noting too junk food, fast food isn’t just the province of low income people in a food desert too exhausted in their poor health and demanding job to shop and cook but is just as prevalent among those middle class and higher individuals and families. Clean eating, clean food a 21st century marketing ploy to sell unhealthy if not moderated foods at entities like Panera Bread to a public who’s been brainwashed through repetition if it doesn’t have preservatives or additives its fine at a time when people are exceedingly vulnerable to such quackery having been worn down by equivalent repetition about our ‘backward, broken’ food system slowly making us fat, sick, poisoned and poised for an early death starting with a truth roughly the size of that biblical mustard seed some companies have been caught putting unknown things on food, antibiotics in meats are a problem, the proportion exaggerated greatly, dido hormones to make larger animals, bigger cuts of meat to satisfy global demand. Someone forging telling the nervous masses can doesn’t automatically mean will whether it’s endocrine disrupters, reactions to substances in meat, strange variations on food sensitivities/allergies (we come back to that later). Lost in the years since the dawn of reality TV, elements of its sensationalism seeping into the documentary, meant to educate television shows on channels like TLC (letters standing for the learning channel) is there’s very little reality in said programs; yes they chronical a rare disease, they profile the most eye popping hoarders, teen scared straight cases, A&E offering people a chance to spend 60 days in prison, Undercover High School’s valiant attempt to educate today’s adults about the very grown up things kids are facing, but to what end? Quickly it becomes more about long island medium’s divorce/relationship problems than her ‘psychic’ ability, Marriage Boot Camp is about the drama not about serous issues exposed in the couple’s therapy ‘retreat’ salvaging their vows, heavy question of should they do so, shows like Hoarders and Fit to Fat to Fit, appropriate at this juncture, named America’s lurid obsession with mental illness and a dear fat people for TV sending waves of disgust masked as empathy, not showing people this is a mental illness, a health problem and if you see this in someone you love, yourself get help, what the shows were initially marketed as. Going back to the current TV references so many are using to form their opinions for examples, the subject of TLC’s My Big, Fat, Fabulous Life, is a study for ‘skinny perfect’ Americans in how can someone so fat have a romantic relationship period, to oohing and awing at the ends and outs of her on again off again relationship with the troubled Buddy; staring transfixed as they see how fat people do ordinary things their ‘normal’ peers can’t imagine she does at her size, can’t conceive she could have a successful life despite her size. Forgotten, cast aside for more titillating aspects most who don’t follow the show regularly may not know the subject has a condition called PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) a hormonal disorder effecting women characterized by her as fat, balding and bearding, a description backed up by those suffering from the disorder featured on medical shows such as The Doctors; one woman who was skinny but who sought their help asking why she had a beard she was forced to shave, a teen who was initially diagnose with a chronic inflammation of the sweat glands experiencing lots of pain and scarring throughout her body, upon a more thorough, deeper, whole examination of her symptoms, cataloging them in totality concluded she likewise had PCOS and laid out a plan to manage the pain, balance her hormones and then tackle the scarring across her body including marring her face. PCOS not lifestyle also explains the 14 pound baby boy people couldn’t stop ragging on his parents in the comment section about what they had done independent his mother’s being able to conceive him naturally being a feat in and of itself with her diagnosis, labeled severe besides; their daughter also large at birth is now a happy, energetic, normal weight toddler signifying he too will quickly slim down post birth. Still if we must deconstruct their mother’s size, there is her hormonal condition, it’s classification among the increasingly problematic portion of the spectrum and the fact she’s now had 2 children, one with the help of fertility treatments doing who knows what to her body, pregnancy itself known to shift hormones causing weight gain, touch off other weaknesses in the body. Large babies are also not always a product of their mother’s bad habits, health problems but a sign of what is to come; enter the man who was a 16 pound newborn becoming a national sensation in the early 80’s. Him growing to a whopping 6’9, 300 pounds, wearing a size 17 shoe, having to regularly duck through doorways, joining the military, apt choice if he wasn’t into basketball, can’t fit into most new fuel efficient cars and entering the national spotlight again to give life advice to the latest bouncing oversized newborn clocking in at 15.5 pounds; now he may have health problems associated with gigantism but it has nothing to do with his mother’s lifestyle or his, not obese simply large in comparison to the rest of him and much smaller us. Remembering the new mother who was featured in a ‘hospitals adapting to increasingly obese patients and the costs to healthcare facilities’ ABC news piece had a thyroid problem not to mention blog illustrated facts, years ago, bed sizes and doorways haven’t changed in decades, the former tailored to a size 8 woman; nevertheless their commentary to reporters centered not around dangers to obese persons’ health, mothers and babies born to obese parents choosing to drive home the extra work for staff as if care was an inconvenience for them. Yes there is something exceedingly shady about Dr. Nowzaradan made famous as the gastric bypass surgeon on My 600 Pound Life, representing obese patients last chance for lifesaving weight loss surgery, though viewed as telling it like it is to people needing to hear something real and lacking politically correct spin to spare their feelings; laid out previously by this blog majority of his patients enfold molestation survivors, past rape victims, those abandoned as a child, children of drug addict parents, those who’ve lost children, siblings, best friends— in other words the very understandably damaged people who if they weren’t ‘self-medicating with food’ they would be doing it with alcohol, illegal drugs, prescription drug abuse, coping by cutting, promiscuous sex, gambling, porn, dare devil behavior. On top of the persons featured being the most apt to suffer food issues from a psychological standpoint, the 5 % success rate for patients post-surgery coupled with the absurdity of taking people who are, where applicable, eating huge portions, lots of fast and fatty food, for whom the diet of a ‘normal’ person would be a challenge and putting them on an extremely restrictive diet, mirroring The Biggest Loser effect on their bodies causing their metabolism to slow significantly regaining weight in the long haul, outcomes show doctors were aware of but threw caution to the wind ultimately using contestants as guinea pigs, are his own words. At an interview for Niki Swift where he revealed previously publically unknown details about his work and outcomes we don’t see on the show. Suspecting his clientele suffer from a ‘genetic disposition,’ his words, infinitely likely he meant predisposition and more accurately disorder effecting their weight/eating habits but has never partnered with a geneticist, endocrinologist, physiologist to confirm his theory in order to better help his patients, craft better treatment plans than invasive and dangerous surgery or in addition to it in the most severe/extreme cases, enhance aftercare services; especially egregious when considering the next bit enlightening that after 5 years surgery recipients metabolisms return to their previous low/distorted levels despite following Nowzaradan’s accompanying diet. Here’s why both are such a problem, if for nothing else, he owes it to his television audience to be honest with them and his clients saying yes you have a disorder and here is how you treat it losing weight in the process; secondly the very fact that these persons’ metabolism reverts to anything other than parameters deemed normal supports his theory, begging the overarching question, why do these people need such strict diets to try to approach a healthy weight, why are their bodies specifically exhibiting such metabolic abnormalities? And is an argument for 2 things A- not doing this to people jeopardizing their health further and giving them false hope, B- tells us and the medical/scientific community the underlying problem is not their ‘psychological addiction to food, pathological tendencies to eat to deal with emotional and related problems;’ it’s something wrong with their bodies causing astronomical weight gain when eating normal food. This blog again having long detailed flaws in the television program and the weight loss procedure, post-op mandated aftercare provided by the renowned surgeon; in one instance a woman he began to perform a gastric bypass on whom he abruptly had to revise his plan to a gastric sleeve due to her enlarged liver and spleen, things that should have been revealed through bloodwork and a liver enzyme test. Another woman he eventually removed from his program because she refused to try and walk towards getting surgery despite in home physical therapy brought to her home/apartment where she lived or stayed while undergoing treatment; but, what both the therapist and doctor Now, as he’s affectionately referred to by his patients, totally ignored is why she ‘refused’ to attempt walking was her fear of falling, significant injury when trying. Blog and author noting incredulously the small walker, not a bariatric walker, the therapist brought with them to help her, the lack of attempting to use a gate trainer to help her relearn to walk, assess any muscle or bone issues hitherto that moment undetected (after months or years of being bedridden/wheelchair bound not standing), so much as recognize the need for a bariatric gate trainer; let alone partnering with someone to design one, waiting until well into yet another totally different patient’s treatment to say yes there is something wrong with her leg she probably needs a hip replacement and necessitated muscle release surgery, tempering it by elaborating that would have to wait until she lost down to X weight goal to rehab the hip effectively. Anomalies from the current season now airing, a patient who describes their eating as looking down and not knowing what they’ve done/consumed carrying all the hallmarks of, people may find that sounds familiar, a sleep disorder or as the side effect of sleep aides like Ambien causing sleep walking, driving and yes eating; one woman who talked about eating a meal and it not filling her up, always being hungry a red flag to the genetic disorder Prader-Willi syndrome where there is a disconnect between the brain and the stomach, brain never receiving the signal your full leaving you always hungry. Prader-Willi also carrying with it markers of developmental delay blog theory long having been people like those on the show suffer from a medical cousin of the disorder too possibly explaining the mental health cognitive symptoms his patients display; hypothyroidism and untreated/managed diabetes are more common causes for excessive hunger. None more damming than Destinee’s story, a trans woman who was slow to lose the weight following the Nowzaradan plan, which true to show dynamics, he blamed solely on her sans ever finding out of she had done gender transition hormones though her breasts look like those of a biological woman, factors that might explain her weight loss struggles unique to her, monitoring hormone levels period for unusual results common to morbidly obese patients, potentially providing an explanation for their extreme obesity; knowing hormones is one of the difficulties women face trying to lose weight, we all remember the weight loss commercial featuring the cartoon couple who both stopped drinking soda and the man drops several pant sizes, the woman only saw her breasts shrink disproportionally to her body. Roadblocks we knew as a public were part of the common knowledge; hormones can be the root cause of a plethora of problems effecting predominately women. Research findings as late as February 2019 exposing nearly half of women say they experienced hormone fluctuations manifesting in mood swings, sleep disturbances, anxiety, hot flashes, lack of energy, urinary incontinence and, you guessed it, weight gain, 72% learning much later said imbalance was the cause of their persistent symptoms; but there is nothing wrong with Nowzaradan’s methodology, sure. Returning to Destinee, then when she goes to him experiencing abdominal pain scared something might be truly wrong, he does a haphazard physical exam, lectures her about missing an appointment despite her calling and saying she needed more time to meet his wanted goal and laid into her again for not achieving her goal weight announcing she has one more chance. Oblivious to the only reason she came then was to assess her stomach pain via the doctor familiar with her present weight loss process he thought was from periodic binging between dieting, his ‘professional’ rationale for her slow progress; irritating for regular or periodic viewers who saw him humiliate a patient and her husband for not following the post op instructions of ‘if you have problems come back here’ ending up in the ER on a feeding tube because they misunderstood the woman’s rapid weight loss. Binging theory proven false 4 months later after, at her final 2 month appointment, she had not met the goal but had shown ‘enough commitment’ he scheduled her for surgery 2 months from the current date and told her to lose another 65 pounds in the intervening time; losing weight consistently but more slowly which, should have signaled to him here is how this individual person’s body responds, isn’t a sign of binging; also he is the one routinely acting as if his patients don’t know the first thing about getting healthy, what they need to do to improve their weight situation giving them little substantial guidance. So they start making small improvements, moving more, walking more cutting things out of their diets only to be screamed at by an impatient old man who might well mind his own spare tire; never providing them a gage to how much walking, how many changes to food, creating a slower program instituting the gradual changes experts state is healthy. Finally on Destinee his wild speculation totally dead when at her pre-op blood work he noticed values indicating a possible problem with her appendix; thankfully for Destinee it didn’t require removal and her surgery went smoothly. But, that means 4 months previously she was having an appendix flare up causing her pain, a flare up he blithely brushed off as something else, an appendix that could have gone acute (what we know as an appendicitis) could have ruptured and killed her, probably would since her previous attempt to solve the problem was met so poorly. Actions for which he should lose his medical license ASAP when standard blood work focusing on what you look for with an inflamed appendix could have given him a more reliable answer; compounding the negligence, he never apologized to Destinee for his vastly wrong/dangerous assumption and viewers were left to piece the correct conclusion together on their own. Or the show participants who die Sean Milliken passed away in February notwithstanding shedding 400 pounds; Milliken’s the 3rd show death in 6 months including a self-inflicted gunshot wound and a battle with cancer post their weight loss journey, saving these people’s lives thrown out the window. Nowzaradan telling a conference interviewer referenced by Swift there’s only so much you can do with a patient who refuses to do their part; there is also only so much you can do if these are the medical tools/resources you are using and they are wholly inadequate. But there is nothing shady about him and his refusal to better his craft, a craft he chose for himself; fat people are not the only category capable of massive self-delusion. Comic Ralphie May can trace his ballooning weight to a car accident had at 16 where he broke 42 bones in his body, shortly before his untimely death he was experiencing hormonal among other health problems; prompting curious questions about how long he was bed ridden awaiting bones to heal even at a young 16, how long was it before he could walk to the bathroom let alone walk for fitness potentially causing him to pack on the pounds, what kind of and for how long was he on pain medicine to cope with his injuries and what could that have ultimately done to his body rendering it what it looked like before death leaving off the default answer of lifestyle choices? Famed trainer Bob Harper’s heart attack listed as part of the reason for his shows demise, because the optics just didn’t look good, was caused by a hitherto unknown, undiagnosed and untreated rare blood disorder. American heart failure instances are indeed skyrocketing the why should ease fears, data citing an aging population, increased heart attack survivors prime for said failure sometime before the end of their life, rural dwelling persons and being a member of an ethnic minority at the bottom of the list. Contemplate the young American sports players on high school teams, who are not obese, who do not have a, however short, lifelong history of little physical activity/fitness, across the country dropping dead repeatedly usually on football fields culprit; undiagnosed heart conditions that slipped past sports physicals congenital, genetic, hereditary abnormalities/defects that have nothing to do with diet and exercise more on the level of Jimmy Kimmel’s little boy born with a malformed heart requiring a series of surgeries to correct. Band On Direction member Louis Tomlinson’s sister suddenly dead at 18 cause heart attack, isn’t an underlying heart condition what killed a YouTube sensation the Bratayley child Caleb; glaring reasons to push screening for young people zero to 18 for heart conditions. Soap opera star Kristoff St. John’s sudden death shocked the daytime drama world cause of death recently released ruled accidental resulting from heart disease calling alcohol a factor; extrapolating from that information St. John who was not obese, hasn’t been obese over his adult life still had heart disease- a phenomenon we’ve been mistakenly lead to believe can’t happen, regardless it could have been caused by excessive drinking over the years. There is something known as sudden cardiac arrest, an electrical short circuit in the heart alone and new ways to read a common EKG bent on detecting its probability toward saving lives; big hint when Shaquille O’Neal is being shown heart numbers by a doctor that have him changing his lifestyle and becoming a spokesperson for African American heart health you know the problem isn’t lifestyle; doctor appearing with him for the segment noting blood vessels in African Americans reacting differently than Caucasians, added study needed to catalog how hearts age in different ethnicities, heritages, which treatments they respond to best, when to intervene in persons with specific backgrounds in order to save lives, quality of life. Type 2 diabetes we can’t stop talking about, sorry American doctors you’ve been looking at the disease all wrong starting at there aren’t 2 types there are 5 genetically distinct variations, ambiguous if they mean genetics of the disease itself akin to DNA of bacteria or genetics of the persons suffering each kind, traditional type 1’s with immune system implications, another functioning similarly absent the immune system being at fault, your traditional type 2 obese diabetic who is essentially insulin resistant but whose metabolism resembles normal weight individuals, characteristic type 2 diabetic whose metabolism has flipped pretty much upside down slowing significantly a common occurrence seen in morbidly obese individuals, finally a 5th milder type found in older adults key listed by the BBC the most common type. Each responding to different treatments, latter information part and parcel with aging populations on the globe, massive baby boomer retirement steadily ongoing in the coming decades in America itself, producing headway in demystifying headlines like these Risk Of Prediabetes Found In Slim Adults linked to inactivity according to Wochit News study coming out of England calling participants not metabolically healthy no definitive description of what that means, how it was ascertained. Reading the diabetes information now I can’t help but think of my mother whose psoriasis, allergy to the sun thought to be a type of lupus and diabetes all spelled something her doctors didn’t know how to put together coupled with a life of being ‘the fat kid in the family’ made for a miserable existence compounded by useless drugs, medical limitations and ranting doctors. Mull over the number of skinny, appropriate weight persons who find themselves battling cancer, children fighting variations on the disease who are not obese, whose parents are not obese, whose childhood pre-cancer did not consist of fatty, sugary meals non-stop and their remission/cure of the disease did not come from removal of all sugar including the glycemic index of certain fruits and vegetables following the Christian nutritionist model, equally the obese children who don’t suffer cancer in their youth, obese persons across all age groups who never get cancer in their lifetime; how often cancer effects people later in life women affected by estrogen or its absence post menopause, borrowing from that 4% of the world’s cancer study it called out 25 types linked to excess body weight but mentioned specifically post-menopausal breast cancer. So it couldn’t possibly be absence of hormones present for 50, 60 70 years of their life, hormone replacement therapy gone bad though that too has been linked to cancer; it has to be body weight forgetting their post-menopausal weight gain could be tied to one of those 2 factors or both together. Scrutinize the latest known name to be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer Alex Trebek who isn’t obese, hasn’t been across his life, who doesn’t have any obvious other risk factors; pancreatic cancer which took the lives of Michael Landon, Patrick Swayze, famed professor Randy Pausch so deadly because it’s symptomless until end stage holding limited treatment options. Colon cancer largely deemed a lifestyle related cancer going up in young adults, hitting hard young white Americans, the white American in the topic video below not obese, not housing a family history, one a lifelong athlete, the other a vegan doctors, ruling that out as a factor in people born in 1990 forward who have multiplied several times their risk for colon and rectal cancers than those in 1950 at the same age. And yes mentioned were the usual suspects: diet, sedentary lifestyles, obesity, littering the comments were chemicals, chemtrails, microwave cooking, Monsanto, radiation but physician clear to establish they don’t know. We used to think early onset puberty in children was due to hormone exposure via the ‘contaminated quality’ of American meat, ‘so bad’ overseas markets don’t want it; closer study found zero correlation; cause actually connected to issues with the ovaries, testis, adrenal glands or pituitary gland in the child’s body itself. Circa 2017 stroke instances were down for men but stagnate for women featured story a 30 year old woman picture of health normal size, vegetarian, non-smoker, until one day boom recovering only to have another a year later sending doctors on a quest to find the cause; located a small hole in her heart repaired, tracking with other information pinning down strokes in younger persons as the consequence of hormonal birth control, sports injuries and undiagnosed heart conditions. Lifestyle related illnesses mentioned too but key was something the doctor said how diabetes effects women versus men in effecting stroke risk, not too much of a leap to extrapolate each risk factor effects the sexes differently necessitating strategies to determine why and screen, treat effectively. Dementia/Alzheimer’s and its potential preventatives, lifestyle changes, much more complicated than originally thought having to combine every method to make a dent; if what the older person is experiencing is a form of dementia not memory loss caused by senior medication reactions, vitamin/mineral deficiencies linked to decreased absorption due to age, sleep disturbances/ lack of sleep combined with age. Daily aspirins out for people seeking to prevent their first heart attack bleeding risk thought to outweigh the benefits until after you’ve had one. Want a practical arbiter of life, health and wellness actual people can live by without going to one extreme or another, look at the man who tried president Trump’s reported diet for a week, before stepping up to the challenge he was 56, 6-1 and weighed 270 pounds, appeared to be what doctors who characterize overweight; he’s not eating like that daily 12 diet coke’s a day, KFC, chocolate cake, stake well done, ice cream, a taco bowl from Trump Tower, wishing he could drink water but finding himself too bloated from soda gaining 10 pounds and skyrocketing his technically already hypertension blood pressure. He constitutes an older man with age related problems we will all face if we get old enough; the oldest woman, in China at 116, enjoys mathematics and eating chocolate following almost every centenarian who made it to 100 having smoked, drank, eaten bacon, eaten carbs loved, lost and most importantly lived before they died.

https://www.salon.com/2018/04/15/wealthy-americans-know-less-than-they-think-they-do-about-food-and-nutrition_partner/

http://www.salon.com/2017/06/17/do-poor-people-eat-more-junk-food-than-wealthier-americans_partner/

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/aug/11/why-we-fell-for-clean-eating

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x73nq3h

https://www.tlc.com/tv-shows/my-600-lb-life/full-episodes/destinees-story

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2019/02/19/my-600-lb-life-star-sean-milliken-dies-29/2920568002/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm9XhAhLges

https://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/ny-ent-louis-tomlinson-sister-dead-20190314-story.html

https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/caleb-bratayleys-death-confirmed-doctors/story?id=35113713

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj7YHwDgaPY

https://www.apnews.com/045b85df3b014ad8ae8d987627b0a4e5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-auQ91LIm_I

http://www.newser.com/story/256082/weve-been-thinking-about-diabetes-all-wrong-study.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnppQZ26Okw

http://www.salon.com/2017/05/15/mick-mulvaney-gets-schooled-about-diabetes-after-saying-its-caused-by-poor-lifestyle-choices/

http://www.salon.com/2017/02/21/personalized-medicine-may-do-more-to-treat-rather-than-prevent-chronic-diseases_partner/

https://www.salon.com/2018/10/27/we-can-detect-and-treat-it-better-than-ever-but-preventing-cancer-is-still-far-out-of-reach_partner/

If they really wanted to talk about something under represented, rarely talked about when discussing obesity, food tends/habits they would talk about how these TV programs perpetuate America’s unhealthiness, they would clap back at the theory body positivity is normalizing obesity and talk about ways fat shamming is equally detrimental to a person’s wellbeing not just stemming from social rejection, stereotyped assumptions fat persons stink, are slovenly, have no willpower, self-control, are too un/ill-educated to make healthy choices for themselves but generating panic from people who don’t want to be like what they see or on the flipside set it as a goal. Or how being LGBT effects this minority group’s weight as they grapple for societal acceptance, building overweight women and underweight men both producing an end game of health problems; but, disastrously deadly when it comes from the medical profession subsequently endangering lives tossing aside any possibility their health problem stems from anything but their size. Part of Destinee’s struggle losing the weight that Nowzaradan wanted her to lose was fear of losing her breasts and her curves, physical parts of her hard fought for feminine identity minus him ever telling her yes your boobs and thighs, butt will shrink in accordance/ proportion with the rest of you but you will still have boobs and a butt, thighs; part of skin surgery, when you get there, will be sculpting these, removing excess skin to fit your new size. Things only he, the doctor, not the Fed X’ed to psychotherapist can tell his trans patient; questionable if he should have taken her case plainly knowing nothing about trans people and concerns exclusively effecting them, concerns dominating the mindset of a male to female trans individual. Spanning the gambit of all medicine beyond hot topic of the last 2 election cycles, the millions who die yearly sans access to care because they have/can afford no health insurance, abysmal treatment of cancer patients draining their life savings, tangible assets to get treatment, near misses, brushes with death, severe complications due to insurance companies suddenly changing brands/types of medication they will cover, pharmaceutical companies suddenly raising prices by staggering percentages for life saving/life sustaining, quality of life giving drugs; hyper focused on the patient’s weight not what they came into your office for, treating that first then moving to a secondary conversation about their scale numbers, BMI, other results like cholesterol, triglycerides, blood sugar regularly misses potentially life threatening conditions that have little or nothing to do with weight. The woman who eventually found out she had cancer told repeatedly by doctors symptoms she described to them were the result of her size not any other medical problem, her cancer removed and there was no lingering threat to her life; commenters on her story cautioning her she probably has Cushing’s disease and should not think herself in the clear, though 6 years out now both cancer and troublesome symptoms free. Cushing’s itself known to cause everything from weight gain to acne, to hypertension and diabetes due to excess hormones/ body secretions; sound like a lot of Americans, hey doctors run the appropriate tests. The now canceled but in syndication medical show House who had a storyline similar to the real life events about a man who demanded Dr. House come up with another reason for his symptoms, look elsewhere or he wasn’t listening to find he too had advanced cancer this time. Another real-life woman wasn’t as lucky as the first diagnosed in her 60’s with cancer, told she had days to live, her obituary speaking for her illuminating a lifetime of fat shamming in Victoria, BC Canada, doctors offering no guidelines apart from weight loss which while it does prevent some cancers and can stave off recurrence doesn’t treat it if you already have it; proving as obesity is a global problem so too is western world medical profession stigmatizing and bias against the obese. Patients who’ve intentionally or accidentally recorded themselves having procedures requiring anesthesia only to end up documenting snide, disparaging comments made by doctors and nurses about people’s body, their personality simply because they want quality care; general disregard for women and what they related to their doctors including a woman who endured almost 20 years of painful periods ignored by physicians until one listened removing a cyst from her reproductive area that had teeth, a man who was experiencing a severe anxiety attack only to encounter a living breathing variation on nurse ratchet, the tip of a very big iceberg. Re-watch the PCOS video of the woman fighting bearding and what she told the panel about her relief at finally being listened to and her words being acted upon; think critically regarding what Bob Harper told Dr. OZ about knowing your family history yes, but also heart health numbers added to LDL, HDL cholesterol, lipids telling people to ensure their doctor doesn’t neglect the blood protein causing him so much trouble, except isn’t that your doctors job? If you are seeing a primary care physician for as little as a yearly checkup shouldn’t they know to A- ask the patient’s family history and B- if they don’t know test for a gambit of things that could be; use fairly new but available genetic testing to determine predispositions helping patients who don’t know who their parents/relatives are being adopted, their parents are currently deceased? Here is where blog author disagrees vehemently with progressives about the shadiness of drug advertisements on television, if we can’t get doctors to do the basics without persons like Bob Harper telling us to ask for what doctors should frankly be doing already, are constantly being advised about how to avoid either hospital mix ups regarding what procedure you’re there to get, which limb they’ll be operating on if applicable, how not to contract hospital born infections, how are patients going to know about select conditions forget know there is a treatment for it; older people who can’t lay their hand flat and have curved fingers will chalk it up to old age if they don’t know to ask if it’s X they heard about on television, absent a treatment they won’t speak up because they don’t believe there’s anything that can be done. Whoopi Goldberg returning to The View after a long absence revealing she got pneumonia then sepsis is exactly why they advertise a pneumonia shot, so that senior citizens get one and avoid what she went through; same with the one announcing a new shingles vaccine for anyone old enough to have contracted chicken pox as a child now 50 plus. Dido the flu shot and it’s potential to kill older persons, how many stubbornly refrain from getting one despite it’s lethality in recent years across all age groups but especially the very young and very old; really listen to the ad demonstrating treatments for men suffering from a curved penis and what it might be, what man is going to go to his doctor talking about that, research it online for fear someone finds his search history, knowing there is a name for it a potential cure, that will get him to a doctor asking questions. Can we really help but wonder if the new Parkinson’s drug reducing hallucinations might have saved Robin Williams life if it had been on the market a few short years ago; and, think whose life might it save because a caregiver for someone with the disease sees that and approaches their doctor. Emphasizing a need to change the conversation, take what Selma Blair revealed in her interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts about having been to several doctors, symptoms again ignored, desperate reaching out to Michael J. Fox, not knowing who to tell about her jerky movements, shaking uncontrollably leg, falling, finally a fall in front of a doctor leading to proper tests to expose her MS diagnosis of which she had been suffering an acute flare up since her son was born who is at least early school age. The ‘parkinsonian’ nature, Blair’s characterization, of her symptom manifestation, should have had doctors looking in that direction and from there, those tests being negative/inconclusive, it should not have been such a leap to at minimum test for MS keeping in mind holder of that opinion is a lay person with no medical degree or training whatsoever; however, having heard of Michael J. Fox’s battle, seen him in interviews which would prompt me to ask her if she had Parkinson’s if her MS wasn’t forefront in the footage. Blair someone who has means, who can repeatedly go to doctors getting second, third, fifteenth if she wants them opinions, can go overseas, out of the country, seek out famous physicians, specialists in what doctors probably misdiagnosed her with along her quest for answers, where ordinary persons don’t; her self medicating via drinking paralleling people with mental health issues self medicating with drugs and alcohol, instances that would happen less not just if people had access to care but if there was greater care to be had on the latter front. They never stop talking about guns and the common sense gun controls we can’t get coupled with mental illness for want of access to psychiatric professionals, trifecta closing around conspiracy theory spewing platforms egging on mentally ill persons to violence causing mass shooting after mass shooting, where scores die needlessly every year; missing the very prescient conversations about better effective diagnostics, improved medications for mental disorders minus the annoying to debilitating side effects, greater research into management, treatment or, insurmountable task, a cure, but obesity is ridiculously deadly . Bald face truth current treatments would not have helped Nikolas Cruz absent full blow long term hospitalization had present mental health professionals and services been more aware, dido Adam Lana; adult future for the child inspiring the blog ‘I am Adam Lanza’s mom’ no reasonable guarantee though doctors were starting to find the correct medication regiment. Rarely spoken to either on the medical or mental health front, the need to generate research into diseases’ effects on ethnic minorities, select ethnic groups who don’t respond, respond adequately to conventional treatments, realities things like the national bone marrow registry lacks donors from native American and African American populations; African Americans who don’t respond as well to asthma treatments, recently studiers of autism hoping to find a genetic link to the developmental disorder seeking minority children effected to better understand it and its impact on specific groups. They talk incessantly about the millions of Americans who die yearly for want of health insurance, how much better things would be in terms of quality of care, improvement of outcomes with nationalized healthcare like proposed Medicare for all, at minimum equally important is the factor of competent doctors people who have health insurance, have resources and are still left medically vulnerable sans a knowledgeable medical provider; take another reality show Dr. Pimple Popper and the sheer number of patients who were brave enough to see a doctor about their frightening condition who were told they couldn’t help them absent a referral to a dermatologist, absent the simple act of telling the patient that’s the type of doctor they need to see. Obesity or no obesity would not have cured one woman’s Hidradenitis suppurativa (inflammation of the sweat glands) punctuated by painful boil like cysts in the armpits or groin, under breasts for woman, prone to drainage, discharge and smell; nor achieved her goal driving her to that famous doctor, a heartbreakingly basic need to be able to put on her bra without pain, connected her with support via someone who also suffers the condition and therefore understands her in ways friends and family don’t, would not/could not change her medical history having the condition from age 8 not over weight and waiting years to find answers combatting people who just look at her blaming her size, told to cut out sugar and processed foods having no effect on what she was experiencing. A false assumption on its face since medicine itself has narrow knowledge of what causes it and what other effects it could signify in the body, the fact it plus her having had a child could explain her being overweight; shame on our culture the smell, the discharge and the isolation made food the only thing she could turn to. Medical errors snuffing out or rendering horrible a staggering number of lives be it the stem cell treatment, called a clinical trial taking none of the precautions, that left patients blind or the doctor who removed what he thought was a tumor turns out it was the woman’s kidney; medical errors circa 2016 cataloged the 3rd leading cause of death behind cancer and heart disease respectively. Side by side medical errors are medical device failures and device horror stories from blood clot filters breaking off in the body sometimes causing death to spinal cord stimulators meant to eliminate chronic back pain cutting out addictive opioids making it worse and debilitating persons it was slated to help, we’ve all heard about the bad hip replacements now imagine someone with a gaping hole where a joint should be after an implant failure; closely associated with that they should talk about the FDA hiding bad reports of numerous devices smelling like a cover-up to investigators. Although those are usually covered by another anchor’s program on their ‘progressive Netflix’ as they like to call it, it still matters in the context of how deadly one lone topic is according to them. Sounds an awful lot like Takata’s airbags, the guardrail manufacturer who built them on the cheap literally impaling people; it would never occur to them the things in our cosmetics and the unregulated supplements is also responsible for cancer rates otherwise unexplained even when the educated guess is life style/obesity connected. We can read the date on the TYT video examples and see reference material was done well in advance of the massive blood pressure pill recalls, it seems there’s a new one every week; refreshing reader’s memories why are they being recalled, there’s a chance they cause what, say it with me, CANCER! If they really wanted to talk about something meaningful they would talk about dangers lurking in surgery centers a-la the one involved in the death of Joan Rivers, tonsillectomies and dental procedures ending in death for, too many times, children, teens and adolescents; staff unprepared for adverse complications often doing complex surgeries more and more in what is an outpatient setting, unprepared to perform basic life saving techniques, think CPR, while taking on patients that are too sick for the facility, alarmingly surgery centers outnumber hospitals across the country. If they were smart they would connect that to the medical care deserts developing in rural areas absent a maternity ward, county health clinics shuttering their doors, as much as they coved the woman of color who died when her ambulance was turned away from the closest hospital to deal with her emergency, or the first responders who automatically assumed a woman could not afford an ambulance, police on scene trying to load her into her mother’s car so she could drive her daughter to the hospital, her daughter also dying. California story of legislation bettering dialysis clinics a positive but what lead to them needing to be bettered so drastically in the first place; who and how many had to die to see it’s creation come to pass, not told if the bill managed to make it into law or a timeframe on implementation. How many of the heart disease, cancer deaths yearly could be avoided with more competent doctoring at least equaling the outcomes of major lifestyle changes, living restrictive lifestyles everyone seems to advocate to avoid the diseases; top 3 causes of death reduced significantly no doubt? Scroll back and re-read/watch the videos at the end of the previous paragraph about the mother of 3 whose childbirths kept getting increasingly painful but it took years, no matter how out of the ordinary for her age, for them to get to a colon cancer screening, years wasted before a doctor did a standard colonoscopy her cancer discovered at stage 4, she lucky to have lived; the other mother only after the birth of her latest child did doctors find her colon cancer. How is it that poor young woman had to have a second stroke before doctors took a deeper look into what was happening; able to repair the tiny hole in her heart, what took them so long to locate it? Almost simultaneously we talk about how lifestyle related illnesses (a broad umbrella for preventable disease headed off/ removed by healthy diet, exercise, moderating alcohol use, quitting smoking, avoiding illicit drugs usually focused on obesity barreling head long into type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease) are shortening Americans’ overall lifespan; however, newest data examining life expectancy cite the opioid crisis, alcoholism and suicide bringing down longevity numbers. Speaking of opioids, failure to offer treatment services/beds to surviving overdose sufferers is seen as a miss opportunity. Suicides targeting women and middle aged white men the latter feeling economic pressure of being unable to provide for their families; toxic masculinity feeding the concept you’re a worthless failure if you can’t regardless situational circumstances, egged on by republicans and Fox News, what people are watching in highly effected areas. Pregnancy too can affect women’s lifespan on a microcellular level shortening their telomeres (chromosomal compounds used to roughly determine the body’s molecular age) anywhere from 6 months up to 2 years for every child, showing signs of contributing breast cancer and the Alzheimer’s detailed in the paragraph above not as not easily prevented with lifestyle interventions as we thought, the brain disease ultimately fatal. Similarly the documented spikes in women’s death shortly after childbirth is not due to poor health prior/during pregnancy, complications in pregnancy connected to lifestyle obesity, diabetes exc. rather hospitals nationwide lacking obstetrics and OBGYN services plus failure to follow medical protocols meant to insure a women’s health through the hours and days directly post childbirth; basics like using made for it measurement tools to gage the amount a woman is bleeding post birth as opposed to having a nurse eyeball it, essentially guessing, seeing a potentially dangerous amount of bleeding acting immediately to evaluate the patient and administer meds, sew up a vaginal tear from natural childbirth. Fundamentals as crucial as listening to a new mother when they say they don’t feel right, describing symptoms part and parcel for known post birth complications instead of waiting hours for a simple scan, dismissing patient complaints couched under clueless first time parents, histrionic hormones, whining or whatever flimsy excuse offered up as to why they didn’t listen to them causing death; the daughter who died because emergency responders didn’t think she could afford an ambulance had just given birth to a baby recently. If they really wanted to talk about something profound when it comes to food, weight, obesity, chronic disease they would talk about how many articles spend time using the words scientist, researchers, doctors, experts don’t know, they would talk about how the WHO’s (world health organization) best remedy, recommendation for the global obesity ‘crisis’ is increased gastric bypass surgeries; how that mimics the developed world’s approach to infertility, they’ve found plenty of cutting edge medical and scientific ways to circumvent it but devote little investigation into the cause of rising infertility rates in both men and women. They would talk about the study just released showing how a little bit of red/processed meat consumption increases risk of death from all causes; see what I did there, same thing they did lump into one category red and processed meats making no distinction between red meat i.e. stake, hamburger, rump roast, various ground beef or cuts available in the grocery store and processed meats beef hot dogs, bologna, sandwich meat. Meaning, how can the study findings be taken seriously because researchers don’t know if it’s specifically red meat or the processed meat causing death when you don’t differentiate between 2 drastically different types of meat, problem with several studies often quoted even by independent media but never noticed. They would honestly talk about the brain glitch obesity is thought to be related to how our brain processes stress triggering survival drives causing overeating and how we rewire those circuits in the brain changing a person’s food behavior, a lot more complicated than ‘emotional eating’ and standard talk therapy; or add in the article on aging belly fat whether it’s the cause or a symptom of so called lifestyle related illnesses why chronicling what researchers disseminating the information still don’t know about anything they talking about defaulting to their eat less, exercise more as you age advice, is bad. They do talk about the statistic air pollution kills millions yearly across the globe but don’t grasp the deductive reasoning guess that could explain the ‘unexplainable’ thought obesity related cancer, or where food is the culprit it is the pollution contamination not ‘big food’s’ chemicals and additives; it’s twin climate change killing people right left and center the most current example Mozambique’s cyclone and growing aftermath. But obesity, sounds a lot like the political left’s mocking refrain but her e-mails contrasting Hillary Clinton’s e-mail and private server to the private e-mail used by the Trump administration while playing dumb, presidential son in-law Jared Kushner’s texts about foreign policy, the mobile devices the president refuses to give up for properly secured ones and what a national security threat that is, to the public indictments in the Muller probe of persons like Michael Flynn judge calling his behavior treasonous. They could easily talk about the fact we don’t have functional treatments for lymphedema and lipedema never mind a cure, conditions not singularly occurring in morbidly obese people but otherwise regularly proportioned people the former usually a complication of injury, effect of age, the latter’s only remedy advanced liposuction and compression garments; they would talk about how we don’t have any real help for that poor woman with Hidradenitis suppurativa outside steroid type injections likely to worsen her weight. The Game of Thrones star suffering not 1 but 2 brain aneurisms in her 20’s absolute wonder to be alive, yet until it struck she had no idea what was happening, doctors baffled; morning show and news medical experts conforming an aneurism can happen at any age, yes aggravated by lifestyle stress, high blood pressure, smoking but housing a genetic component, actress left with a titanium plate in her head. We don’t know what caused Luke Perry’s deadly stroke what is obvious is his lack of obesity, known risk factors, but obesity is ridiculously deadly. They frankly need to talk about the number of students still dying on sports fields despite the rash of deaths yearly of those mentioned heart issues because sports physicals have yet to include an EKG, cardiac ultrasound, cardiac echo to ensure the health of a vital organ in a would be athlete instead pushing for medical personnel and portable defibrillators on fields, in practices. Hosts of other things that kill people totally divorced from lifestyle related illnesses, superbugs and the anti-biotics not being developed, barely being researched, the vaccines we don’t have for Lyme disease and rocky mountain spotted fever spread by mosquitos in the U.S., dengue fever and malaria throughout Africa, 30 plus tireless years of working to treat and combat AIDS stubbornly without a vaccine 20 years into the 21st century largely because it is a disease associated with sex. Worse gay sex viewed as an abomination, a step above highly immoral to the religious right so why immunize or cure people not living right; encourage them to immorality by removing disease. We have a vaccine for 6 cancers yet half of kids aren’t getting them because it’s the HPV vaccine again conflated with sex, seen as giving a license to kids to have pre-marital, promiscuous, unprotected sex, tied ‘exclusively’ to girls because it was marketed as a cervical cancer vaccine; leaving out boys who can get the same HPV and cancer exposure via oral sex, popular with teens due to the removal of pregnancy risk, thoughts devoid of comprehension not all sex is consensual, the abuse rates for children zero to 18 minus gender. From a medical negligence standpoint the last 2 years alone saw astronomical child deaths from the flu compared to previous years doctors still sending home children who very soon die for want of hospital grade supervision; EMTs leaving it up to parents if they want to take their child in without the professional expertise advising them to do so because of the spike in deaths, but focus is on their soda and fast food consumption, their sedentary lifestyle in front of videogames think Fortnite. If they really wanted to interject context into their conversation on weight, obesity, ‘what’s killing us,’ regardless their thoughts on our ability to see it, they would bring up the cancer found in a foot bone fossil of ancient man, the arthritis found in dinosaur bones never encountered a trans-fat and prehistoric man always touted for their intact teeth thanks to law sugar diets; Egyptian mummy remains though showing evidence of heart disease wouldn’t that make it a longstanding predisposition in that regions people, at least the ones descended from those mummies? Underlying message, identified are common diseases ailments found on earth during various parts of history that humanity sharing earth with the plant and animal life on it are going to have to put up with for the foreseeable future. They would reiterate the realities in the final 2 links after the paragraph essentially telling people to stop holding out for a fountain of youth pill based on things constantly tested on mice or that chances of getting cellphone radiation exposure cancer are small unless you are a male rat which makes sense comparing the size of the animal and the phone versus that of human beings and their devices, perspective, perspective, perspective.

http://www.newser.com/story/262683/womans-obit-slams-fat-shaming-by-doctors.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuVEL9yTSaY
https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/07/204686/dr-pimple-popper-tv-show-episode-2
http://www.newser.com/story/266954/he-cut-out-a-tumor-it-was-actually-her-kidney.html
https://www.salon.com/2019/03/12/hidden-fda-reports-detail-harm-caused-by-scores-of-medical-devices_partner/
https://www.salon.com/2017/06/10/california-bill-addresses-safety-concerns-at-dialysis-clinics_partner/
https://www.salon.com/2019/02/19/discharged-dismissed-ers-often-miss-chance-to-set-overdose-survivors-on-better-path_partner/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UdLSuFRKOA
https://www.salon.com/2018/05/09/the-belly-fat-battle-a-wider-waist-is-dangerous-for-reasons-we-do-not-fully-grasp_partner/
https://www.salon.com/2018/04/13/overeating-it-may-be-a-brain-glitch_partner/
http://www.salon.com/2017/02/06/we-have-a-vaccine-for-six-cancers-why-are-less-than-half-of-kids-getting-it_partner/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-bEEEfb6B0

https://www.salon.com/2019/02/12/a-fountain-of-youth-pill-sure-if-youre-a-mouse_partner/

Dental care/dental health management perceptions parallel medicine and obesity attitudes in America; there is no room in their thinking, of average citizen X, for someone with genetically, hereditarily bad teeth, the rare people born with no enamel on their teeth and several other orthodontia problems known to dental professionals everywhere. The default chastisement is about soda and sugar consumption, lack of brushing, not just once, but 3 times a day, lax flossing, refusal to go to the dentist forgetting both fear and cost. Compartmentalizing where the problem is most acute and the stereotypes associated with the region, paralleling our obsession with the perfect body creating the opposite result orthodontics braces, retainers once meant to correct severe overbites, jaw deformities, crooked teeth prone to cavities and other issues effecting eating have become a multi-million/billion business catering to giving people that perfect, whitest smile. Nearly every toothpaste on the market offering varying degrees of whitening capability, accurate or not, feasible or not, persons desperate to get a job, elevate their career prospects investing in braces, custom liners and throwing away hundreds of dollars on over the counter whitening products if they can’t afford those from their dentist’s office; so much so we’ve earned the social scorn of the rest of the westernized world. Americans fortunate enough to have been born with good teeth having little empathy for those who weren’t, uncaring about mentioned un-fluoridated water in Appalachia’s wells, their primary source of water, it being well water the naturally occurring minerals that may be harming teeth for all we know and all the research not done; fracking a popular revival of energy sources and jobs dumping god only knows what kind of chemicals into people’s drinking water supply, though we do know some was so full of methane they were lighting their tap water on fire. Speaking of Fluoride, if they aren’t the ones spreading conspiracy theories about what fluoride is put in the water to do from dumb us down to control our minds. Reference piece author bringing up high instances of smoking, chewing tobacco known to wreak havoc on mouth health; medications mentioned that cause dry mouth, their example opioids, but there are plenty of others, meth mouth among the illicit drug’s users, alcoholics known to have oral health problems too, the only eating disorder isn’t one best attributed to gluttony— bulimia and anorexia still exist in vast numbers as well as orthorexia (removing whole food groups from your diet in a bid to be uber healthy, a control mechanism similar to anorexia analyzing sufferers distorted thinking ) and can wreck your dental health all in different ways. Top side effect of properly taken prescription medications, short or long term to treat a myriad of ailments anti-biotics to psychiatric management (Jim Carey did a parody on this very effect in Me Myself and Irene) is dry mouth, dry mouth subsequently spelling tooth deterioration, decay and possible loss if your dentist doesn’t put it together; rinses and other products to combat exclusively dry mouth fairly new, possibly unaffordable to populations surviving on social security benefits, pensions, dwindling retirement savings and welfare also common to Appalachia and persons with dental struggles. Psychiatric medications for everything from depression to bipolar to anti psychotic medicines notorious for causing weight gain too meaning mental health sufferers get it, judgement coming and going on both their weight and their teeth, who says we don’t judge people for all medical conditions. There is no compassion for individuals who lost teeth to everything from a car/motorcycle, boating accident to domestic violence, had their jaw broken and wired shut to heal at some juncture in their life only for it to get infected and the teeth have to go once the wires came off; we are imploring people to get more exercise, be more active but still see X games sports participants as dare devils, the oldest of the founders are pushing middle age now, so they definitely shouldn’t hold any expectation of restorative dentistry that is affordable oh no. Paradoxically braces used more and more for purely cosmetic reasons, if not meticulously taken care of can rot teeth while on, pregnancy can increase the likelihood of gum disease and tooth decay; and if you are a poor parent, well you should have just kept your legs closed, picked a more stable choice of partner, blog and author going over repeatedly the birth control, tube tying women can’t get thanks to religious right policies believers still saying things like that to women’s faces, so obviously no restorative dentistry for you either. Regardless doing everything right reality you are more than just at your parents genetic whims when you’re mother’s health during pregnancy can greatly impact things like their child’s tooth health, parents who were addicted to substances, didn’t eat properly, didn’t take prenatal vitamins could mean children who become adults with weak, prone to issues teeth; we’ve covered already the lack of clinics and maternity services in rural areas, did we think the only thing missing in Appalachia was city water systems and dentists? Across America the numerous women who don’t know they are pregnant until late into their pregnancy or in growing instances until they appear at the hospital in pain, so common they made a TV show about it called I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant, I’ve told the story of my friend’s last 2 children who were utter surprises until being examined for pain at the hospital, her anemia fortunate for her 4th as she opted for prenatal supplements over foul tasting iron pills. Reading carefully descriptions of dental problems uncovered by Salon in Tennessee why are kids’ gums so inflamed it hurts to bush their teeth, soda drinking doesn’t cause that so what is causing it? Is it predominately in the region or is it an increasing occurrence America wide like our declining dental health for want of enough dentists in areas across the country a prelude to the healthcare deserts growing nationwide, no women’s clinics, health clinics or maternity care; easy to deduce why teens are pulling their teeth with pliers if the mobile dentist is beyond their reach, won’t be back until next year. Mobile dentists what these people in rural isolated areas limiting access for want of ability to get to them, curtailing procedures available to them, have been dependent on for decades appearing about once per year as alluded to; no guarantee they can afford the services assuming they can reach them. Telling the heart disease representing the number one cause of death in America can be caused by chronically bad, neglected teeth, forming abscesses, diabetes can likewise be touched off by, say it with the rest of readers, rotting, bad, neglected teeth; could this be part of what is plaguing Appalachia predominately populated by older Americans, cut off from major metropolitan areas, depending on those mobile dentist services, could this be what’s impacting the rest of America’s heart health when they can’t afford giant dental care costs, if they have employer dental coverage can’t manage their deductibles, co-pay, or their portion of the procedure(s) they need. All part of the reference author’s whole picture but we don’t see snobbish Americans ignorant to the struggles of people without dental coverage, suffering no tooth problems getting past the author and dentists serving the area calling it ‘Mountain Dew mouth.’ Yes bad, neglected, rotting teeth can come close to deadly; my uncle’s best friend spent days in the hospital with no other obvious medial problems, chronic disease other than his horrible oral health and no financial means to rectify, children have died when abscess infections went awry thanks to huge wait lists, but we keep moralizing peoples oral health. My other uncle spending years with bad teeth before getting the necessary ones pulled, required partials and cyclical 6 month cleanings for his natural teeth; heart problems and subsequent bypass surgery he underwent attributed to his diabetes and its effects on his heart, could it have been both set off by years of bad teeth’s toll on his body, eventually dying of a heart attack. And a 3rd had his pulled by 21 for dentures; because, he was born with them soft, prone to decay and useless. Never mind, regarding Appalachia, they aren’t merely drinking Mountain Dew in place of nasty tasting well water they are using it to make moonshine bathtub varieties of alcohol guaranteed to be hard on teeth court ruling yes Pepsi Co. yes they can do that and presumably sell it which was undoubtedly the focus of the lawsuit. Again part of an all-encompassing picture painted by the Salon writer, yet people are barred from jobs not in Hollywood, not front facing positions like reception for bad or missing teeth, chipped/broken teeth that are not glaringly noticed and it’s legal the same way age discrimination is from the aspect of practicality legal because they hide behind ‘we found a more qualified candidate’, other trite phrases used by employers; par for the course when New York City just passed a law preventing employers from discriminating against employees wearing natural and ethnic hairstyles, refusing to hire potential employees wearing natural or ethnic hairstyles. Featured, a women told by her retail job, she promptly quit, her braids/dreads, she would have to take out, made her look unkempt, too urban for their image, when looking at her, her current poofy parted hair resembled more bed head mess than her braids ever could; eye roll, her former employer was The Gap. Oh the horror people get a job and get off welfare and food stamps perhaps being able to pay for their dental needs in the process; still in places with little job prospects and the need for caregivers to the elderly and aged people are looking for those with perfect teeth to take care of them, more aptly their loved ones, an erroneous sign of character. Like those discriminated against for their hairstyle saying their hair has no effect on their job performance ability to do a job, generally a person’s teeth have no bearing on their ability to provide necessitated caregiving services common to CNA’s, home health aides, nurses, assisted living or nursing home personnel and while it might, might be a reflection on how they see, take care of themselves basic psychology tells us, has told us for years accurately, it is no gage of how they care for others; maybe it’s time we listen. Absolute sacrilege the listed misfortunate and more have opportunities at restorative dentistry, addicts, alcoholics who go through the grueling steps to conquer their addiction be able to restore all of themselves. In a triple whammy blow against the poor turns out the substance we’ve been using to fill teeth is generally bad at withstanding anything that happens in the mouth chewing, drinking plus only last 7-10 years before needing to be redone and even between that time can break down, cause gaps between filling and the tooth causing new cavities to form resulting tooth loss in or lead to life threatening infection when bacteria fills that gap; informed assumption they mean the amalgam fillings used to solve the problem of metal toxicity from metal fillings, never fear researchers found something better that lasts twice as long, what do we want to be it’s, done need a crystal ball for this one, twice as expensive. Curious, the cherry on top of our backwards healthcare system’s view of dentistry, more than the 2 tiered system of inequality some dentists refusing Medicaid patients because they can’t keep a practice open, pay back dental school bills/loans and make a functional living doing so while the wealthy pay thousands for a single veneer, the wildly fluctuating prices not just dependent on location around the United States but vastly different by which individual practice you go to dentistry remaining a largely private industry as they noted, the number of dental procedures often categorized cosmetic by both dentists and insurance companies that are merely means for people to keep their teeth and continue eating a variety of foods including harder ones like raw vegetables and fruits; what they are restoring is a person’s literal ability to eat, chew, properly digest their food, no one, none of the 2 referenced dental articles making the correlation between lost health and lost teeth in terms of good foods they can no longer eat absent implants, partials, dentures forced onto soft, fatty, greasy, processed food. Yet Medicare classifies a full set of dentures as cosmetic forcing my grandmother to pay hundreds out of pocket and travel to a different city to obtain teeth to eat with; why this author is skeptical of Bernie Sanders Medicare for all claims about adding vision and dental he acted as if would be for everyone but hearing him speak of late only highlights it for the elderly possibly phased in over the 4 years he states it will take to encompass everyone but I need care as close to now as possible, millions of others too, facing teeth with bigger and bigger holes, one chipped tooth. Where 20 odd years ago at 18 I had good teeth, a small premolar cavity too small to fill having drank soda consistently throughout my teens; my problems seem to stem from my wisdom teeth coming in, warned they would be cavity causers but the dentist failed to explain fully how, why, at 21 and beyond no means to afford their extraction. Only getting my double digit number of cavities filled through a health department program with a 10 dollar co-pay and X dollars allotted to each patient, within 2 years cavities solved, it took another 2 to gather the $800 for wisdom teeth extraction plus assessment exam; program discontinued when Medicaid took up some of the burden in my state limiting people to fillings and extractions. Added to the Medicaid accepting dentist shortage are high spend downs for persons on things like social security disability, retirement or survivors benefits they can’t afford so don’t pay meaning no dentistry for them; Medicaid dentists housing a terrifying reputation of doing unnecessary procedures on usually kids, pulling healthy teeth for the dollars, desperate adults surmised to be fair game. Confronting prevention methods to cut down on cavities, gum disease and other orthodontia problems, apart from treating existing mouth issues, brushing flossing, the water pick systems sold, the electric toothbrushes touted as better than a manual, new spin on the angled verses flat head toothbrush commercials from my childhood; people myself among them, would be far more inclined to believe soda’s combination of chemically engineered sugars and carbonated water has a significant detriment on teeth if they didn’t know about the preverbal laundry list of common foods dentists prevent their families from consuming and advise their patients to avoid popcorn and corm on the cob for the husks and strain on teeth respectively, tomato sauce for the acid content dido citrus fruits for identical reasons and not the juices you find in the store housing added sugar, pasteurization and things known to wear on tooth enamel but the whole fruits themselves, coffee again less for the sugar you add to the fancy concoctions in coffee houses, the store bought varieties you can put in your home coffee maker and instead the natural acid content. Sparkling water viewed as an alternative to soda with its equally attractive fizz, whether you avoid or try the name mentioned above, Bubly another popular one out too for the carbonation and acid erosion it does to your teeth; not to mention the dentist advice to wait at least 30 minutes, later elongated to an hour, after drinking a carbonated beverage to brush your teeth, to rinse your mouth with water post drinking to neutralize acid curtailing erosion, round where are we now of you can’t win for losing. I might find myself enquiring of my dentist about gum disease preventing tooth paste, gum detoxifying tooth pastes if the people telling me about them weren’t promoting a product akin to all the ones meant to stop tooth sensitivity to hot and cold if use consistently enough the ones promising to replenish your tooth enamel impossible, only plausible to protect what you have, and of course costing more than a basic combination toothpaste with cavity and plague/tarter build up prevention; again it reverberates back to the concept explored in paragraph 2 science’s next great idea of making eating a purely recreational activity and the Silicon Valley business that tried to make so doing a reality only succeeding in making people sick, let’s all stop eating normal food removing the burden form dental professionals to investigate the types of tooth decay they see, develop real advice for aging patients on preserving their teeth and realization longer lifespans mean greater chance of losing teeth. The related articles section of the Appalachia story drew me to a 2012 one on a Kentucky program for new soon to be mothers that saw a cut in smoking, stopping alcohol and reducing soda consumption nurse raising an eyebrow at mothers needing told not to put Mountain Dew in the baby bottle along not putting infants/emerging toddlers to bed with juice, apparently no one had ever told them not to with the former; incredibly misleading and painting the new mothers in a terrible light since we tell parents all the time and everywhere across the country to avoid doing the same thing with milk in bedtime bottles at bedtime to avoid ‘bottle rot, same exact thing happening with pasteurized, not formula, milk. I had a health teacher saying if a baby/toddler falls asleep with milk, juice, cold/fever medicine in their mouth to blow in their faces activating their swallow reflect so whatever is in there doesn’t sit all night; practical parenting tip from someone who had been there talking to a room full of high school girls who couldn’t wait to get pregnant, myself the rare exception. Baby bottle no, no’s that lead to tooth decay slightly more complicated when kids under one year are A still on a bottle need that soother to get to sleep and B- aren’t allowed water until after their first birthday. Older Americans incredulous about pasteurized milk saying milk directly from a cow doesn’t do that just the cooked stuff; areas seeing spikes in sickened people and children drinking completely raw milk, young parents on a back to earth, as nature intended it kick, where anything the cow, most common source of U.S. milk, goes directly into you or your child including the E.coli in eastern Tennessee. No children shouldn’t get soda before a certain age likely their teens or after, what was common knowledge in the 80’s and 90’s, not because of an obesity epidemic or excessive rotting teeth but because it was believed the caffeine stunted growth, why kids and coffee was a no, no when entities like Starbucks came on the scene; yet, now we’ve gone from backing off that in select circles to expanding it, doctors are advising no juice for children under a year old citing both sugar content and obesity as well as acid levels and dental health, high fructose corn syrup and dextrose linked to gut irritation even in adults. So young kids and their parents are boxed in to milk and water, pediatricians admonishing parents not to forget the importance of plain water, for kids over a year old of course; instead of the much better advice to limit your child to the baby and toddler juices, starting around 6 months, similar to the Gerber graduates type stuff for their age group designed low acid and reduced sugar, going for the natural ones minus engineered sugars. What my friend did with her oldest son, graduating to Kool-Aid in the toddler years because he refused to drink water and rather than have him dehydrated and hospitalized she used that, also having to flavor his milk at times to get him to drink it; processes she repeated with her other 4 children incorporating more water as they aged, limiting them to one large pitcher of Kool-Aid a day split between 3, 4, 5 kids as the family grew and the rest water, milk served with meal times. Kool-Aid was what doctors recommended to my mother when I was 6 and had my first UTI to get the recommended amount of fluids into me to prevent more since I too avoided water like the plague and simply would not drink. Now 14 her oldest has had no cavities while her 10 and her 4 year old each have had 1 chalked up to poor brushing technique their dentist was relatively unconcerned about common in children. Crumbling the paradigm children won’t starve themselves, won’t dehydrate themselves message to parents, so don’t give into their whims, don’t over indulge them; my friend’s second son was a picky eater and not until he was placed on an appetite stimulant that also helped correct his ADHD symptoms did his weight reach doctor accepted levels, her 3rd child, like his brother, on doctor ordered PediaSure because he’s underweight and refuses food regularly. Reaching nowhere near the threshold of an eating disorder, unfortunately eating disorders, for those who battle them, hold the highest mortality rate among psychiatric illnesses, but it’s all about what we put in out face holes either preventing obesity or protecting our teeth. Thanks to the perception that preventatives are the lone and only key to keeping oral health intact research isn’t being done into what exactly causes cavities, what is causing the people in Appalachia’s cavities, genetic or other weaknesses we are seeing in teeth in the modern era, research slow on re-growing natural teeth though promising strides are being made; reminding us, what happened to all those future predictions about a child born today, segments going back as far as 2010 touting thanks to scientific advancement they wouldn’t experience cavities, middle age and other weight issues would be solved with an implant leveling off things in the body. Maybe if we get on that and get off people’s back they can at least enjoy their ‘shortened lifespan,’ their bad teeth don’t have to mean bad everything.

https://www.businessinsider.com/things-americans-do-that-seem-just-bizarre-to-the-outside-world-2013-5

http://www.newser.com/story/272512/distillery-to-pepsi-mountain-dew-is-fair-game-for-moonshiners.html

https://www.salon.com/2012/08/10/dont_put_mountain_dew_in_a_baby_bottle/

https://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/anorexia-americas-hidden-epidemic-23432138

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktHz6_ZaMoo

http://www.refinery29.com/healthy-clean-eating

https://www.salon.com/2019/03/16/none-of-this-was-supposed-to-happen-until-i-got-thin/

https://www.salon.com/2018/06/09/eating-disorders-are-hard-to-overcome-but-ditching-diets-is-crucial_partner/

https://www.salon.com/2019/03/30/more-time-in-the-kitchen-may-not-be-the-answer-to-feeding-kids-well_partner/

http://www.salon.com/2017/08/08/pass-the-salt-the-myth-of-the-low-salt-diet_partner/

https://www.salon.com/2017/10/14/healthy-choices-are-neither-good-or-bad-only-thinking-makes-them-so_partner/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHhG364Jzlw

https://www.salon.com/2019/03/27/atv-deaths-top-15000-threshold-in-latest-government-report_partner/

https://people.com/tv/former-chips-actress-denise-dubarry-hay-dies/

http://www.newser.com/story/268659/nursing-home-staff-smelled-the-stench-but-did-nothing.html
https://www.salon.com/2017/08/08/pass-the-salt-the-myth-of-the-low-salt-diet_partner/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrMx5Cr3PX8

Bottom line much to the chagrin of persons peddling get healthy methods and the latest diet fad, much of what we think we know about food, weight and obesity remains a mystery; what isn’t, that our approach, be it TYT’s, Dr. Now’s or Michelle Obama’s doesn’t work. Constantly ragging on people about their consumption of the wrong foods only exacerbates the problem, constantly telling them how deadly obesity is and boggling their minds with statistics doesn’t motivate them to change; giving people the impression they can’t reach their dreams or be anything unless they are thin does so much more than ensure they never will be it dampens productivity and possibility nationwide, it perpetuates a cycle of indeed early death more attributed to the stress we place on people to meet society and doctor’s own skewed expectations based on half pieced together medical knowledge. When parents have to wonder if the scales at WIC (women infants and children) nutritional voucher program meant to put healthy foods on the table of the poorest children/families between 0-5 years are accurate because the low income parent just took their child to the pediatrician and they said nothing about the child’s weight yet they are being counseled by the WIC worker about an impending problem being judged they don’t know how to take proper care of their child according to a Salon author talking to the compliers of a new book looking at socioeconomic realities and solutions to the nation’s obesity epidemic; my friend had to obtain a doctor’s not saying her oldest could not tolerate whole milk (causing him to vomit to get them to switch it for the 2 % 12 ½ years later having the opposite problem having to force the clinic to haggle with the nutrition program to keep him on the whole milk since he was a preemie and slightly underweight at his 24 month checkup, them compromising at 2%. While, returning to the book’s bullet points the most struggling WIC recipients grapple with lacking other basics like enough chairs to sit down at a table, battling homelessness while being chastised for no home cooked meals utilizing a microwave and hot plate having to ignore the ‘health conscious’ advice spewing forth from everywhere out of necessity for their sanity still feeling like bad mothers. It’s a moral failing if you are anything other than society’s ideal weight, teeth, parenting, food buying ability be it for yourself or your family. And we wonder why president Trump is airbrushing pictures to make himself look slightly thinner, of all his displayed oddball behaviors this one the easiest to decipher; he does it because America has no tolerance for fat people let alone a fat president and looking a little thinner buys him peace in his eyes with the American people why disgraced doctor Ronny Jackson stated that Trump was 6’3 and weighs 239 pounds, because that was the cut off for that height and not be considered obese and his image couldn’t take being called that. Remember Chris Christie couldn’t possibly be president because of his size even had a doctor speaking out predicting his premature death earning his ire as he described heart wrenching questions from his then 12 year old son about was he going to die? I think we all wish the only problems we had in America at present were the prospects of a president Chris Christie, the former governor more present, aware and knowledgeable than 45 will ever be. Dr. Now famous for saying pizza isn’t part of your diet when your 700 lbs.; we should clap back saying that depends on the pizza homemade varieties with wholegrain, flat bread crusts, vegetables, low fat cheese, vegetarian meat substitutes should be acceptable, Oprah’s line of healthy food products O So Good sports both mashed potatoes and a pizza crust made largely from cauliflower again should be acceptable along with the already mentioned cookbook substitutions for making brownies and other hard to give up foods instead of the exclusion practiced by the man who discovered dairy makes him balloon up. But we perversely love watching him own his most outrageous patients, ‘bitch slapping’ them with reality confident in our assurance that will never be us, as if people who haven’t hit 40 yet and/ or known to scream at their TV have room to talk; losing sight of that’s not sound, healthy medicine, it may, as shown, render short term results but little else, it doesn’t confront overeating where that is the issue and the reality it may be a brain glitch, it doesn’t incorporate evolving discoveries of why we eat when we’re not hungry, makes no room for what we may learn in the very near future about obesity, as enumerated in paragraph 3 the things he could help with but doesn’t, the new findings on diabetes and where that will inevitably take us in treating, managing and dare we say it someday curing the disease. It’s not sound medicine, research, science when prediabetes in healthy weight adults is described as them not being metabolically healthy with no news segment definition of that term assuming one is provided for them, readers of the findings. They did find one cause for a lesser talked about cancer esophageal linked to very hot tea, only up for debate if it was the contents of the tea or the temperatures damage of cells. Salt not salt, low salt moderate salt doesn’t make a serious difference perhaps until you have a diagnosis and in rare cases cutting out salt totally has led to death; commenter further breaking it down between those who are sensitive to salt who will see a negative blood pressure effect and those not who can use as much as they like. People who had higher potassium and magnesium had to worry less about their blood pressure regardless their salt intake. Things outside the realm of what we put in our face holes at least in the traditional way that should worried to down right scare is the brain eating amoeba found in Louisiana’s water system, ATV accidents passing the 15,000 mark according to government report, the actress who died from a rare fungus; proving life is unpredictable, you can do everything right and die an early even accidental death, you can do everything wrong live longer than doctors, nutritionists and experts calculate you will based on what we supposedly know about health and wellness, like the book on the practical reality (unreality) of home cooked, from scratch meals advising us to not care so much, i.e. that we have no room for anything else, maybe we should care a little less about food and a little more about living. If, at the risk of being far too repetitious TYT really wanted to have a deep, existential conversation they would talk about the cold truths of getting older that have nothing to do with our attitude toward age and how badly we treat older people; uncomfortable practicalities of living into your 70’s, 80’s 90’s, approaching centenarian status exemplified in the 90 something year old woman who shot her 74 year old son rumored to have been planning on placing her in a nursing home. Whether it was for cynical reasons so he could continue life with his girlfriend or due to her declining health is unknown and unknowable with her son now dead but it underscores the majority probability no matter how good your health up to the last 6 months to 2 years of your life, no matter how well you eat, how much you exercise, avoid smoking, drugs, excessive alcohol consumption, practice everything from mindfulness to tai chi to yoga you will end up in a nursing home either because you have no family or because while you live your health is too complicatedly precarious they can’t take care of you financially, emotionally, can’t balance their jobs, their family/small children and your needs. Nursing homes even if they weren’t rife for abuse and major bacterial/viral infections, stories every other week about nurses abusing veterans, the staff who smelled a horrendous stench in the man’s room but somehow couldn’t figure out it was coming from him until he was finally admitted to the hospital with gangrene ravaging his genitals necessitating their removal, mercifully to some, he died soon after, it isn’t an existence to aspire to. Nursing homes can’t replace the home you lived in for 30-40 years, the memories there in, the independence you once had ultimately having to give up along with your car keys and many earthly possessions of sentimental value; finding a care facility that can meet you or your loved ones needs may mean being hundreds to thousands of miles away from friends or family. Odds are you will not die at home in your bed surrounded by the things you loved and the people you cherished but in a hospital connected to tubes and wires, haven’t been conscience for days because doctors don’t know how to talk end of life and families don’t know how to accept death with dignity. They would seriously be asking what is so appealing about outliving the bulk of persons you know a phenomenon not unique to American’s socially isolationist, independent culture, westernized nations’ ineffective approach to community, technology’s effect of making us less connected while touting connection; the UK who has a minister of loneliness, the first ever it might be added, volunteers hotlines reaching out daily to older residents who have lost spouses, like their American counterparts, their children, if they had any are busy to overwhelmed with their growing families, few living friends remaining to them. Dying alone in Japan is the evolving norm the island nation described by some as dying as a whole seeing the vast number of elderly persons taxing care facility and a declining young population; in fact, no obesity is not killing persons in Japan but overwork related suicides might be, rent a family level loneliness soon to follow after. Following our obsession with heart health numbers pay close attention to the young Japanese reported who died of heart failure after a series of repeated 14 hour days 60, 70 and 80 hour workweeks the standard. Few connecting stress and the number one killer heart disease but the man who had 2 heart attacks, changed his diet, took his meds but not until he reduced his workload and started spending more time with his grandchildren did his cholesterol numbers slice in half; independent the isolated comment accusing the mainstream media of spreading misinformation it worked for him, but it’s all and only about what we put in our face holes. Only vaguely mentioned how little sleep the man was getting teaching classes, doing lectures and going overseas for speaking engagements, sound like a lot of America, working 60 ,70 and 80 hours a week could that be the source of everyone’s high cholesterol a precursor to the number one killer heart disease? In America we see loneliness’s effects, outlasting your peers, friends and family’s effects with the greatest generation laying the last WWII vets, well into their 90’s, the decimal point of a percent deemed lucky enough to reach 100 slightly above buried with no living family yes to see Americans step up and attend, but a sad way to live your final days and to die. My uncle just turned 65 and over the last 8 years he has buried a sister, 2 brothers, a sister in law, a stepchild, a daughter in law and at least 2 high school friends; if they wanted to talk about something profound they would talk about the toll that kind of grief has on a person or that depression, part of the stages of grief and effecting more and more Americans, can be as deadly to the body as high cholesterol and heart disease, loneliness having the effect on the body of smoking up to 15 cigarettes per day and increasing mortality, but it’s all about what we put in our face holes. If they really wanted to talk about something they’d talk about it not being enough to merely accumulate years on this planet but to live life to the fullest, to enjoy being alive even if that means ignoring most of the conflicting noise about health even when coming from them the sacred independent media.