Smoking: 467,000 deaths.
High blood pressure: 395,000 deaths.
Overweight-obesity: 216,000 deaths.
Inadequate physical activity and inactivity: 191,000 deaths.
High blood sugar: 190,000 deaths.
High LDL cholesterol: 113,000 deaths.
High dietary salt: 102,000 deaths.
Low dietary omega-3 fatty acids (seafood): 84,000 deaths.
High dietary trans fatty acids: 82,000 deaths.
Alcohol use: 64,000 deaths.
Low intake of fruits and vegetables: 58,000 deaths.
Low dietary poly-unsaturated fatty acids: 15,000 deaths.

What’s notable is that 11 of the twelve are diet and exercise-related. Allow me to repeat: 11 out of the 12 leading causes of premature death are related to factors entirely having to do with shit you eat or drink, and getting exercise. And the comical thing is that even this 11/12 figure under-represents the truth of the matter, which you will find for yourself by going to the mall – any mall – and taking a gander at the people around you, who may not be close to death, exactly, but who are in wretched shape and already living lives made wretched by the consequences of their idiotic choices.

In all this debate about health care, wanna know the real dirty little secret? Wanna know how to cut health care spending by eighty percent? Have people eat right and exercise. Period. So the question becomes: is this even possible? If the government were to try this approach, in the face of the corn lobby, the wheat lobby, the milk lobby, big pharma, the whole nutritional edifice based on religion more than actual peer-reviewed research -

if, in short, Obama were to declare a one-man war on the actual causes of preventable human health problems, how far could he get? Or is this something we are just doomed to live with? This isn’t a rhetorical question — I really want to know. Because I realize, truly, how large is the gap between knowing the right thing to do and doing it. My own behaviors are far from optimal, which is ridiculous in light of how the consequences are higher for me (because of chronic pain issues) than for the average person.

But if you believe — as I do — that what a government is _for_ is to provide things for its populace that an entity _smaller_ than a government cannot provide, things that require massive coordination, massive infrastructure, and a time horizon longer than what profit-driven private enterprise can manage -

if you believe that, then you believe that health, in all its guises, is _exactly_ the kind of thing the government should be involved in (vs. things that are the exact opposite of what the government should be involved in, like deciding who should be fucking who; or deciding that schoolchildren need to learn to accept Christ into their hearts instead of learning about actual science.) But that still doesn’t answer the question of how much a government could actually do to ameliorate a very bad situation if it were actually thinking in those terms.

Certainly the health care bills floating around now don’t even begin to address the issue from this angle. I wonder if it will ever be different.

From Marginal Revolution.

Unfortunately for celiac patients, the extra cost of a special diet is not reimbursed by health care plans. Nor do most policies pay for trips to a dietitian to receive nutritional guidance.

In Britain, by contrast, patients found to have celiac disease are prescribed gluten-free products. In Italy, sufferers are given a stipend to spend on gluten-free food.

Some doctors blame drug makers, in part, for the lack of awareness and the lack of support. “The drug makers have not been interested in celiac because, until very recently, there have been no medications to treat it,” said Dr. Peter Green, director of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University. “And since drug makers are responsible for so much of the education that doctors receive, the medical community is largely unaware of the disease.”

My hackles raise. I’d rather have no health care at all, like during those years when Monica and I had no health insurance, then subject myself to this crap.

(From a Times Article via Steve.)

The USDA will tell you that all eggs are created equal, just as all vegetables, whether organic or not, are equal. Somehow the output from a chicken doesn’t depend on the inputs in the USDA’s world, which is frankly a ridiculous assumption. It’s like a chicken is a little computer program that always puts out the perfect solution, regardless of how much garbage you fed into the program. Too bad it’s not reality.

I was passed two articles from Mother Earth News regarding the nutrition of truly pastured eggs versus the eggs the USDA uses for its tests. Care to see what the results were?

1/3 less cholesterol
1/4 less saturated fat
2/3 more vitamin A
2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
3 times more vitamin E
7 times more beta carotene
4 to 6 times as much vitamin D
But how exactly did they get these results?

These amazing results come from 14 flocks around the country that range freely on pasture or are housed in moveable pens that are rotated frequently to maximize access to fresh pasture and protect the birds from predators. We had six eggs from each of the 14 pastured flocks tested by an accredited laboratory in Portland, Ore.

So we have an egg that is altogether more nutritious when the animal is raised in a more natural environment and allowed to eat its natural diet. Imagine that! Too bad the USDA and the Egg Board are unwilling to admit it.

Mike and I talk a lot about reframing our mindset and I think this is another key time for that. I pointed out before that it’s not that a diet based on real foods prevents disease, rather it doesn’t cause disease like the diet of most people. A pastured egg from a chicken eating something very close to the primal version of a chicken diet is our baseline, not the conventional egg. It’s not that pastured eggs are packed with more vitamins. It’s that conventional eggs have less nutrition. It’s all about context.

From Modern Forager.