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Infrastructure in Your Area?


Jim Naseum

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"Those findings overlap with the troubling results of a study published in November. It reported a startling rise in recent years in the death rate of white, middle-aged men in the U.S. The study’s authors attributed that increase to three main factors: substance abuse (from alcohol, prescription opioids and heroin), suicide and chronic liver disease."

https://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2015/12/us-life-expectancy-remains-unchanged-infant-mortality-declines-says-cdc

Edited by dwilawyer
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Predicting LE for health professionals is like predicting the weather 6 months out. They have way too many variables to juggle and all those variables can move a lot. 

 

My pessimism is just the "bet" I would make on all those variables. And it is based on the premise that all controls in society are still shifting from government to private influence - for the simple reason of "follow the money." Where the money goes, so goes the influence." Here's one example: Private prisons. Since government increasingly can't afford to operate prisons, the shift is toward privitization. That drastically changes the incentives involved in recidivism. Where once the object was to lower it, the profit motive now wants to RAISE it, and raise it as fast as possible. The obvious and inescapable result of privitizing prison is that only increases in prisoners will satisfy Wall Street. 

 

And so it goes with food. Every dollar increase in Kraft's yearly dividends will be represented by another inch on the waistline of consumers. That's simply the undeniable logic of a system where all the influence is privatized. Harking back to my previous post, "Governments are now charged with helping private capital run the economy." So, you look at that and can see why the people can't possibly get GMO labeling requirements from their government! An unbelievable condition of events! (Notwithstanding any argument about the health value of GMO, just simply based on people's "right to know.")

 

So, "the American human body" will continue to provide a massive profit incentive to the food industry. It's "the new frontier" everyone is always looking for. "Ok boys, we have raped all the forests, dug out all the coal, fished out all the fish, now let's dredge the good health out of 310 million human bodies." It's not one bit different than the prison incentives.

 

What can anyone possibly imagine will reverse the current trend in obesity? I see nothing whatsoever on the horizon. As we see, the younger generations are getting obese at an ever earlier age. Disaster looms.

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Predicting LE for health professionals is like predicting the weather 6 months out. They have way too many variables to juggle and all those variables can move a lot. 

 

My pessimism is just the "bet" I would make on all those variables. And it is based on the premise that all controls in society are still shifting from government to private influence - for the simple reason of "follow the money." Where the money goes, so goes the influence." Here's one example: Private prisons. Since government increasingly can't afford to operate prisons, the shift is toward privitization. That drastically changes the incentives involved in recidivism. Where once the object was to lower it, the profit motive now wants to RAISE it, and raise it as fast as possible. The obvious and inescapable result of privitizing prison is that only increases in prisoners will satisfy Wall Street. 

 

And so it goes with food. Every dollar increase in Kraft's yearly dividends will be represented by another inch on the waistline of consumers. That's simply the undeniable logic of a system where all the influence is privatized. Harking back to my previous post, "Governments are now charged with helping private capital run the economy." So, you look at that and can see why the people can't possibly get GMO labeling requirements from their government! An unbelievable condition of events! (Notwithstanding any argument about the health value of GMO, just simply based on people's "right to know.")

 

So, "the American human body" will continue to provide a massive profit incentive to the food industry. It's "the new frontier" everyone is always looking for. "Ok boys, we have raped all the forests, dug out all the coal, fished out all the fish, now let's dredge the good health out of 310 million human bodies." It's not one bit different than the prison incentives.

 

What can anyone possibly imagine will reverse the current trend in obesity? I see nothing whatsoever on the horizon. As we see, the younger generations are getting obese at an ever earlier age. Disaster looms.

Incentives are determined by the nature of the contract.  In healthcare positive outcomes now gauge reimbursement so providers are incentivized to provide better health care.  If privatized prisons are structured to punish recidivism then they too will become more rehabilitative.  As you say, they will follow the $$$ and if the $$$ punishes negative consequences then better outcomes should result.

 

And if industry rapes the forests understand that forests are inanimate, nonthinking, nonreactive entities, - as are coal mines - and to a lesser degree fish.  People on the other hand actually do think, do react and should be held responsible for their own conduct.  They are not at all equal when it comes to being a commodity.  

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Predicting LE for health professionals is like predicting the weather 6 months out. They have way too many variables to juggle and all those variables can move a lot. 

 

My pessimism is just the "bet" I would make on all those variables. And it is based on the premise that all controls in society are still shifting from government to private influence - for the simple reason of "follow the money." Where the money goes, so goes the influence." Here's one example: Private prisons. Since government increasingly can't afford to operate prisons, the shift is toward privitization. That drastically changes the incentives involved in recidivism. Where once the object was to lower it, the profit motive now wants to RAISE it, and raise it as fast as possible. The obvious and inescapable result of privitizing prison is that only increases in prisoners will satisfy Wall Street. 

 

And so it goes with food. Every dollar increase in Kraft's yearly dividends will be represented by another inch on the waistline of consumers. That's simply the undeniable logic of a system where all the influence is privatized. Harking back to my previous post, "Governments are now charged with helping private capital run the economy." So, you look at that and can see why the people can't possibly get GMO labeling requirements from their government! An unbelievable condition of events! (Notwithstanding any argument about the health value of GMO, just simply based on people's "right to know.")

 

So, "the American human body" will continue to provide a massive profit incentive to the food industry. It's "the new frontier" everyone is always looking for. "Ok boys, we have raped all the forests, dug out all the coal, fished out all the fish, now let's dredge the good health out of 310 million human bodies." It's not one bit different than the prison incentives.

 

What can anyone possibly imagine will reverse the current trend in obesity? I see nothing whatsoever on the horizon. As we see, the younger generations are getting obese at an ever earlier age. Disaster looms.

Incentives are determined by the nature of the contract.  In healthcare positive outcomes now gauge reimbursement so providers are incentivized to provide better health care.  If privatized prisons are structured to punish recidivism then they too will become more rehabilitative.  As you say, they will follow the $$$ and if the $$$ punishes negative consequences then better outcomes should result.

 

And if industry rapes the forests understand that forests are inanimate, nonthinking, nonreactive entities, - as are coal mines - and to a lesser degree fish.  People on the other hand actually do think, do react and should be held responsible for their own conduct.  They are not at all equal when it comes to being a commodity.  

 

 

Yes. Incentives could be used positively. I see no sign of it yet. 

 

From my limited view, prisoners are simply another resource to farm for profits. In the four counties around me, they contracted out all the phones in the jails to a outfit that uses it as a means of bilking the families of prisoners. In addition to the very high per-minute fees, there are connect fees, account fees, and $8 fees to add money to the account. Families of prisoners end up paying out hundreds of dollars a year trying to stay in touch with their family member. It's raw. It's crass. The county receives a $2.5M kickback from this robbery phone company. Story here: http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2016/01/28/county-sued-over-jail-calls-accused-taking-kickbacks/79085210/

 

THAT's the kind of "resource" that private capital sees everywhere they look in this new world. 

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What can anyone possibly imagine will reverse the current trend in obesity? I see nothing whatsoever on the horizon. As we see, the younger generations are getting obese at an ever earlier age. Disaster looms.

 

A virus that kills you before you have time to become obese. 

 

A reduction in health insurance premiums for voluntary blood sugar screenings.

 

Taxing, like cigs, processed sugar, in all forms, at the wholesale/production level.

 

Taxing carbonated soft drinks beverages. 

 

Require warning labels

 

The problem is, as it was with cigs, is it is a legal product.  Having just one (of whatever, bag of chips, coke, etc.) is not going to hurt you.  In order for legal system to help, you have to show an unsafe/defective product.  Very difficult.  Not to mention, you are talking about food.

 

I don't think you can tackle it from an availability standpoint, you probably can't ban Coke for example.  You would have to go at it from a demand standpoint.  So you up the price of items that are high concentration in sugar.  You ban supersize drinks (wait, I have heard that somewhere before).

 

The issue is further complicated by a lack of consensus of what is "bad" and how much.  I have seen some well respected people say that milk, and any of it's by products is worse then anything you can eat and the only one who should be consuming it is baby cows. 

 

Milk, cheese, yogurt, cottage cheese, etc.   They argue, given a choice between a Coke and a glass of milk, or a slice of cheese, you are much better off with the Coke.

 

There are a number of ways the trend can be bucked, but it is not promising.  Even  with cigs were known to be bad, worse than sugar, worse than fat, that there was no question they would  shorten your life, we got up to 40% smokers.  Now of course there is an addiction component to cigs, but from a documentary I saw yesterday, sugar is addictive, just a lot less so than nicotine.  We dropped from 40 to 25%. 

 

There are a lot of special interests at work that it would be difficult to do anything on a national level.  I have seen moms get soda machines  removed from schools, change nutrition at schools, etc.  So we are talking generation probably.

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What can anyone possibly imagine will reverse the current trend in obesity? I see nothing whatsoever on the horizon. As we see, the younger generations are getting obese at an ever earlier age. Disaster looms.

 

A virus that kills you before you have time to become obese. 

 

A reduction in health insurance premiums for voluntary blood sugar screenings.

 

Taxing, like cigs, processed sugar, in all forms, at the wholesale/production level.

 

Taxing carbonated soft drinks beverages. 

 

Require warning labels

 

The problem is, as it was with cigs, is it is a legal product.  Having just one (of whatever, bag of chips, coke, etc.) is not going to hurt you.  In order for legal system to help, you have to show an unsafe/defective product.  Very difficult.  Not to mention, you are talking about food.

 

I don't think you can tackle it from an availability standpoint, you probably can't ban Coke for example.  You would have to go at it from a demand standpoint.  So you up the price of items that are high concentration in sugar.  You ban supersize drinks (wait, I have heard that somewhere before).

 

The issue is further complicated by a lack of consensus of what is "bad" and how much.  I have seen some well respected people say that milk, and any of it's by products is worse then anything you can eat and the only one who should be consuming it is baby cows. 

 

Milk, cheese, yogurt, cottage cheese, etc.   They argue, given a choice between a Coke and a glass of milk, or a slice of cheese, you are much better off with the Coke.

 

There are a number of ways the trend can be bucked, but it is not promising.  Even  with cigs were known to be bad, worse than sugar, worse than fat, that there was no question they would  shorten your life, we got up to 40% smokers.  Now of course there is an addiction component to cigs, but from a documentary I saw yesterday, sugar is addictive, just a lot less so than nicotine.  We dropped from 40 to 25%. 

 

There are a lot of special interests at work that it would be difficult to do anything on a national level.  I have seen moms get soda machines  removed from schools, change nutrition at schools, etc.  So we are talking generation probably.

 

 

How funny is the timing of your post! I was in the kitchen fixing my lunch (bag of peas), and tossing ideas about how how exactly the trend could be reversed, as the trend was reversed with tobacco. I was writing a post in my head to launch that discussion. I sat down with my peas, and there it is on the screen!

 

First thing I thought of was that this is a much different era than 1970. We have an extremely vocal libertarian streak in the various legislatures that didn't exist 40 years ago. I think that greatly burdens actions like taxes. Did the sugary drink tax pass in NYC? There might be one in Berkeley, but that's not very typical of any place else in America, and frankly, there was not much obesity in Berkeley anyway (by my last account people were pencil thin).

 

So rather than looking for the AGAINST proposition, maybe try a FOR proposition. Like getting a 50% discount on your health insurance for a normal BMI. 

Pay for college for any kid entering college with a normal BMI? HA HA - - man, the courts would destroy any kind of discriminatory rewards like those!

 

You can't move FoodCo, they simply are not going to volunteer an inch of ground. Even the Nutritional Pyramid is loaded with false bias created by the agra business. It's hard to make progress by simple advice when facing a delicious bowl of ice cream. 

 

Which means, it has to become a cultural taboo, and that will take many generations. And actually, it might backfire where the taboo becomes against thin people! 

 

I can predict the JEFFMATTHEWSBAND answer: Leave them alone. Who cares? They will figure it out! Which, sorta, kinda, maybe makes some sense too, if it weren't for the social cost of treating diabetes and the whole lot of conditions contained within the obesity problem. It's a tough one.

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Did you see they just completely changed the food pyramid? I think it has up to 4 cups of coffee a day is ok, which may be, but I thought that was still unsettled.

I cannot recall what else was on there, I was going to ignore it because of what a joke the one we had growing up was. The four food groups are:

The milk lobby, the cheese lobby

The Beef lobby

The Wheat growers, (breads and cereals)

and last but not least, fruits and vegetables

I am not sure what NY ended up with, I just remember all the news about NYC banning Big Gulps, or supersize soft drinks and I thought they were whacky.

I hate to keep bringing up the South, but we were raised on sun tea in CA, the brand was Sport Tea, made in Napa, doesn't require sugar, here you have "regular" and "sweet." Everywhere, you want an iced tea, the response is "regular or sweet" and in some places you get sweet if you don't specify. It is viewed as a good alternative to a softdrink, but the "sweet" here has as much sugar, or more, than a soft drink.

Edited by dwilawyer
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Actually, I guess it changed in 2015.

They are making progress:

Is caffeine okay to include in my day?

Much of the available scientific studies on caffeine focuses on coffee intake, thus the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines provides guidance that centers around coffee. According to the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines, moderate coffee consumption — up to three to five 8-oz cups/day or providing up to 400 mg/day of caffeine — can be incorporated into healthy eating styles since it is not associated with an increased risk of major chronic diseases (e.g., cancer) or premature death, especially from cardiovascular disease.

However, the Dietary Guidelines notes that people who currently do not consume caffeinated coffee or other caffeinated beverages are not encouraged to start. The Dietary Guidelines also includes an important note that some coffee or other caffeinated beverages may include calories from added sugars and/or saturated fat (such as cream, whole or 2% milk, and creamer), both of which should be limited.

- See more at: http://www.choosemyplate.gov/2015-2020-dietary-guidelines-answers-your-questions#sthash.DmdRmiCh.dpuf

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Well again, as you well know, these things arenthe subject of negoiation and influence.

Here is a recent article from Time about sugar, and how to reduce it.

10 Easy Ways to Stop Eating So Much Sugar

http://flip.it/5f2hc

The new guidelines are the first time ever where they recommend limiting added sugar. And the number is probabky way too high, 10% of total calories.

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Well, yes, you can do all that. But for me, I had to simplify it and make it more foolproof. Should I learn the names of 56 kinds of added sugar? Should I spend my day reading the labels on factory made garbage posing as food? Should I even attempt to outwit thousands of attorneys and engineers and marketing dudes trying to fool and scam their customers with bullshite? "No", I said to myself, that's just non productive. They will outwit me at every turn. (Look at what they have done to yogurt!)

 

I just don't really buy much foodstuffs that have "ingredients." I try to make 90% of my diet is just fresh food - an apple, not an apple pie. I'd like to get to 100% with 0% "factory made food." But, that's probably more rigid than is possible for me. A good goal though. 

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