One Million Deaths Per Year

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For example nice fruits and vegetables are expensive! same with meats and poulty.

I quit eating fish (after watching a David Suzuki program on the damage humans are doing to oceans through overfishing) then meat (it seemed the logical next step) while I was a student. Chick peas and lentils are pretty cheap compared to animal matter.

I invented a dish where I'd put tofu skins, soy sauce, miso and a few vegetables in my ramen noodle soup. That's student cheap, yet relatively nutritious. I'd also go to the "delete bin" and pick through the half-price semi-rotten vegetables at Superstore. Since it was Superstore, the quality was only marginally worse than the stuff they sold for full price

Well, al!

Are you, too, a libertarian?

Or just a guy who thinks about our common fate, watches Suzuki, and opts to act out of moral suasion out of concern for the collective? (That was very badly put, but dammit it can't be that only the libertarian has will power, eh? Say it ain't so!)                   Please.

I understand, or think I understand where you're coming from.  I agree that for a large number of people, personal choice is more responsible than other external pressures.  However, one of the things I have noticed is that having a choice is not the ultimate arbiter of healthy living...understanding that one has a choice.  That understanding comes through education, awareness, and societal/cultural supports. 

The person above who posted the bit about walking and child care was me...lol.  I stand by it though.  For an obese person, or anyone for that matter, a low intensity walk would need to be well over an hour to see any real benefits.  I know there is the 'every little bit counts' option as well, but let's be real.  20-30 mins of walking isn't going to do a whole hell of a lot.  Of course a parent with children and no childcare can choose to go for a walk, but only if s/he sees it as a viable option, especially after a full work day, meal prep for kids, etc.  Time might just not be handy for someone in that situation.  Simply looking in on their life and tallying hours in the day and pointing out that they have 'plenty of time' to exercise smacks of the sort of patriarchal attitudes that ignore lived experience.

Now don't get me wrong, I devote a good chunk of my time to exercise and healthy eating; it's actually a hobby of mine.  There's also a part of me, deep down inside that I dislike, that cringes when I see an obese person making a poor food choice.  Most times, this breeds some contempt and feelings of superiority that I really find repugnant in myself.  I just don't see how giving air to that judgement will work to alter behaviour. 

I also think that, unfortunately, the issue of obesity and health has become so intertwined with body image and self esteem that it's impossible to treat obesity the same way we might treat other behaviour that puts health at risk.  You can tell a smoker that they are killing themselves, or someone to use a condom without damaging their self-perception and self-esteem, it's different when you tell someone they're fat. 

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But the upcoming wave of adults have their eating habits set in childhood, and I'm not sure we've equipped the youth to make proper health choices.

It isn't about "being equipped," it's about thinking and having some resolve. I mentioned the change in my diet that I made as a student. I was about 30 at the time. According to your theory, my decision was Herculean in its flouting of three decades of programming and habit (My mom cried when I didn't eat the turkey she made at Christmas supper that year - is that the kind of societal and cultural support you mentioned?).

Stop making excuses or blaming others. If you want to do something and think it's valuable and important that it be done, then take responsibility for yourself and do it...just quit whining about it.

Well, fish ARE on the way out, al. And I know a couple of people who would eat the last one in the oceans. With relish (or lemon).

You win Sven.

The fish lose.

It would seem Libertarian is the best fit for Homo sapiens in the declining years of the species.

1,000,000 deaths a year Sven? That's SFA.

Just wait until you see the toll rung up by the species Homo sapiens, led by the hubristic crowd you represent.

Why the bump? I'd say George pretty much finished this thread off at post 5:

George Victor wrote:

Libertarianism is so rational, so individualistic, so disconnected from social/psychological reality, so God-like in its certainties.

What buoyant confidence! What dread power!

Gah.  A thread about how people's poor choices are really everyone's fault but their own and I missed it?

Can we have another?

You can't have an economy that treats people like cattle and expect them to be healthy or happy. The system has to have heart and soul. People are more than just one-dimensional beings driven by self-interest and greed. People are capable of so much more and probably will not be healthy or happy until all of the range of human nature and needs are accounted for. Capitalism accounts for too little of what we really are. As far as capitalists are concerned, people are ruled by the seven deadly sins, and it's a warped view of humanity.

Sven wrote:

 

Fidel wrote:

You can't have an economy that treats people like cattle and expect them to be healthy or happy.

You mean like people were treated as unique individuals under one-party Soviet or Maoist rule?

Oh, wait a second...they were treated exactly like "herds of cattle".

[IMG]http://i34.tinypic.com/11raq06.gif[/IMG]

Christ, do people not have any individual responsibility...for anything???  Is everything always "society's fault"???

The Sovs never promised people things they couldnt deliver.  What Marxists around the world did see as deliverables to hundreds of millions of desperately poor people were: health care, education, and roofs over their heads. And the rightwing counter to those efforts was to bomb schools and hospitals and terrorize whole populations with dirty war and vicious trade sanctions when the people resisted.

What communists did not promise billions of human beings was a terrible cold war era lie that everyone could all live in mini-mansions at inflated market prices, two and three gas guzzlers in the driveway, and lavish lifestyles of wanton consumption at the expense of the rest of the world and the environment.  One billion chronically hungry people today. 25 years ago, it was 500 million. Capitalism is a colossal failure.

So you're basically agreeing with Sven that communism/socialism also treated individuals like cattle?  Or are you just trying to segue into another canned speech about the two old line parties in this northern bananastan?

Snert wrote:

So you're basically agreeing with Sven that communism/socialism also treated individuals like cattle?  Or are you just trying to segue into another canned speech about the two old line parties in this northern bananastan?

A large majority of East Germans prefer Soviet communism to capitalism according to opinion polls today and similar results in the former communist countries. Seque that.

I think if corporate stooges in government were really concerned about human health, then they would do something about industrial pollution and hazardous work place environments. If they were to look at the weird birth defects in animals and fish around the Great Lakes region, alarm bells should go off in their corrupt little minds. But they refuse to even imagine that their friends in industry and banking who finance their political campaigns and personal wealth on the QT might be doing bad things to the ecosystem all living things depend on. Our corrupt stooges are not just thundering nitwits by wild chance. There is a method to their madness.

Sven wrote:

Fidel wrote:

I think if corporate stooges in government were really concerned about human health, then they would do something about industrial pollution and hazardous work place environments. If they were to look at the weird birth defects in animals and fish around the Great Lakes region, alarm bells should go off in their corrupt little minds. But they refuse to even imagine that their friends in industry and banking who finance their political campaigns and personal wealth on the QT might be doing bad things to the ecosystem all living things depend on. Our corrupt stooges are not just thundering nitwits by wild chance. There is a method to their madness.

It's "corporate stooges" which cause people to unwillingly eat too much and not exercise?!?

And I didn't realize that twinkies and obesity are the root causes of all cancers and heart disease, all respiratory ailments. And what about those Great Lakes fish with two heads, double fins, and birds born with organs outside of their bodies? Is all that from eating too many twinkies and Cornish pasties, too? What about young men having breast reduction surgery, and the abnormally high rates of cancer, MS, Mongoloid births, and respiratory diseases in North America? Why have US and Canadian feds refused to release data for industrial pollution over the years? How many nuclear power plants in corporate America will be enough, and why should Canada build them in our backyards to supply power to an economy that wastes so much and conserves so little?

Undoubtedly poor choices are at the root of many health problems. But good choices should not be made more difficult. When I was a child in the sixties, our school was within walking distance of our house. At seven in the morning our street would be filled with men swinging their lunch-pails, walking to work at the foundry. We all got our half-hour of walking without needing to exercise any will-power. Contrast that with now. Many children live in suburbs where bussing to school is the only practical solution. And nobody would be fool enough to buy a house near their workplace, even if modern zoning permitted it: security of employment doesn't extend much beyond the end of the week. And the vogue for mechanization means no-one gets their exercise at work. I knew several letter-carriers as a teen and even worked briefly as a relief mailman one Christmas. These guys were built like greyhounds. They could roll in to sort their mail in the grip of a crushing hangover and by noon, the combination of fast walking and fresh air would have put the roses back in their cheeks. And now what do I see? American mail carriers zipping about on Segways. This absence of built-in activity in our lives can lead to comic results. I have one friend who rises at five in the morning, and drives twelve miles to spend half an hour in the gym.

The fact that the two- or three-household job is now an economic necessity means that nobody is at home getting good meals ready. We eat, or bolt, in solitude, seeking out the fastest meals between the day job and the evening job. Heart attacks, stroke, and obesity are the price of our devotion to work. I remember reading a few years back of a study that showed people eat more when they are tired but need to keep going. Small wonder Americans, famously given to long hours at work, are getting fatter.

It's all well and good to wag a finger at sinners, but virtue gets harder every day simply because of the way the Almighty Market is constructing our society. You can exhort people to live a healthy life and get the righteous thrill of being Jeremiah in a jogging suit. Or you can actually help them by trying to build a healthier society.

Sven wrote:

Fidel wrote:

I think if corporate stooges in government were really concerned about human health, then they would do something about industrial pollution and hazardous work place environments. If they were to look at the weird birth defects in animals and fish around the Great Lakes region, alarm bells should go off in their corrupt little minds. But they refuse to even imagine that their friends in industry and banking who finance their political campaigns and personal wealth on the QT might be doing bad things to the ecosystem all living things depend on. Our corrupt stooges are not just thundering nitwits by wild chance. There is a method to their madness.

It's "corporate stooges" which cause people to unwillingly eat too much and not exercise?!?

Deal with the point or shut the fuck up, Sven.

Sven wrote:

I am merely saying that poor lifestyle choices (little or no exercise, poor diets, overeating, smoking, drinking too much, etc.) are significant factors which adversely impact American health (and health statistics).

Yes, indeed. And you've merely said that same thing exactly twenty different times here, as if repetition would somehow lend it weight.

That's the twenty somewhat-on-topic posts (though they never address the arguments presented), as opposed to the other dozen or so posts of snide remarks and sniveling.

Put me on the libertarian side(from the egoist tradition)

This question of obesity misses the point, the problem is that people have long lost their intimate connection to food production, banning mcds is not even in the ball park of what needs to be done.

People need to discover a sense of self suffinciency again, and that is something beyond a state or some centralized system telling you what is healthy. In general modern society is sick, thats probably the root of it all.

Sven wrote:

Fidel wrote:

Many don't have the time to...

[SNIP]

It's all about choices...

According to a comprehensive StatCan analysis, a typical Canadian watches 20-25 hours of television each week.

How many 30-minute walks could people get in a week by just turning off the boob tube?

I think some of it is due to geography and secondary issues beyond peoples control. They say a teenager in Europe is more likely to go for a vigorous walk or even hike than North American kids. I'm not sure why that is, but I think a number of factors are in play. I can remember throwing a pair of skates over my hockey stick and hiking to the outdoor rink most Saturdays when growing up. And we had so much fun that before we knew it, it was dark outside. We'd sit in the shack peeling our hockey stuff off and playing I'm so hungry word games. I was often so hungry, that I claimed to be capable of eating one end out of a skunk. I can remember disliking certain vegetables then, but by the time I arrived home I ate everything and anything my old ma put in front of me. She knew I would be eating my broccholi and cabbage and even brussel sprouts, because I'd been playing hard at the rink most of the day.

That rink isn't there anymore, and it's because of several things including weather changes. But there are no municipal alternatives for  children in that neighborhood today where I grew up. There is no screaming of kids and sounds of sticks and skates on ice or pucks flying across the road anymore. The city has stop funding a number of outdoor rinks for some time now. And organized hockey in town is just too expensive for too many families. I'm seeing advertisements on TV here revealing that one in three children in Canada can't get off the sidelines, meaning their parents can't afford to enroll them in organized sports. And that's about the same rate of obesity among Canadian children.

G. Pie questioned my concern for the money supply in Canada having been fully privatized by 1991, and that it seems to G. Pie that I tend to blame everything on our debt driven monetary system. And it certainly does seem to be the case. There is more to it than just a privatized money supply. The problems are with a laissez-faire attitude renewed again in Ottawa and Queen's Parks since the 1980's. Neoliberal ideology has affected so much of our lives, and I think there should be studies done to collect national health and other vital statistics, and for the feds to produce an overall assessment of their policies of the last 30 years and make it public.

May I offer my solution. LTJ?

Lard Tunderin Jeezus wrote:

Mike Stirner wrote:

People need to discover a sense of self suffinciency again, and that is something beyond a state or some centralized system telling you what is healthy. In general modern society is sick, thats probably the root of it all.

Ok, so you're rejecting political and collectivist options. Why?

And more importantly: what's your solution, then?

Are we simply waiting for the sick society to collapse, so that übermenschen such as Sven and yourself can rule as they are destined?

I think we have to kind of pretend that government will not be providing any solutions to obesity or ill health or lack of recreational facilities for youth. And that's not hard to imagine, because it's essentially true for very many citizens. Our leave-it-to-the-market ideologues are basically abandoning large sections of the country to their own devices while cost of living soars for everyone. The best revenge on our thundering nitwits is to live as well as we can, and to vote against them every four years on the one day of protest that counts for anything. Them and their failed ideology will eventually become but footnotes in the annals of Canadian history,