Mon, Aug-15-11, 03:58
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Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160
BF:
Progress: 109%
Location: UK
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Quote:
August 13, 2011
The Politics of Fried Butter
by Barbara Berkeley, MD
Has anyone been watching the coverage of the Iowa Straw Poll? This early indicator of national election trends is held in conjunction with the Iowa State Fair. If you have been following reports on CNN or any of the news networks, perhaps you've noticed that political reporters feel it necessary to make continual (and completely gratuitous) references to the junk food at the fair. It seems that nary a reporter can deliver his lines without describing the deliciousness of the fried Oreos, fried Snickers or Fried Butter! And each time, the conversation revolves around how bad-for-you but really great this all is and how everyone at the Fair and all of their kids are chowing down in the good old American way.
As someone who has to mop up the medical damage created by our ha-ha attitude toward bad food, it's easy to see that toxic foods are no different than cigarettes. They kill just as many people in this country and take an awful toll in non-fatal misery. Just in fun you say? Well, perhaps in the 1940s a similar reporter might have enthused about the pleasures of a tent that offered multiple kinds of yummy tobacco. In those days, anyone who suggested that a smoker quit might be laughed off or called a killjoy. We've gotten past that today for the most part. Killing yourself with cigarettes is no longer PC. But we still think that eating Fried Butter is cute.
For me, it's particularly galling to see this kind of reporting coupled with political commentary. Our continued blindness to the link between poor health and our national fiscal dilemma is unfathomable. We have the highest per capita health care spending in the world, and health care costs currently account for 16% of our GDP, a doubling of expenses over the past 30 years. If things go unchecked, projections suggest a further doubling to 31% in the 25 years to come. While these costs have many sources, practically no one is willing to look at the responsibility that we, the American public, bear for failing to take better care of ourselves. We've become a country where diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol are the norm and where we've bought into the belief that pills can fix everything that ails us. They can't. And they don't. And as a result we are being bankrupted by an ever increasing health care bill.
The fact that we can still enthuse about deep fried Twinkies in a world so filled with obese and diabetic citizens shows us that we are very far indeed from correctly indicting unhealthy food as we have tobacco. In a way, we shouldn't be surprised. The current motto of our country-in-crisis is "Give Nothing Up." No one appears willing to give up his or her pleasures even if it means sacrificing for the greater good. The rich want to keep their tax cuts, Congressmen choose to re- ensure re-election rather than take the bold steps needed to get us out of our fiscal mess, liberals want to preserve funding for every known social program, and the citizenry wants to pretend that it's still ok to eat whatever and wherever they want.
The world is changing and it seems that we don't want to know. I just returned from Asia where the airport in Singapore looks like a 5 star resort complete with orchid gardens, movie theater, Rodeo Drive style shopping and ponds full of gorgeous, fat koi. The people are slender, the airplanes sleek and new, the roads seamless, the buildings spectacular. I then flew home to New York, where the airport was decayed, the roads lined with garbage, the people overweight and wheezing, the bridges rusting and the buildings along the way covered with graffiti.
Once upon a time, in the lean and healthy years of America, Fried Butter was fun. We wish it still could be. But, sadly, it's time for America to grow up and take responsibility for itself.
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http://refusetoregain.com/refusetor...ied-butter.html |
GROW UP already! 
) I just consider it 45 seconds of the prep that's done. No biggie for me. To someone else this is where I can hear "obsessive" from other people. What do we always read inthe Refuse to Regain thread....to maintain the loss, you basically have to follow the same patterns that got you to the loss--for me this just isn't about the food, it's also about the habits such as weighing everyday, not keeping triggers in the house, logging food, weighing portions, etc. If I can be as successful as say Judy 5 years from now and all I had to do was weigh daily, use MY PLAN, weigh my portions, and the other obvious things with the actual eating, then it's a small price to pay in my life.
, knowing that you tend to obsess anyway, its great that you can see a way to take that and make it into a strategy that will work out well for you. 
Linear Mode
