Between 1985 and 2000, the retail price of carbonated soft drinks rose by 20%, the prices of fats and oils by 35%, and those of sugars and sweets by 46%, as compared with a 118% increase in the retail price of fresh fruits and vegetables. …
Healthy, low-calorie foods cost more money and take more effort to prepare than processed, high-calorie foods. … Drewnowski estimated that a calorie-dense diet cost $3.52 a day compared with $36.32 a day for a low-calorie diet.
A more nuanced translation of Hippocrates’ original Greek text might read: Life is too short; the task is huge; the right time is like a razor blade; the road to experience is fraught with hazards; to continuously accept reality and critical thought over hope and prejudice is taxing.
Back in March and April of 2009 I wrote a long series of posts on taste. I got interested in it through the idea of supertasters – individuals who are overly sensitive to certain bitter tastes and, as a result, have their own set of food preferences. When More Time Than Dough contacted me about quoting from one of those posts, I decided to clean them up and present them as a series.
I have no idea where I’ll be next month. I could be silent. I could be dead. I could be exactly like this. I could be in a variety of stages. But I know, absolutely with certainty – within reason – that I’ll be dead in five years. And that reversal of consciousness means that I am very focused upon life in the next two weeks.
As kids approach puberty, scientists now know, there is a two-hour shift in when their bodies release melatonin, the hormone that causes sleepiness. As a result, teens and preteens find it impossible to fall asleep until about 11 p.m., even if they try to go to bed earlier. Yet teenagers still need an average of 9.25 hours of slumber each night.
Between those late 19th century discussions of euthanasia as mercy killing and 1975, when Balfour Mount introduced the term palliative care, there was no name for supportive care of the dying. Without a name, there could be no specialists in the subject, no professors to teach it, no training for physicians. There was little discussion of the subject in medical schools. Without a name, the subject could not be indexed and researched in medical literature. There could be no advances in knowledge or improvement in techniques.
Bureaucratized shift-work is not good for doctors and it’s not good for patients. I don’t know what the solution will be. Primary care doctors are asking to be paid by the hour, not for piece work. That might help. The wealthy can afford concierge doctors. Maybe something will come out of the medical home concept. If doctors and patients get unhappy enough, perhaps a creative solution will evolve.
A recent commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association asks: If individuals don’t use preventive services, “what kind of penalty … would be ethically and morally acceptable?” The question wasn’t “How do we account for unhealthy behavior,” but what punishment would be sufficient either to change that behavior or at least to save money by denying these people health care.
When political and economic thinking became more conservative in the 1970s and 1980s, governments began to promote the idea that individuals were personally responsible for their health and should practice healthy lifestyles. A large segment of the population – mainly the educated and economically secure – welcomed these ideas. Feeling personally responsible for one’s health and practicing healthy lifestyles gives one the reassuring illusion of control. In particular, it’s a good distraction from the things that are beyond individual control, like salmonella in our peanut butter and the superbug MRSA at the gym.
Some argue that social networking, and the web in general, encourages us to merge our identities – to no longer have separate selves for home, office, leisure, and friends. As the author points out, however, “a humane society values privacy, because it allows people to cultivate different aspects of their personalities in different contexts.”
I remember a scene from The Osbournes where son Jack, recently released from drug rehab, talks about finding a few stray particles of OxyContin dust in his pocket. He immediately consumed them as if his life depended on it. The craving was overwhelming. His description made the feeling of addiction palpable.