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Musings Report 2023-18 4-29-23 World Turned Upside Down
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World Turned Upside Down
"Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours." Marcus Aurelius
The chief blessing we crave when it's no longer ours is health.
NOTE: I am not a healthcare professional, This essay is based solely on my opinions as an average individual. Nothing is intended as advice. I am reporting what I've concluded and what I'm doing, that's all. Yes, I understand people who eat healthy and are fit can still become ill. The topic here isn't diseases we don't control, it's the illnesses that we do influence that's the subject.
My primary impression of health is the world has been turned upside down, but few seem to even notice.
I'm going to wander a bit here, but please indulge me for a few minutes.
Very elderly people like my 92-year old Mom-in-law tend to watch a lot of TV, and so we have a bunch of low-quality cable channels that are part of the package we pay for so she can watch a few of her favorite channels.
I scroll through the channels occasionally not for the content (action movies, talk shows, and what I call "trash TV") but for the commercials, which reflect the culture and economy in insightful ways.
Roughly half the adverts are promoting unhealthy food or booze, and the other half are promoting medications to alleviate the maladies the unhealthy food created.
The commercials promoting unhealthy food are miniature movies communicating 1) these pleasures are available to everyone in our multicultural society and 2) these pleasures are the highest peaks of pleasure; you will be unable to control your joy once you take the first bite.
Both of these messages are basically true.
We're all homo sapiens sapiens, and so we've been naturally selected over millions of years as primates, and the past 200,000 years as humans, to crave sweetness, fat and salt. These are scarce in the vast majority of natural foods available to us and so these activate our brain's pleasure centers much like a powerful drug. In effect, they hijack our brains' pleasure centers.
It's difficult to get enough of these three "drugs" in the natural world to sicken ourselves. Much of the game we could bring down as hunters had limited body fat due to being on the move all the time. A few humans enjoyed fatty game but this was not the planetary norm.
As for plant-based fat, consider a coconut, the source of coconut oil. I open and use coconuts regularly, as we have five coconut palms. We grate it or slice it into chips. It's impossible to extract any useful quantity of oil from coconut meat without tools / technology, and it's hard to eat more than a few handfuls because it's rich and you quickly feel full.
As the book Eat Like a Human explains, as primates, our bodies signal what nutrients they need via what we feel especially hungry for. We've all experienced this at various times: we find ourselves craving meat, fruit, vegetables, nuts, etc.
This mechanism makes perfect sense when viewed through the lens of natural selection: individuals who acquire this signaling mechanism will be healthier than those who are unable to correct nutritional deficiencies and so this trait will spread through the species.
This essay explains the key concepts: The Modern Stone Age Diet.
Another book that lays out the general principles of a healthy diet and lifestyle is The Blue Zones.
All organisms have been selected to maintain equilibrium in their core biological functions. Our bodies maintain a balance of salt and water, for example, and when we get so dehydrated that the body can no longer maintain equilibrium, we get whoozy, pass out and eventually die. Another example is the pancreas adjusts its output and release of insulin in response to signals from the digestive system about the fat and sugar content of the food just consumed.
All these mechanisms are automatic and hidden from us. By and large, we eat what we want and continue to feel normal even when we're eating unhealthy food. Our bodies lack a mechanism to provide our minds with feedback that we're becoming unhealthy as a result of what we're eating.
The key insight here is our bodies were selected for the omnivorous, fiber-rich, varied diet of hunter-gatherers, a diet that could support the complex microbiome that is an essential mechanism of human digestion and absorption of nutrients.
As a general rule, we've focused on the intestinal tract and the enzymes released by the pancreas and liver as the key mechanisms of turning food into nutrients and chemical energy. Only recently have we come to understand the microbiome--the complex mix of gut bacteria--is as important to our health as our own organs.
The food industry seeks to maximize profits, just like all the other industries. The food industry has discovered that the way to increase market share and revenues while reducing costs (and thus maximizing profits) is to lower the quality of the ingredients, buy ingredients globally at lower prices and increase the quantities of sweeteners, fats and salt in the processed foods they produce and market.
Another key part of the profit-maximizing strategy is to exploit the fad-du-jour on food labeling: thus packaged foods are now labeled "paleo," or "gluten-free," "whole grain," etc.
The hijacking of our pleasure centers by increasing sweetness, fat and salt is of course not announced on the front of the box. To discover this, we must become forensic scientists and research the fine print of the "nutrition facts" information required on all food items.
This information is deceptive via omission, i.e. what's left out. The percentage of each ingredient is left out, so we're left to guess based on the descending order of ingredients, as the regulations require the ingredients be listed in order of their weight.
This industry-wide increase in the quantities of sweeteners, fats and salt can only be noticed if you've lived a long time. I can remember, for example, when the breakfast cereal Cheerios had no sugar. Sales fell as the sugar-bomb cereals took market share, and so now one cup (the listed "serving size") of Multi-Grain Cheerios contains 8 grams of sugar. This is a lot; the cereal tastes very sweet.
Another tool in the maximization of profit tool bag is to promote a food product as "healthy" by using words which act as markers for "healthy" such as "whole grain" and "protein." So sugary cereals are emblazoned with "whole grain" and sugary drinks are labeled "protein," for example, Abbott Labs Ensure Plus Nutrition Shake.
The first three ingredients (those that weigh the most) of Ensure Plus Nutrition Shake (8 fl. oz., i.e. one cup) are: water, maltodextrin (a high-glycemic index simple carbohydrate much like sugar) and sugar. The fourth most abundant ingredient by weight is milk protein concentrate and the fifth is a mix of vegetable oils. The one cup contains 11 grams of fat and 20 grams of sugar, including 19 grams of added sugar. The one-cup drink contains zero dietary fiber and a hefty dose of salt (210 milligrams).
It is in effect a sugar drink with some protein. Other "protein drinks" have similar profiles of ingredients. Those that claim to be "low-sugar" contain large quantities of artifical sweeteners that are banned in other countries due to their risk profile.
The net result is all these drinks are sickly-sweet, apparently on the belief that anything that isn't sickly-sweet is unpalatable. They contain empty-calorie cheap oils and salt to complete the ingredients that hijack of the brain's taste-pleasure triggers: sweetness, salt and fat.
By no stretch of the imagination is this drink a natural food or a healthy replacement for real food. The rationale given is these sugars are "easily digestible" and "boost blood sugar right away." Perhaps, but at what cost? That's never mentioned or addressed.
Special-K cereal had a reputation as a "healthy" (i.e. low sugar content) cereal. A glance at the "Nutrition Facts" label of "Special-K-Blueberry" reveals that it contains 12 grams of sugar per cup, compared to "only" 8 grams per cup of Honey Bunch of Oats and Multi-Grain Cheerios. All three have 150 calories per one-cup serving, 3 grans of protein and plenty of salt: 230 mg for "Special-K-Blueberry", 150 mg for Multi-Grain Cheerios and 190 mg for Honey Bunch of Oats.
All three cereals are extremely sweet and their nutritional value is modest (3 grams of protein and 3 grams of dietary fiber).
By way of contrast, a half-cup (dry) of oatmeal contains the same calories (150) but has more protein (5 grams), zero sodium, 1 gram of sugar (none added) and 4 grams of fiber. It's also much less expensive than the "whole grain" sugary cereals.
Simply put, the human organism was optimized by selective pressures to thrive on a varied diet of fiber-rich real food. The human genome has not changed in any meaningful fashion for the past 40,000 years. The introduction of agriculture 5,000 year ago increased our reliance on grains to the detriment of our overall health, a fact revealed by comparing teeth and bones from people who subsisted mostly on grains and those with more varied (i.e. traditional / primate) diets.
The human body has not adapted to the highly processed foods that make up the bulk of Americans' diets. Put simply, it's difficult to create metabolic disorders on a varied diet of fiber-rich real foods, while it is difficult not to generate metabolic disorders on a diet of processed foods loaded with sweeteners, fats, salt and near-zero fiber.
Our profit-maximizing food industry maximizes profits by creating processed products that hijack our taste-pleasure centers. We eat for pleasure because our bodies lack the mechanisms to signal the rise of metabolic disorders until it's too late and we've become ill.
The pharmaceutical industry is also profit-maximizing. Real foods--completely unprocessed--are not very profitable. And so the solution to metabolic disorders--completely eliminating all processed foods from one's diet and limiting what cannot be found in real foods, i.e. large quantities of fat, sugar and salt--has no commercial / corporate promoters.
Alleviating the symptoms of the many diseases created by a diet of processed foods designed to hijack our taste-pleasure centers with costly medications is highly profitable, hence the endless flow of adverts for meds on Trash TV and in the rest of the media. These meds don't reverse the damage of an unhealthy diet because that isn't possible. They can only alleviate the symptoms or lower the readings of what we measure: blood sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure, etc.
Lowering readings is not the same as restoring health.
Cooking shows are staples of both TV channels aimed at higher income audience (PBS, etc.) and Trash TV. When I glance at these programs, they inevitably start with a half-cup of butter or oil "to make it taste delicious." The health consequences of consuming these rich foods is never addressed.
The world of diet is an infinite swirl of quibbles, cults and "yes, but..." All of this can be dispensed with as noise once we understand that the human body doesn't need a highly restrictive diet to be healthy, it simply needs a wide variety of fiber-rich real foods prepared without oversized quantities of fat, sugar and salt.
My impression of the entire US healthcare sector is that the health consequences of consuming highly processed low-fiber foods loaded with sugar (or equivalent), fat and salt is only addressed as "something you might want to consider". My impression is the "remedies" offered are 1) medications which have poorly disclosed side-effects and which have not been properly tested in combination with other medications and 2) surgery.
The world has been turned upside down because it's not profitable (and might generate legal liability) to suggest that completely eliminating processed foods, fast foods and indeed, rich restaurant food in favor of a 100% real-food diet prepared at home, in combination with common-sense fitness, would reverse the majority of the lifestyle diseases plaguing those who are consuming an unhealthy diet humans are not designed to consume.
Put another way: in pre-industrial human life, we had the opportunity to gorge on fatty meats, salty foods and sweets a few times a year. Now we can eat all these for pleasure three meals a day, plus salty -sugary snacks and drinks all day.
In a way, eating for pleasure appeals to the child's mind within each of us. The adult mind that recognizes cause and effect and eventual consequences cannot compete with the brain's taste-pleasure centers. Eventually it concludes it has to go Cold Turkey and swear off all processed foods, fast foods and rich restaurant food.
This is where I am. I look at what's offered across the media as "food" and I don't see anything healthy that I want to eat. Yes, I'll treat myself to some guilty pleasure to avoid the feeling of denying myself, but it doesn't take much to fulfill the guilty pleasure.
I understand maximizing profit, standards of care, limiting liability, eating for pleasure, the power of marketing and the rest of it, but no thanks, I'm out. The cost is simply too high.
Yes, there are many diseases that are genetic in origin or that have unknown causes. But doesn't it make sense to eliminate the diseases that we know are caused by an unhealthy diet and poor fitness?
I happened to overhear a patient listing the medications he's taking to a caregiver. He rattled off eight pharmaceuticals (what language is that? Oh, it's Big Pharma) plus several injected meds. He was past middle age and large. He spoke well and was obviously well-educated. Yet here he was, dependent on 8 or 10 medications for whatever passed as "health." He must have been in pain as the only med I recognized was Oxycontin. It was not an enviable condition to be in. It was depressing and saddening, as where did the path ahead for this patient lead to?
There's no money in eating and living a lifestyle so healthy that you don't need any meds to reduce your blood sugar, cholesterol or blood pressure because they're all normal, even into advanced age.
If we distance ourselves from all this and look at it with fresh eyes, the world has been turned upside down. Instead of basing our economy and decision-making on preventing diseases created by unhealthy food, we promote unhealthy food and the costly medications to alleviate the symptoms of consuming an unhealthy diet because these maximize profits.
The only way to set the world right it is to renounce everything being presented for profit as "food" that generates ill-health. Whole wheat bread, brown rice, whole grain crackers, wild fish, etc., fine. When you cook your own food, you control how much fat, sugar and salt goes into what you eat. Once you take control of what you prepare at home, you can focus on making it delicious without resorting to loads of fat, sugar and salt.
Yes, there are "food deserts" that make it difficult for low-income residents to buy real food. But on the other hand, almost every city with "food deserts" has small ethnic markets which offer real foods at affordable prices. When we shopped in Oakland Chinatown, for example, or at Hispanic markets, I rarely saw other ethnicities shopping in these markets, all of which were on bus lines.
As for lowering the cost of food: wasting zero food lowers costs, eliminating snacks, desserts and sugary drinks reduces costs and so does being lean, as one's appetite is reduced. How often are these mentioned in articles about the high cost of real food? My impression is they are never mentioned because they imply agency .
Many cities are coming around to the benefits of promoting community gardens ("allotments" in the UK) open to anyone who wants a garden to grow their own food.
As for education--how many students receive an accurate account of human diet, health and fitness and the consequences of a food and healthcare system optimized to maximize profits?
The full weight of enormously wealthy and enormously profitable industries and corporations is pressing to keep the world upside down. It takes effort to disentangle oneself from all these forces and disown a diet whose only possible output is disease. But once we understand cause and effect, the path becomes clear and real health beckons.
The world is upside down when nurses express surprise that I don't take any meds (I'm 69 years old). I don't take any meds not because I'm being recalcitrant, I just don't need any. How did we get to a place where practically everyone is consuming meds to "stay healthy"? Isn't "health" the absence of the need to take meds? To say this is to realize the world is upside down.
It's miserable to be chronically ill. It makes sense to do everything in our power to avoid chronic illness so we don't crave what we lost--our health.
Highlights of the Blog
When We Lose Small Businesses... 4/28/23
What If the Whole Shebang Unravels? 4/26/23
America's Social Contract Is Broken 4/24/23
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Homegrown green beans with 1) shrimp, 2) a bit of lean pork and 3) gobo and carrots. Guess what the gardens are producing in abundance? Yup, green beans....
From Left Field
NOTE TO NEW READERS: This list is not comprised of articles I agree with or that I judge to be correct or of the highest quality. It is representative of the content I find interesting as reflections of the current zeitgeist. The list is intended to be perused with an open, critical, occasionally amused mind.
Many links are behind paywalls. Most paywalled sites allow a few free articles per month if you register. It's the New Normal.
The man who walked around the world: Tom Turcich on his seven-year search for the meaning of life
LLMs and Phishing (via Tom D.)
California Economy Is on Edge After Tech Layoffs and Studio Cutbacks -- what happens when capital gains from stocks and real estate dry up?
How an American couple’s dream of ex-pat Paris life became a grande nightmare -- hard not to be amazed at their naivete...
One economist went on a long whimsical journey to pay his taxes with cash and prove a point about ‘legal tender’
Retail and fast food jobs with rising pay lure older workers into roles once filled by teens.
American Ramble review: a riveting tale of the divided United States.
The Roman Empire and Ancient China: How Much Did They Know About Each Other?
The Problem With Advice From Successful Writers: They actually don’t know how to succeed.
A new survey has found that there are 13.61 million households that have a net worth of $1 million or more, not including the value of their primary residence. About 8,046,080 US households have a net worth of $2 million or more, covering about 6.25% of American households, and we found out that there are an estimated 1,456,336 households with a net worth of at least $10 million.-- top 10%, to 6%, top 1%....
These 4 free apps can help you identify every flower, plant and tree around you (via Cheryl A.)
"Tell me what you lie about and I will tell you who you are." Nassim Taleb
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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