Consumer Health Quotes

One of the things that baffles me (and there are quite a few) is how there can be so much lingering stigma with regards to mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder. In my opinion, living with manic depression takes a tremendous amount of balls. Not unlike a tour of Afghanistan (though the bombs and bullets, in this case, come from the inside). At times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you're living with this illness and functioning at all, it's something to be proud of, not ashamed of. They should issue medals along with the steady stream of medication.

Organic Oreos are not a health food. When Coca-Cola begins selling organic Coke, as it surely will, the company will have struck a blow for the environment perhaps, but not for our health. Most consumers automatically assume that the word "organic" is synomymous with health, but it makes no difference to your insulin metabolism if the high-fructose corn syrup in your soda is organic.

What Foods Create Blood Glucose? Blood glucose is not created just by sweets—it’s created by all foods. Proteins create glucose, fats create glucose, vegetables create glucose, fruits create glucose, fruit juices create glucose, starchy foods create glucose, and of course, sweets create glucose. So the key to losing weight is to consume less of the foods (including drinks) that create large amounts of glucose and replace them with foods and beverages that create smaller amounts of glucose and go into the bloodstream more slowly.

Here is the problem: Poor Americans consume too little healthcare, especially preventive healthcare. Other Americans—often rich Americans—consume too much healthcare, often unwisely, and sometimes to their detriment. The American healthcare system combines famine with gluttony.

Ultimately, forgiveness is usually about one thing—“This is for me, not for you.” Hatred is exhausting; forgiveness, or even just indifference, is freeing. To quote Booker T. Washington, “I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.” Belittle and distort and consume. Forgiveness seems to be at least somewhat good for your health—victims who show spontaneous forgiveness, or who have gone through forgiveness therapy (as opposed to “anger validation therapy”) show improvements in general health, cardiovascular function, and symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Chapter 14 explored how compassion readily, perhaps inevitably, contains elements of self-interest. The compassionate granting of forgiveness epitomizes this.41

The ninety-nine cent price of a fast-food hamburger simply doesn't take account of that meal's true cost--to soil, oil, public health, the public purse, etc., costs which are never charged directly to the consumer but, indirectly and invisibly, to the taxpayer (in the form of subsidies), the health care system (in the form of food-borne illnesses and obesity), and the environment (in the form of pollution), not to mention the welfare of the workers in the feedlot and the slaughterhouse and the welfare of the animals themselves.

It is not as if farming brought a great improvement in living standards either. A typical hunter-gatherer enjoyed a more varied diet and consumed more protein and calories than settled people, and took in five times as much viatmin C as the average person today.

What was to be a relatively innocuous federal government, operating from a defined enumeration of specific grants of power, has become an ever-present and unaccountable force. It is the nation’s largest creditor, debtor, lender, employer, consumer, contractor, grantor, property owner, tenant, insurer, health-care provider, and pension guarantor. Moreover, with aggrandized police powers, what it does not control directly it bans or mandates by regulation.

Why sit and stare at a box beaming messages indoctrinating us into consumer culture for hours a day when there are so many more enjoyable alternatives available?

So it is always preferable to discuss the matter of veganism in a non-judgemental way. Remember that to most people, eating flesh or dairy and using animal products such as leather, wool, and silk, is as normal as breathing air or drinking water. A person who consumes dairy or uses animal products is not necessarily or usually what a recent and unpopular American president labelled an "evil doer.

dairy intake is “one of the most consistent dietary predictors for prostate cancer in the published literature,” and those who consume the most dairy have double to quadruple the risk.

A zealous man in religion is pre-eminently a man of one thing. It is not enough to say that he is earnest, hearty, uncompromising, thorough-going, whole-hearted, fervent in spirit. He sees one thing, he cares for one thing, he lives for one thing, he is swallowed-up in one thing — and that one thing is to please God. Whether he lives — or whether he dies; whether he has health — or whether he has sickness; whether he is rich — or whether he is poor; whether he pleases man — or whether he gives offence; whether he is thought wise — or whether he is thought foolish; whether he gets blame — or whether he gets praise; whether he gets honor, or whether he gets shame — for all this the zealous man cares nothing at all. He burns for one thing — and that one thing is to please God, and to advance God's glory. If he is consumed in the very burning — he is content. He feels that, like a lamp, he is made to burn, and if consumed in burning — he has but done the work for which God appointed him. Such a one will always find a sphere for his zeal. If he cannot preach, and work, and give money — he will cry, and sigh, and pray. Yes, if he is only a pauper, on a perpetual bed of sickness — he will make the wheels of sin around him drive heavily, by continually interceding against it. If he cannot fight in the valley with Joshua — then he will do the prayer-work of Moses, Aaron, and Hur, on the hill. (Exod. 17:9-13.) If he is cut off from working himself — he will give the Lord no rest until help is raised up from another quarter, and the work is done. This is what I mean when I speak of "zeal" in religion.

We should never present flesh as somehow morally distinguishable from dairy. To the extent it is morally wrong to eat flesh, it is as morally wrong — and possibly more morally wrong — to consume dairy

God is not glorified when we keep for ourselves (no matter how thankfully) what we ought to be using to alleviate the misery of unevangelized, uneducated, unmedicated, and unfed millions. The evidence that many professing Christians have been deceived by this doctrine is how little they give and how much they own. God has prospered them. And by an almost irresistible law of consumer culture (baptized by a doctrine of health, wealth, and prosperity) they have bought bigger (and more) houses, newer (and more) cars, fancier (and more) clothes, better (and more) meat, and all manner of trinkets and gadgets and containers and devices and equipment to make life more fun. They will object: Does not the Old Testament promise that God will prosper his people? Indeed! God increases our yield, so that by giving we can prove our yield is not our god. God does not prosper a man's business so that he can move from a Ford to a Cadillac. God prospers a business so that 17,000 unreached people can be reached with the gospel. He prospers the business so that 12 percent of the world's population can move a step back from the precipice of starvation.

The phytochemicals, antioxidants, and fiber- all of the healthful components of plant foods- originate in plants, not animals. If they are present, it is because the animal ate plants. And why should we go through an animal to get the benefits of the plants themselves? To consume unnecessary, unseemly, and unhealthy substances, such as saturated fat, animal protein, lactose, and dietary cholesterol, is to negate the benefits of the fiber, phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that are prevalent and inherent in plants.

I believe depression is legitimate. But I also believe that if you don't: -exercise -eat nutritious foods -get sunlight -get enough sleep -consume positive material -surround yourself with support Then you aren't giving yourself a fighting chance.

It is eminently possible to have a market-based economy that requires no such brutality and demands no such ideological purity. A free market in consumer products can coexist with free public health care, with public schools, with a large segment of the economy -- like a national oil company -- held in state hands. It's equally possible to require corporations to pay decent wages, to respect the right of workers to form unions, and for governments to tax and redistribute wealth so that the sharp inequalities that mark the corporatist state are reduced. Markets need not be fundamentalist.

So, what is my prescription for good health? In short, it is about the multiple health benefits of consuming plant-based foods, and the largely unappreciated health dangers of consuming animal-based foods, including all types of meat, dairy and eggs.

If Ayurveda were a religion Nature would be its Goddess, and overindulgence would be the sole sin She would punish. Ayurveda is meant to allow you to enjoy the pleasures of life up to the point that such enjoyment interferes with your health. Full-time gratification is in fact bondage, because the more we consume the more we become captives of our consumption.

When it comes to your health, a time-and energy-consuming porn habit can really interfere with important self-care activities such as exercising, eating well, getting enough sleep, and even bathing and grooming. Sleep

Scientific studies and government records suggest that virtually all (upwards of 95 percent of) chickens become infected with E. coli (an indicator of fecal contamination) and between 39 and 75 percent of chickens in retail stores are still infected. Around 8 percent of birds become infected with salmonella (down from several years ago, when at least one in four birds was infected, which still occurs on some farms). Seventy to 90 percent are infected with another potentially deadly pathogen, campylobacter. Chlorine baths are commonly used to remove slime, odor, and bacteria. Of course, consumers might notice that their chickens don't taste quite right - how good could a drug-stuffed, disease-ridden, shit-contaminated animal possibly taste? - but the birds will be injected (or otherwise pumped up) with "broths" and salty solutions to give them what we have come to think of as the chicken look, smell, and taste. (A recent study by Consumer Reports found that chicken and turkey products, many labeled as natural, "ballooned with 10 to 30 percent of their weight as broth, flavoring, or water.

Fascism talks ideology, but it is really just marketing—marketing for power. It is recognizable by its need to purge, by the strategies it uses to purge, and by its terror of truly democratic agendas. It is recognizable by its determination to convert all public services to private entrepreneurship, all nonprofit organizations to profit-making ones—so that the narrow but protective chasm between governance and business disappears. It changes citizens into taxpayers—so individuals become angry at even the notion of the public good. It changes neighbors into consumers—so the measure of our value as humans is not our humanity or our compassion or our generosity but what we own. It changes parenting into panicking—so that we vote against the interests of our own children; against their health care, their education, their safety from weapons. And in effecting these changes it produces the perfect capitalist, one who is willing to kill a human being for a product (a pair of sneakers, a jacket, a car) or kill generations for control of products (oil, drugs, fruit, gold).

There are always unfavourable consequences to consuming unnatural foods.

Our society assigns us a tiny number of roles: We're producers of one thing at work, consumers of a great many things all the rest of the time, and then, once a year or so, we take on the temporary role of citizen and cast a vote. Virtually all our needs and desires we delegate to specialists of one kind or another - our meals to the food industry, our health to the medical profession, entertainment to Hollywood and the media, mental health to the therapist or the drug company, caring for nature to the environmentalist, political action to the politician, and on and on it goes. Before long it becomes hard to imagine doing much of anything for ourselves - anything, that is, except the work we do "to make a living." For everything else, we feel like we've lost the skills, or that there's someone who can do it better... it seems as though we can no longer imagine anyone but a professional or an institution or a product supplying our daily needs or solving our problems.

The idea that we need to consume more of some particular nutrient to balance another that is overconsumed is as ineffective as taking vitamin C to minimize the damage from smoking cigarettes.

Eating is an agricultural act," Wendell Berry famously wrote, by which he meant that we are not just passive consumers of food but cocreators of the systems that feed us. Depending on how we spend them, our food dollars can either go to support a food industry devoted to quantity and convenience and "value" or they can nourish a food chain organized around values--values like quality and health. Yes, shopping this way takes more money and effort, but as soon as you begin to treat that expenditure not just as shopping but also as a kind of vote--a vote for health in the largest sense--food no longer seems like the smartest place to economize.

We're a nation with an eating disorder, and we know it. The multiple maladies caused by bad eating are taking a dire toll on our health--most tragically for our kids, who are predicted to be this country's first generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. That alone is a stunning enough fact to give us pause. So is a government policy that advises us to eat more fruits and vegetables, while doling out subsidies not to fruit and vegetable farmers, but to commodity crops destined to become soda pop and cheap burgers. The Farm Bill, as of this writing, could aptly be called the Farm Kill, both for its effects on small farmers and for what it does to us, the consumers who are financing it.

Here is an all-too-brief summary of Buffett’s approach: He looks for what he calls “franchise” companies with strong consumer brands, easily understandable businesses, robust financial health, and near-monopolies in their markets, like H & R Block, Gillette, and the Washington Post Co. Buffett likes to snap up a stock when a scandal, big loss, or other bad news passes over it like a storm cloud—as when he bought Coca-Cola soon after its disastrous rollout of “New Coke” and the market crash of 1987. He also wants to see managers who set and meet realistic goals; build their businesses from within rather than through acquisition; allocate capital wisely; and do not pay themselves hundred-million-dollar jackpots of stock options. Buffett insists on steady and sustainable growth in earnings, so the company will be worth more in the future than it is today.

When viewed at the next quantum level of perspective, from which the Earth is seen as an organism and humans are seen as microorganisms, the human species looks like a menace to the planet. In fact, the human race is looking a lot like a disease -- comprised of organisms excessively multiplying, mindlessly consuming, and generating waste with little regard for the health and well-being of its host -- planet Earth.

When everything was fine And the notion of sin had vanished And the earth was ready In universal peace To consume and rejoice Without creeds and utopias, I, for unknown reasons, Surrounded by the books Of prophets and theologians, Of philosophers, poets, Searched for an answer, Scowling, grimacing, Waking up at night, muttering at dawn. What oppressed me so much Was a bit shameful. Talking of it aloud Would show neither tact nor prudence. It might even seem an outrage Against the health of mankind. . .

Driving a hybrid car could save about one ton of carbon-dioxide emissions per year but adopting a plant-based diet would save nearly one and a half tons over a comparable period." "If every American reduced chicken consumption by one meal per week, the carbon-dioxide savings would be equivalent to removing 500,000 cars form the road." In a given year, "the number of animals killed to satisfy American palates is 8.6 billion, or 29 animals per average American meat eater. The total number of animals killed on land and sea was approximately 80 billion, or 270 per American meat and fish eater - making the average number of animals consumed in one American lifetime 21,000.

I'll never tire of her warm smile or bright green eyes. She's mine, in sickness and in health, till death do us part-scratch that- even in the afterlife she's mine and I'll fight any spirity-ghost bastard that attempts to fuck this up.

Things that have happened to me that have generated more sympathy than depression Having tinnitus. Scalding my hand on an oven, and having to have my hand in a strange ointment-filled glove for a week. Accidentally setting my leg on fire. Losing a job. Breaking a toe. Being in debt. Having a river flood our nice new house, causing ten thousand pounds’ worth of damage. Bad Amazon reviews. Getting the norovirus. Having to be circumcised when I was eleven. Lower-back pain. Having a blackboard fall on me. Irritable bowel syndrome. Being a street away from a terrorist attack. Eczema. Living in Hull in January. Relationship break-ups. Working in a cabbage-packing warehouse. Working in media sales (okay, that came close). Consuming a poisoned prawn. Three-day migraines.

How did we forget these lessons from the past? How did we go from knowing that the best athletes in the ancient Greek Olympics must consume a plant-based diet to fearing that vegetarians don’t get enough protein? How did we get to a place where the healers of our society, our doctors, know little, if anything, about nutrition; where our medical institutions denigrate the subject; where using prescription drugs and going to hospitals is the third leading cause of death? How did we get to a place where advocating a plant-based diet can jeopardize a professional career, where scientists spend more time mastering nature than respecting it? How did we get to a place where the companies that profit from our sickness are the ones telling us how to be healthy; where the companies that profit from our food choices are the ones telling us what to eat; where the public’s hard-earned money is being spent by the government to boost the drug industry’s profits; and where there is more distrust than trust of our government’s policies on foods, drugs and health? How did we get to a place where Americans are so confused about what is healthy that they no longer care?

Don't rely on labels to give you the information you need. Trust only the ingredient list and your gut.

Approximately 80% of all the antibiotics consumed in the United States are used for animal production, not human health.

Why hasn’t a hip alliance emerged that’s concerned about what happens to our intellectual health, our country, and, yes, our happiness when we consume empty-calorie entertainment?

Foci development was almost entirely dependent on how much protein was consumed, regardless of how much aflatoxin was consumed!

He consumed books as if they were as necessary to his health as bread and water, but they were rarely the books he had been assigned.

She looked into the room. So many machines and wires and tubes - a reminder that the human body was an incredible miracle, its countless autonomic functions a gift when they were operating as intended, and a cumbersome nightmare to have to approximate when they were not.

social media addict? This is a very real problem—so much so that researchers from Norway developed a new instrument to measure Facebook addiction called the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale.[3] Social media has become as ubiquitous as television in our everyday lives, and this research shows that multitasking social media can be as addictive as drugs, alcohol, and chemical substance abuse. A large number of friends on social media networks may appear impressive, but according to a new report, the more social circles a person is linked to, the more likely the social media will be a source of stress.[4] It can also have a detrimental effect on consumer well-being because milkshake-multitasking interferes with clear thinking and decision-making, which lowers self-control and leads to rash, impulsive buying and poor eating decisions. Greater social media use is associated with a higher body mass index, increased binge eating, a lower credit score, and higher levels of credit card debt for consumers with many close friends in their social network—all caused by a lack of self-control.[5] We Can Become Shallow

If you are a feminist and are not a vegan, you are ignoring the exploitation of female nonhumans and the commodification of their reproductive processes, as well as the destruction of their relationship with their babies; If you are an environmentalist and not a vegan, you are ignoring the undeniable fact that animal agriculture is an ecological disaster; If you embrace nonviolence but are not a vegan, then words of nonviolence come out of your mouth as the products of torture and death go into it; If you claim to love animals but you are eating them or products made from them, or otherwise consuming them, you see loving as consistent with harming that which you claim to love. Stop trying to make excuses. There are no good ones to make. Go vegan.

Scared for health, afraid of death, bored, dissatisfied, vengeful, greedy, ignorant, and gullible—these are the qualities of the ideal consumer. Can we imagine a way of education that would turn passive consumers into active and informed critics, capable of using their own minds in their own defense?

5. Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I vow to cultivate good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming. I vow to ingest only items that preserve peace, well-being, and joy in my body, in my consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family and society. I am determined not to use alcohol or any other intoxicant or to ingest foods or other items that contain toxins, such as certain TV programs, magazines, books, films, and conversations. I am aware that to damage my body or my consciousness with these poisons is to betray my ancestors, my parents, my society, and future generations. I will work to transform violence, fear, anger, and confusion in myself and in society by practicing a diet for myself and for society. I understand that a proper diet is crucial for self-transformation and for the transformation of society.

Worship itself is made up of ordinary stuff. We use plain words. Some of the most the glorious words in Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer are, well, common and plain enough to make you weep—“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us.” We are baptized in plain water. We consume plain bread and wine. And it all is lifted up by plain people.

New Rule: Just because a country elects a smart president doesn't make it a smart country. A couple of weeks ago, I was asked on CNN if I thought Sarah Palin could get elected president, and I said I hope not, but I wouldn't put anything past this stupid country. Well, the station was flooded with emails, and the twits hit the fan. And you could tell that these people were really mad, because they wrote entirely in CAPITAL LETTERS!!! Worst of all, Bill O'Reilly refuted my contention that this is a stupid country by calling me a pinhead, which (a) proves my point, and (b) is really funny coming from a doody-face like him. Now, before I go about demonstration how, sadly, easy it is to prove the dumbness that's dragging us down, let me just say that ignorance has life-and-death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq War, seventy percent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Six years later, thirty-four percent still do. Or look at the health-care debate: At a recent town hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross-country to protest highways. This country is like a college chick after two Long Island iced teas: We can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget the town halls, and replace them with study halls. Listen to some of these stats: A majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. Twenty-four percent could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket. Not here. Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators, and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only three got their wife's name right on the first try. People bitch and moan about taxes and spending, but they have no idea what their government spends money on. The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes more twenty-four percent of our budget. It's actually less than one percent. A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen ad a third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which is an absurd sentence, because it contains the words "Bush" and "knowledge." Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll say eighteen percent of us think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks. And I haven't even brought up religion. But here's one fun fact I'll leave you with: Did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which came first. I rest my case.

She's an irritating, opinionated woman- a type Buddy can't stand. I don't think he could see her for what she is. A person deprived, for life, of any understanding or taste for the main current of poetry that flows through things, all things. She might as well be dead, and she goes on living, stopping off at the delicatessen, seeing her analyst, consuming a novel every night, putting on her girdle, plotting for Muriel's health and prosperity. I love her. I find her unimaginably brave.

You grew older today, but did you age as well? If you drank a few cups of green tea, had five servings of fruits and vegetables, exercised for at least 30 minutes at your target heart rate, took nutritional supplements optimized for your age and health situation, spent quality time with close friends and loved ones, consumed a glass of red wine, had a romantic (and sensual!) time with your spouse or significant other, and got 8 hours of quality sleep, then you probably aged very little if at all.

THE ORGANIC FOODS MYTH A few decades ago, a woman tried to sue a butter company that had printed the word 'LITE' on its product's packaging. She claimed to have gained so much weight from eating the butter, even though it was labeled as being 'LITE'. In court, the lawyer representing the butter company simply held up the container of butter and said to the judge, "My client did not lie. The container is indeed 'light in weight'. The woman lost the case. In a marketing class in college, we were assigned this case study to show us that 'puffery' is legal. This means that you can deceptively use words with double meanings to sell a product, even though they could mislead customers into thinking your words mean something different. I am using this example to touch upon the myth of organic foods. If I was a lawyer representing a company that had labeled its oranges as being organic, and a man was suing my client because he found out that the oranges were being sprayed with toxins, my defense opening statement would be very simple: "If it's not plastic or metallic, it's organic." Most products labeled as being organic are not really organic. This is the truth. You pay premium prices for products you think are grown without chemicals, but most products are. If an apple is labeled as being organic, it could mean two things. Either the apple tree itself is free from chemicals, or just the soil. One or the other, but rarely both. The truth is, the word 'organic' can mean many things, and taking a farmer to court would be difficult if you found out his fruits were indeed sprayed with pesticides. After all, all organisms on earth are scientifically labeled as being organic, unless they are made of plastic or metal. The word 'organic' comes from the word 'organism', meaning something that is, or once was, living and breathing air, water and sunlight. So, the next time you stroll through your local supermarket and see brown pears that are labeled as being organic, know that they could have been third-rate fare sourced from the last day of a weekend market, and have been re-labeled to be sold to a gullible crowd for a premium price. I have a friend who thinks that organic foods have to look beat up and deformed because the use of chemicals is what makes them look perfect and flawless. This is not true. Chemical-free foods can look perfect if grown in your backyard. If you go to jungles or forests untouched by man, you will see fruit and vegetables that look like they sprouted from trees from Heaven. So be cautious the next time you buy anything labeled as 'organic'. Unless you personally know the farmer or the company selling the products, don't trust what you read. You, me, and everything on land and sea are organic. Suzy Kassem, Truth Is Crying

There is nothing extreme about ethical veganism. What is extreme is eating decomposing flesh and animal secretions. What is extreme is that we regard some animals as members of our family while, at the same time, we stick forks into the corpses of other animals. What is extreme is thinking that it is morally acceptable to inflict suffering and death on other sentient creatures simply because we enjoy the taste of animal products or because we like the look of clothes made from animals. What is extreme is that we say that we recognize that “unnecessary” suffering and death cannot be morally justified and then we proceed to engage in exploitation on a daily basis that is completely unnecessary. What is extreme is pretending to embrace peace while we make violence, suffering, torture and death a daily part of our lives. What is extreme is that we excoriate people like Michael Vick, Mary Bale and Sarah Palin as villains while we continue to eat, use, and consume animal products. What is extreme is that we say that we care about animals and that we believe that they are members of the moral community, but we sponsor, support, encourage and promote “happy” meat/dairy labeling schemes. (see 1, 2, 3) What is extreme is not eating flesh but continuing to consume dairy when there is absolutely no rational distinction between meat and dairy (or other animal products). There is as much suffering and death in dairy, eggs, etc., as there is in meat. What is extreme is that we are consuming a diet that is causing disease and resulting in ecological disaster. What is extreme is that we encourage our children to love animals at the same time that we teach them those that they love can also be those whom they harm. We teach our children that love is consistent with commodification. That is truly extreme—and very sad. What is extreme is the fantasy that we will ever find our moral compass with respect to animals as long as they are on our plates and our tables, on our backs, and on our feet. No, ethical veganism is not extreme. But there are many other things that we do not even pay attention to that are extreme. If you are not vegan, go vegan. It’s easy; it’s better for your health and for the planet. But, most important, it’s the morally right thing to do.

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and because firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the case against a miracle is—just because it is a miracle—as complete as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined to be. Why is it more than merely probable that all men must die, that lead cannot when not supported remain suspended in the air, that fire consumes wood and is extinguished by water, unless it is that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and for things to go differently there would have to be a violation of those laws, or in other words a miracle? Nothing is counted as a miracle if it ever happens in the common course of nature. When a man who seems to be in good health suddenly dies, this isn't a miracle; because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet often been observed to happen. But a dead man’s coming to life would be a miracle, because that has never been observed in any age or country. So there must be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, because otherwise the event wouldn't count as a ‘miracle’. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, we have here a direct and full proof against the existence of any miracle, just because it’s a miracle; and such a proof can’t be destroyed or the miracle made credible except by an opposite proof that is even stronger. This clearly leads us to a general maxim that deserves of our attention: No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless it is of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact that it tries to establish. And even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the stronger one only gives us an assurance suitable to the force that remains to it after the force needed to cancel the other has been subtracted.

It's WW2 and there are wage controls in place. Instead of health care, companies decide to offer employees shoes. Having absorbed those costs, they later lobby for every company to be required to offer shoes. That calls forth regulation and monopolization of the shoe industry. Shoes are heavily subsidized. Every shoe must be approved. Producers must be domestic. They must adhere to a certain quality. They can't discriminate based on foot size or individual need. Prices rise, and some people lack shoes, so the Affordable Shoe Act forces everyone to buy into an official shoe plan or pay a fee. Here we have a perfect plan for making shoes egregiously expensive. The entire country would be consumed with the fear of being shoeless if they lose their job. The left wing calls for a single shoe provider to offer universal shoes and the right wing meekly suggests that shoe makers be permitted to sell across state lines. Meanwhile, libertarians suggest that we just forget the whole thing and let the market make and deliver shoes of every quality to anyone from anyone. Everyone screams that this is an insane and dangerous idea.

The situation is established not only to provoke defensiveness but to sidetrack the reformer into answering the wrong questions.... In this, the pattern of discourse resembles that of dinnertime conversations about feminism in the early 1970s. Questions of definition often predominate. Whereas feminists were parlaying questions which trivialized feminism such as "Are you one of those bra burners?" vegetarians must define themselves against the trivializations of "Are you one of those health nuts?" or "Are you one of those animal lovers?" While feminists encountered the response that "men need liberation too," vegetarians are greeted by the postulate that "plants have life too." Or to make the issue appear more ridiculous, the position is forwarded this way: "But what of the lettuce and tomato you are eating; they have feelings too!" The attempt to create defensiveness through trivialization is the first conversational gambit which greets threatening reforms. This pre-establishes the perimeters of discourse. One must explain that no bras were burned at the Miss America pageant, or the symbolic nature of the action of that time, or that this question fails to regard with seriousness questions such as equal pay for equal work. Similarly, a vegetarian, thinking that answering these questions will provide enlightenment, may patiently explain that if plants have life, then why not be responsible solely for the plants one eats at the table rather than for the larger quantities of plants consumed by the herbivorous animals before they become meat? In each case a more radical answer could be forwarded: "Men need first to acknowledge how they benefit from male dominance," "Can anyone really argue that the suffering of this lettuce equals that of a sentient cow who must be bled out before being butchered?" But if the feminist or vegetarian responds this way they will be put back on the defensive by the accusation that they are being aggressive. What to a vegetarian or a feminist is of political, personal, existential, and ethical importance, becomes for others only an entertainment during dinnertime.

Fitbit is a company that knows the value of Shadow Testing. Founded by Eric Friedman and James Park in September 2008, Fitbit makes a small clip-on exercise and sleep data-gathering device. The Fitbit device tracks your activity levels throughout the day and night, then automatically uploads your data to the Web, where it analyzes your health, fitness, and sleep patterns. It’s a neat concept, but creating new hardware is time-consuming, expensive, and fraught with risk, so here’s what Friedman and Park did. The same day they announced the Fitbit idea to the world, they started allowing customers to preorder a Fitbit on their Web site, based on little more than a description of what the device would do and a few renderings of what the product would look like. The billing system collected names, addresses, and verified credit card numbers, but no charges were actually processed until the product was ready to ship, which gave the company an out in case their plans fell through. Orders started rolling in, and one month later, investors had the confidence to pony up $2 million dollars to make the Fitbit a reality. A year later, the first real Fitbit was shipped to customers. That’s the power of Shadow Testing.

It’s easy to behave like nothing is wrong, even when you have a mental illness and feel like you’re going to be consumed by it. Even at my most miserable, I was good at holding down my job, cracking jokes, going out just enough so I wasn’t seen as a hermit. Many people become experts at this, even tricking themselves. I could probably have gone on like this forever, living half a life, pretending that I was OK with it. But something had broken, and I couldn’t do it anymore. I’d done it for so long, and it had become exhausting.

There, there, best to bring it all up,' she said. My memory was in shreds. Imagine a photograph cut into narrow strips then jumbled up. Everything is there, but you can't see the whole picture and even the strips have no bearing on reality. I did know I had consumed a large amount of alcohol. But I must have done something crazier than just being found drunk to have a nurse sitting by my bed. I thought it would be a good idea to say something and planned it for several seconds. 'She's all right,' I said. 'Who is?' asked the nurse. 'Alice. I'm all right now.' As I spoke I wondered if I had said something wrong. didn't sound like me. There were so many voices muttering in the background it was hard to tell.

What made this project especially remarkable is that, among the many associations that are relevant to diet and disease, so many pointed to the same finding: people who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease. Even relatively small intakes of animal-based food were associated with adverse effects. People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. These results could not be ignored. From the initial experimental animal studies on animal protein effects to this massive human study on dietary patterns, the findings proved to be consistent. The health implications of consuming either animal or plant-based nutrients were remarkably different.

Adult ducks do not require a lot of time-consuming care or specialized facilities.

The military government had decided public services should be in private hands. Health was not a right, but a consumer good to be bought and sold.

If the things we eat have been processed—manipulated, broken apart, adulterated, with most of the fiber (and nutrients) thrown away—then we end up consuming something that’s food, technically speaking, but lacks many of the health benefits that eating is supposed to bring us. We get calories—which we need to survive, of course—but little else. None of the nutrition. As Dr. Fuhrman puts it, we end up mechanically full but nutritionally starved. If we do that often enough, we will absolutely harm ourselves at the cellular level. Over time, that may bring about some chronic condition.

[Free trade agreements] are trade agreements that don't stick to trade…they colonize environmental labor, and consumer issues of grave concern (in terms of health safety, and livelihoods too) to many, many hundreds of millions of people - and they do that by subordinating consumer, environmental, and labor issues to the imperatives and the supremacy of international commerce. That is exactly the reverse of how democratic societies have progressed, because over the decades they've progressed by subordinating the profiteering priorities of companies to, say, higher environmental health standards; abolition of child labor; the right of workers to have fair worker standards…and it's this subordination of these three major categories that affect people's lives, labor, environment, the consumer, to the supremacy and domination of trade; where instead of trade getting on its knees and showing that it doesn't harm consumers - it doesn't deprive the important pharmaceuticals because of drug company monopolies, it doesn't damage the air and water and soil and food (environmentally), and it doesn't lacerate the rights of workers - no, it's just the opposite: it's workers and consumers and environments that have to kneel before this giant pedestal of commercial trade and prove that they are not, in a whole variety of ways, impeding international commerce…so this is the road to dictatorial devolution of democratic societies: because these trade agreements have the force of law, they've got enforcement teeth, and they bypass national courts, national regulatory agencies, in ways that really reflect a massive, silent, mega-corporate coup d'etat…that was pulled off in the mid-1990's.

key reason why we are chronically consuming far too much food energy is because of the wide accessibility of ultra-processed, industrially manufactured foods, which impair our body’s self-regulatory satiety mechanisms and directly trigger hunger and cravings. These ultra-processed industrial foods are chemically engineered to be addictive and make up nearly 70 percent of calories that people in the United States consume today.

Consumption is not bad, but when done at excessive proportions it turns out to be not just bad, but downright deadly for the self as well as the society, as the society itself is a collective functional expression of many selves.

The average person walks into their doctor's office ready to accept whatever is said and handed to them. Without taking time to research or gain more insight, they accept pills and treatment without looking into other options. Our nation overeats. We put toxic fake food into our bodies, but wonder why we're sick. We continue a vicious cycle of consuming the wrong foods and drinks along with a stressful lifestyle, yet question why cancer is so rampant. Most of our society live in fear and believe they have no control. My positive message is that we do have control. We need to take back ownership of our bodies and minds. Don't blindly fill prescriptions without first checking into potential side effects, adverse reactions, and long-term damage to your body and mind. Be conscious of what you are consuming. Be informed. Take the initiative to gain more knowledge. Understand your options so you may be in a better position to make an informed choice.

When consumers tried to improve their health by shifting to skim milk, Congress set up a scheme for the powerful dairy industry through which it has quietly turned all that unwanted, surplus fat into huge sales of cheese—not cheese to be eaten before or after dinner as a delicacy, but cheese that is slipped into our food as an alluring but unnecessary extra ingredient. The toll, thirty years later: The average American now consumes as much as thirty-three pounds of cheese a year.

In 2015, the cancer agency of the World Health Organization (WHO) declared glyphosate to be a “probable human carcinogen.”22 As a result, the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and the Feed the World Project (now the Detox Project) teamed up to offer the public the opportunity to have their urine tested for glyphosate.

More than thirty studies have shown the protective effect of tomato consumption on prostate cancer.17 The Harvard Health Professionals Follow-Up Study examined 46,719 men for lycopene intake and found that consuming two to three cups of tomato sauce per week is associated with a 30 percent decreased risk of prostate cancer, which is consistent with the antiangiogenic effect of lycopene on cancer.18 In the men who did develop prostate cancer, those who ate more tomato sauce were found to have less angiogenic and less aggressive cancers.19 More than one thousand cultivars of tomatoes exist, and the amount of lycopene in each varies greatly.

People keep saying someone should fix the system, the system is corrupt. What they don’t get is; they are the system. It’s just like how people hate McDonald’s and Coca Cola. People say they are evil corporations, terrorists and ruining the health of the future but then, how are these brands live and running all over the world, making billions of dollars of profit every day? People still buy it, that’s how. The majority of the world is people who know something is bad for them but keep consuming it. If it’s so bad for you, why buy it? If the system is so bad, why do they vote for it? It’s the people who need to change not the leaders.

By putting economic growth on equal footing with the preservation of human health, by promoting a need to possess and to consume that borders on the pathological, and by permitting industries to run roughshod over landscapes in order to create financial profit, the governments of industrialized nations have supported the changes that are primarily responsible for the befouled and poisonous environment that in many places has become our heritage. What resistance humanity is able to mount to the juggernaut that many call “the economy" is essentially an objection to the indifference towards human and nonhuman life that drives the juggernaut." Horizon

If we want to follow the signs of the times, we have to look at how our core economic beliefs have produced a culture that makes poverty, violence, ill health, and fragile economic systems seem inevitable. Economic systems based on competition, scarcity, and acquisitiveness have become more than a question of economics; they have become the kingdom within which we dwell. That way of thinking invades our social order, our ways of being together, and what we value. It replicates the kingdom of ancient Egypt, Pharaoh’s kingdom. It produces a consumer culture that centralizes wealth and power and leaves the rest wanting what the beneficiaries of the system have.

Instead of hunting and gathering, instead of farming and harvesting in the area where we live, we are flying God’s fruits and vegetables around the planet, not eating foods designed for our terrain and climate. We are distributing, selling and consuming “fresh foods” (or so the package says) days and weeks after they have been harvested.

Notice that a strict vegetarian diet is not necessarily the same thing as a WFPB diet. Some people become vegetarian only to replace meat with dairy foods, added oils, and refined carbohydrates, including pasta made with refined grains, sweets, and pastries. I refer to these people as “junk-food vegetarians” because they are not consuming a nutritious diet.

Appearing nude on film was not easy when I was twenty-six in Body Heat; it was even harder when I was forty-six in The Graduate, on the stage, which is more up close and personal than film. After my middle-age nude scene, though, I unexpectedly got letters from women saying, "I have not undressed in front of my husband in ten years and I'm going to tonight." Or, "I have not looked in the mirror at my body and you gave me permission." These affirmations from other women were especially touching to me because when I began The Graduate I'd just come through a period when I felt a great loss of confidence, when my rheumatoid arthritis hit me hard and I literally couldn't walk or do any of the things that I was so used to doing. It used to be that if I said to my body, "Leap across the room now," it would leap instantly. I don't know how I did it, but I did it. I hadn't realized how much my confidence was based on my physicality. On my ability to make my body do whatever I wanted it to do. I was so consumed, not just by thinking about what I could and couldn't do, but also by handling the pain, the continual, chronic pain. I didn't realize how pain colored my whole world and how depressive it was. Before I was finally able to control my RA with proper medications, I truly had thought that my attractiveness and my ability to be attractive to men was gone, was lost. So for me to come back and do The Graduate was an affirmation to myself. I had my body back. I was back.

In my time in Washington, no battle has consumed more energy than stopping Obamacare. On the evening of September 24, 2013, it began with a prayer. In my tiny “hideaway” office wedged into a dome in the Capitol Building, Senator Mike Lee and I bowed our heads, read from the Book of Psalms, and asked for the Lord’s guidance. I then walked to the floor of the U.S. Senate and announced, “I intend to speak in support of defunding Obamacare until I am no longer able to stand.”* I opened by noting that “all across this country, Americans are suffering because of Obamacare.” And yet politicians in Washington were not listening to the concerns of their constituents. They weren’t hearing the people with jobs lost or the people forced into part-time work. They had no answers for the people losing their health insurance, or the people who are struggling. With good reason, men and women across America believe that politicians get elected, go to Washington, and stop listening to them. This is the most common thing you hear from the man on the street, from Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and Libertarians: You’re not listening to me.

Giving up animal fats has also meant shifting over to vegetable oils, and over the past century the share of these oils has grown from zero to almost 8 percent of all calories consumed by Americans, by far the biggest change in our eating patterns during that time. In this period, the health of America has become strikingly worse. When the low-fat, low-cholesterol diet was first officially recommended to the public by the American Heart Association (AHA) in 1961, roughly one in seven adult Americans was obese. Forty years later, that number was one in three. (It’s heartbreaking to realize that the federal government’s “Healthy People” goal for 2010, a project begun in the mid-1990s, for instance, was simply to return the public back to levels of obesity seen in 1960, and even that goal was unreachable.)

How contaminated are U.S. pork products? Consumer Reports magazine tested nearly two hundred samples from cities across the country and found that more than two-thirds of the pork was contaminated with Yersinia.129 This may be because of the intensification and overcrowding that characterizes most of today’s industrial pig operations.130 As noted in an article in National Hog Farmer entitled “Crowding Pigs Pays,” pork producers can maximize their profits by confining each pig to a six-square-foot space. This basically means cramming a two-hundred-pound animal into an area equivalent to about two feet by three feet. The authors acknowledged that overcrowding presents problems, including inadequate ventilation and increased health risks, but they concluded that sometimes, “crowding pigs a little tighter will make you more money.”131

That night Berkman fell asleep in the bosom of the industrial leviathan. “Its torch of liberty is a furnace fire,” he said, “consuming, destroying, devastating: a countrywide furnace, in which the bones and marrow of the producers, their limbs and bodies, their health and blood, are cast into Bessemer steel, rolled into armor place, and converted into engines of murder to be consecrated to Mammon his high priests, the Carnegies, the Fricks.

But the story of BPA is not just about gender: it’s also about class. Or at least it’s about gendered class. Fearing a major consumer boycott, most baby-bottle manufacturers voluntarily removed BPA from their products, and while the official US line on BPA is that it is not toxic, the EU and Canada are on their way to banning its use altogether. But the legislation that we have exclusively concerns consumers: no regulatory standard has ever been set for workplace exposure.5 ‘It was ironic to me,’ says occupational health researcher Jim Brophy, ‘that all this talk about the danger for pregnant women and women who had just given birth never extended to the women who were producing these bottles. Those women whose exposures far exceeded anything that you would have in the general environment. There was no talk about the pregnant worker who is on the machine that’s producing this thing.

Prioritize whole, unprocessed, nutrient-rich, nourishing foods. Eat vegetables, grass-fed and pastured meats and eggs, wild-caught seafood, and some fruit, nuts, and seeds. Avoid foods that are likely to be more harmful than healthful. Especially when regularly consumed, certain foods can trigger inflammation, cause digestive problems, or derail our natural metabolic processes, such as grains, legumes, sugar, and processed seed and vegetable oils.

Hereditary is a myth unless it has to do with skin, eye, and hair color and appearance. No illnesses are hereditary as you will hear doctors say when one of their patients gets diagnosed with a disease. I always explain it like this, if your parents smoked around you in the house and car while you grew up and then they ended up with lung cancer, your doctor will tell you that you are likely to inherit the same disease. This explanation can also be applied to the air, water, and food that your parents provided you with when you were growing up, which a lot of times, are the same types of food and drinks as your grandparents provided to your parents when they were kids. So, as you can see, what is referred to as hereditary has more to do with the air you breathe, what you drink, and the food you consume and very little to do with hereditary. Hippocrates knew this but the American Medical Association (AMA) doesn't want you nor their doctors to know.

If you work and do pure research in this industry as long as I have – and you actually pay attention and do your homework, then this naked and raw truth stands out -> The supplement world of cancer-fighters, CAD-preventers, health-promoters, magic-water – AND/OR - muscle-builders, fat-burners and weight-loss agents – all of them – already have an over-crowded mass grave-yard of previous magic bullets that would supposedly make your life and/or body better – Yes, so promising and heavily promoted “this” era – but so dead and gone the next – leaving in their wake a trail of mass-consumer confusion – but also leaving their actual intention -> a new generation of passive consumers – those who can’t differentiate the sizzle from the steak. Or as W.C. Fields put it so long ago – “There’s a sucker born every minute.” -> There isn’t a supplement on the planet that marks the difference between ‘health or ill-health’ – or between ‘fit or fat.’ - or between ‘results and stagnation.

She was independent, and would cut anyone who implied otherwise, but acknowledged that her independence was linked to her bank account and inherited wealth: cleaners to help manage the chores that her disability made difficult and time-consuming, personal trainers to help maintain her physical health and make sure she stayed on track in physical therapy, a nutritionist to design meal plans that supposedly benefitted her, and doctors who offered the latest medications to help with her ataxia.

These multinational companies are really good at selling us fake food, produced in giant factories from a long list of already highly processed ingredients. They sell us these products because they are highly profitable, even if it means we’re consuming dangerous chemicals, additives, and toxic ingredients. And it gets worse than that. It’s intentional. Food companies have big R&D departments for this very reason—to make their food addictive.5 If it wasn’t, they’d have a much harder time staying in business.

O infinite goodness of my God! It is thus that I seem to see both myself and Thee. O Joy of the angels, how I long, when I think of this, to be wholly consumed in love for Thee! How true it is that Thou dost bear with those who cannot bear Thee to be with them! Oh, how good a Friend art Thou, my Lord! How Thou dost comfort us and suffer us and wait until our nature becomes more like Thine and meanwhile dost bear with it as it is! Thou dost remember the times when we love Thee, my Lord, and, when for a moment we repent, Thou dost forget how we offended Thee. I have seen this clearly in my own life, and I cannot conceive, my Creator, why the whole world does not strive to draw near to Thee in this intimate friendship. Those of us who are wicked, and whose nature is not like Thine, ought to draw near to Thee so that Thou mayest make them good. They should allow Thee to be with them for at least two hours each day, even though they may not be with Thee, but are perplexed, as I was, with a thousand worldly cares and thoughts. In exchange for the effort which it costs them to desire to be in such good company (for Thou knowest, Lord, that at first this is as much as they can do and sometimes they can do no more at all) Thou dost prevent the devils from assaulting them so that each day they are able to do them less harm, and Thou givest them strength to conquer. Yea, Life of all lives, Thou slayest none of those that put their trust in Thee and desire Thee for their Friend; rather dost Thou sustain their bodily life with greater health and give strength to their souls.

Their management and regulation of our lives spans the total spectrum of American experience, from their obtuse Imperial Measurement System, to their irregularity-strangled English language. From their lobbyist-ruled government bureaucracy, to their consumer-oriented religious holidays like Christmas. From their brainless professional sports jocks cast as heroes, to their anorexic supermodels warping the concept of beauty. These are the people who made sugary colas more important that water; fast food more important than health; television sitcoms more important than reading literature. They made smoking a joint in your home a crime; going out in public without your hair tinted an embarrassment; and accidentally carrying a half-filled bottle of baby formula on an airplane a terrorist act. Do you realize 85 percent of Americans still say 'God bless you' after someone sneezes? And that 'In God We Trust' is on every single dollar in circulation? Or that 'One nation under God' is recited everyday in the Pledge of Allegiance by millions of impressionable kids?

Everybody knows, but many deny, that eating red meat gives one character. Strength, stamina, stick-to-it-iveness, constitution, not to mention a healthful, glowing pelt. But take a seat for a second. Listen. I eat salad. How’s that for a punch in the nuts, ladies? What’s more, as I sit typing this on a Santa Fe patio, I just now ate a bowl of oatmeal. That’s right. Because I’m a real human animal, not a television character. You see, despite the beautifully Ron Swanson–like notion that one should exist solely on beef, pork, and wild game, the reality remains that our bodies need more varied foodstuffs that facilitate health and digestive functions, but you don’t have to like it. I eat a bunch of spinach, but only to clean out my pipes to make room for more ribs, fool! I will submit to fruit and zucchini, yes, with gusto, so that my steak-eating machine will continue to masticate delicious charred flesh at an optimal running speed. By consuming kale, I am buying myself bonus years of life, during which I can eat a shit-ton more delicious meat. You don’t put oil in your truck because it tastes good. You do it so your truck can continue burning sweet gasoline and hauling a manly payload.

The rise of loneliness as a health hazard tracks with the entrenchment of values and practices that supersede any notion of "individual choices." The dynamics include reduced social programs, less available "common" spaces such as public libraries, cuts in services for the vulnerable and the elderly, stress, poverty, and the inexorable monopolization of economic life that shreds local communities. By way of illustration, let's take a familiar scenario: Walmart or some other megastore decides to open one of its facilities in a municipality. Developers are happy, politicians welcome the new investment, and consumers are pleased at finding a wide variety of goods at lower prices. But what are the social impacts? Locally owned and operated small businesses cannot compete with the marketing behemoth and must close. People lose their jobs or must find new work for lower pay. Neighborhoods are stripped of the familiar hardware store, pharmacy, butcher, baker, candlestick maker. People no longer walk to their local establishment, where they meet and greet one another and familiar merchants they have known, but drive, each isolated in their car, to a windowless, aesthetically bereft warehouse, miles away from home. They might not even leave home at all — why bother, when you can order online? No wonder international surveys show a rise in loneliness. The percentage of Americans identifying themselves as lonely has doubled from 20 to 40 percent since the 1980s, the New York Times reported in 2016. Alarmed by the health ravages, Britain has even found it necessary to appoint a minister of loneliness. Describing the systemic founts of loneliness, the U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy wrote: "Our twenty-first-century world demands that we focus on pursuits that seem to be in constant competition for our time, attention, energy, and commitment. Many of these pursuits are themselves competitions. We compete for jobs and status. We compete over possessions, money, and reputations. We strive to stay afloat and to get ahead. Meanwhile, the relationships we prize often get neglected in the chase." It is easy to miss the point that what Dr. Murthy calls "our twenty-first-century world" is no abstract entity, but the concrete manifestation of a particular socioeconomic system, a distinct worldview, and a way of life.

More food is good, but agricultural diets can provoke mismatch diseases. One of the biggest problems is a loss of nutritional variety and quality. Hunter-gatherers survive because they eat just about anything and everything that is edible. Hunter-gatherers therefore necessarily consume an extremely diverse diet, typically including many dozens of plant species in any given season.26 In contrast, farmers sacrifice quality and diversity for quantity by focusing their efforts on just a few staple crops with high yields. It is likely that more than 50 percent of the calories you consume today derived from rice, corn, wheat, or potatoes. Other crops that have sometimes served as staples for farmers include grains like millet, barley, and rye and starchy roots such as taro and cassava. Staple crops can be grown easily in massive quantities, they are rich in calories, and they can be stored for long periods of time after harvest. One of their chief drawbacks, however, is that they tend to be much less rich in vitamins and minerals than most of the wild plants consumed by hunter-gatherers and other primates.27 Farmers who rely too much on staple crops without supplemental foods such as meat, fruits, and other vegetables (especially legumes) risk nutritional deficiencies. Unlike hunter-gatherers, farmers are susceptible to diseases such as scurvy (from insufficient vitamin C), pellagra (from insufficient vitamin B3), beriberi (from insufficient vitamin B1), goiter (from insufficient iodine), and anemia (from insufficient iron).28 Relying heavily on a few crops—sometimes just one crop—has other serious disadvantages, the biggest being the potential for periodic food shortages and famine. Humans,

Consider almost any public issue. Today’s Democratic Party and its legislators, with a few notable individual exceptions, is well to the right of counterparts from the New Deal and Great Society eras. In the time of Lyndon Johnson, the average Democrat in Congress was for single-payer national health insurance. In 1971, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, for universal, public, tax-supported, high-quality day care and prekindergarten. Nixon vetoed the bill in 1972, but even Nixon was for a guaranteed annual income, and his version of health reform, “play or pay,” in which employers would have to provide good health insurance or pay a tax to purchase it, was well to the left of either Bill or Hillary Clinton’s version, or Barack Obama’s. The Medicare and Medicaid laws of 1965 were not byzantine mash-ups of public and private like Obamacare. They were public. Infrastructure investments were also public. There was no bipartisan drive for either privatization or deregulation. The late 1960s and early 1970s (with Nixon in the White House!) were the heyday of landmark health, safety, environmental, and financial regulation. To name just three out of several dozen, Nixon signed the 1970 Clean Air Act, the 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the 1973 Consumer Product Safety Act. Why did Democrats move toward the center and Republicans to the far right? Several things occurred. Money became more important in politics. The Democratic Leadership Council, formed by business-friendly and Southern Democrats after Walter Mondale’s epic 1984 defeat, believed that in order to be more competitive electorally, Democrats had to be more centrist on both economic and social issues.

in order to increase the probability against the testimony of witnesses, let us suppose, that the fact, which they affirm, instead of being only marvelous, is really miraculous; and suppose also, that the testimony considered apart and in itself, amounts to an entire proof; in that case, there is proof against proof, of which the strongest must prevail, but still with a diminution of its force in proportion to that of its antagonist. 12. A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. Why is it more than probable, that all men must die; that lead cannot, of itself, remain suspended in the air; that fire consumes wood, and is extinguished by water; unless it be, that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and there is required a violation of these laws, or in other words, a miracle to prevent them? Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of nature. It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden; because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, but by an opposite proof, which is superior.

She was too narcoleptic to speak. Or move. How long had this been going on? Was she like this yesterday? Had I missed her illness in my quest to prove to my brain that my dick wasn’t the one behind this train wreck’s wheel? I touched her forehead again. It sizzled. “Sweetheart.” “Please get out.” The words clawed past her throat. “Someone needs to take care of you.” “That someone definitely isn’t you. You made that clear these past couple days.” I said nothing. She was right. I hadn’t bothered to check on her. Perhaps I’d wished she’d check on me. In truth, she’d already gone beyond any expectations in trying to make whatever it was between us work. Meanwhile, I’d shut her down. Repeatedly. “Shortbread, let me get you some medicine and tea.” “I don’t want you to nurse me to health. Do you hear me?” She must have hated that I’d seen her like this. Weak and ill. “Call Momma and Frankie. It’s them I want by my side.” I swallowed but didn’t argue. I understood she didn’t want to feel humiliated. To be taken care of by the man who ensured she understood her insignificance to him. How did her bullshit meter not fry? How could she think I really felt nothing toward her? “First, I’ll get you medicine, tea, and water. Then I’ll call for Hettie to stay with you. Then I’ll notify your mother.” I tugged her comforter up to her chin. “No arguments.” She tried to wave me out, groaning at the slightest movement. “Whatever. Just go. I don’t want to see your face.” I gave her what she wanted, though as always, not in the way she expected. The sequence of actions didn’t proceed as promised. First, I contacted Cara to dispatch the private jet to Georgia. Then I called my mother-in-law and Franklin—separately—demanding their presence. Only then did I enter the kitchen to grab water, tea, and ibuprofen for Shortbread’s fever. Naturally, like the chronic idler he often proved to be, Oliver still sat at the island, now enjoying an extra-large slice of red velvet cake I was pretty sure was meant to be consumed by Dallas. “What are you still doing here?” I demanded, collecting the things I needed for her. He scratched his temple with the handle of his fork, brows pulled together. “You invited me here. You wanted to watch a soccer game, remember?” I did not remember. I didn’t even remember my own address right now. “Get out.” “What about the—” I snatched the plate from his fingers, admitting to myself that I’d treaded into feral grounds. “This cake wasn’t for you to eat.” “You’ve gone insane in the ten minutes you were gone.” Oliver gawked at me, wide-eyed. “What happened to you? Did Durban not get her hands on the latest Henry Plotkin book and take her anger out on you?” Shit. The Henry Plotkin book. I shoved Oliver out with a fork still clutched in his grimy fist, dialing Hettie with my free hand. She half-yawned, half-spoke. “Yes?” “Dallas is ill. You need to come here and take care of her until my in-laws arrive in about two hours.” “Oh, yeah?” Her energy returned tenfold. “And what the hell are you gonna do during this time?” “Freeze my balls off.”(Chapter 58)

We must become what we wish to teach. As an aside to parents, teachers, psychotherapists, and managers who may be reading this book to gain insight on how to support the self-esteem of others, I want to say that the place to begin is still with oneself. If one does not understand how the dynamics of self-esteem work internally—if one does not know by direct experience what lowers or raises one’s own self-esteem—one will not have that intimate understanding of the subject necessary to make an optimal contribution to others. Also, the unresolved issues within oneself set the limits of one’s effectiveness in helping others. It may be tempting, but it is self-deceiving to believe that what one says can communicate more powerfully than what one manifests in one’s person. We must become what we wish to teach. There is a story I like to tell psychotherapy students. In India, when a family encounters a problem, they are not likely to consult a psychotherapist (hardly any are available); they consult the local guru. In one village there was a wise man who had helped this family more than once. One day the father and mother came to him, bringing their nine-year-old son, and the father said, “Master, our son is a wonderful boy and we love him very much. But he has a terrible problem, a weakness for sweets that is ruining his teeth and health. We have reasoned with him, argued with him, pleaded with him, chastised him—nothing works. He goes on consuming ungodly quantities of sweets. Can you help us?” To the father’s surprise, the guru answered, “Go away and come back in two weeks.” One does not argue with a guru, so the family obeyed. Two weeks later they faced him again, and the guru said, “Good. Now we can proceed.” The father asked, “Won’t you tell us, please, why you sent us away for two weeks. You have never done that before.” And the guru answered, “I needed the two weeks because I, too, have had a lifelong weakness for sweets. Until I had confronted and resolved that issue within myself, I was not ready to deal with your son.” Not all psychotherapists like this story.

I discovered that the predominant effects produced by the drugs discussed in this book are positive. It didn’t matter whether the drug in question was cannabis, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, or psilocybin. Overwhelmingly, consumers expressed feeling more altruistic, empathetic, euphoric, focused, grateful, and tranquil. They also experienced enhanced social interactions, a greater sense of purpose and meaning, and increased sexual intimacy and performance. This constellation of findings challenged my original beliefs about drugs and their effects. I had been indoctrinated to be biased toward the negative effects of drug use. But over the past two-plus decades, I had gained a deeper, more nuanced understanding. Sure, negative effects were also possible outcomes. But they represented a minority of effects; they were predictable and readily mitigated. For example, the type of drug use described in this book should be limited to healthy, responsible adults. These individuals fulfill their responsibilities as citizens, parents, partners, and professionals. They eat healthy, exercise regularly, and get sufficient amounts of sleep. They take steps to alleviate chronic excessive stress levels. These practices ensure physical fitness and considerably reduce the likelihood of experiencing adverse effects. Equally important, I learned that people undergoing acute crises and those afflicted with psychiatric illnesses should probably avoid drug use because they may be at greater risk of experiencing unwanted effects. The vast amount of predictably favorable drug effects intrigued me, so much so that I expanded my own drug use to take advantage of the wide array of beneficial outcomes specific drugs can offer. To put this in personal terms, my position as department chairman (from 2016 to 2019) was far more detrimental to my health than my drug use ever was. Frequently, the demands of the job led to irregular exercise and poor eating and sleeping habits, which contributed to pathological stress levels. This wasn’t good for my mental or physical health. My drug use, however, has never been as disruptive or as problematic. It has, in fact, been largely protective against the negative health consequences of negotiating pathology-producing environments.

Psychologically unhealthy people are sad, depressed, incapable of defining their wants and needs, incapable to choosing an occupation they like, incapable of unconditional love, and incapable of respect or admiration. Psychologically unhealthy people are cowards in disguise and they can only fear. Once in a relationship or friendship with such people, they will make you believe they depend on you to be happy, but they can’t be happy. That is what they say to keep you for long enough, to feed on you for long enough, to consume your energy for long enough. Psychologically unhealthy people are already dead in spirit. They can only feed on emotions. Psychologically unhealthy people can only make you feel sad, lost, demotivated and incapable. But that is merely the surface, the resulting consequences of losing your energy to someone else that can merely feed on you. And psychologically people know that already. That is why they made you believe they need you. They do need you. That is how they survive. Without people like you, they die, they literally die. Their body and mind cannot survive without an external source of energy. Because truly, energy comes from the soul, and they have none. Their soul is drifting in hell.

My general philosophy regarding endurance contains four key points: 1. Build a great aerobic base. This essential physical and metabolic foundation helps accomplish several important tasks: it prevents injury and maintains a balanced physical body; it increases fat burning for improved stamina, weight loss, and sustained energy; and it improves overall health in the immune and hormonal systems, the intestines and liver, and throughout the body. 2. Eat well. Specific foods influence the developing aerobic system, especially the foods consumed in the course of a typical day. Overall, diet can significantly influence your body’s physical, chemical, and mental state of fitness and health. 3. Reduce stress. Training and competition, combined with other lifestyle factors, can be stressful and adversely affect performance, cause injuries, and even lead to poor nutrition because they can disrupt the normal digestion and absorption of nutrients. 4. Improve brain function. The brain and entire nervous system control virtually all athletic activity, and a healthier brain produces a better athlete. Improved brain function occurs from eating well, controlling stress, and through sensory stimulation, which includes proper training and optimal breathing.

I want to end here with the most common and least understood sexual problem. So ordinary is this problem, so likely are you to suffer from it, that it usually goes unnoticed. It doesn't even have a name. The writer Robertson Davies dubs it acedia. “Acedia” used to be reckoned a sin, one of the seven deadly sins, in fact. Medieval theologians translated it as “sloth,” but it is not physical torpor that makes acedia so deadly. It is the torpor of the soul, the indifference that creeps up on us as we age and grow accustomed to those we love, that poisons so much of adult life. As we fight our way out of the problems of adolescence and early adulthood, we often notice that the defeats and setbacks that troubled us in our youth are no longer as agonizing. This comes as welcome relief, but it has a cost. Whatever buffers us from the turmoil and pain of loss also buffers us from feeling joy. It is easy to mistake the indifference that creeps over us with age and experience for the growth of wisdom. Indifference is not wisdom. It is acedia. The symptom of this condition that concerns me is the waning of sexual attraction that so commonly comes between lovers once they settle down with each other. The sad fact is that the passionate attraction that so consumed them when they first courted dies down as they get to know each other well. In time, it becomes an ember; often, an ash. Within a few years, the sexual passion goes out of most marriages, and many partners start to look elsewhere to rekindle this joyous side of life. This is easy to do with a new lover, but acedia will not be denied, and the whole cycle happens again. This is the stuff of much of modern divorce, and this is the sexual disorder you are most likely to experience call it a disorder because it meets the defining criterion of a disorder: like transsexuality or S-M or impotence, it grossly impairs sexual, affectionate relations between two people who used to have them. Researchers and therapists have not seen fit to mount an attack on acedia. You will find it in no one’s nosology, on no foundation's priority list of problems to solve, in no government mental health budget. It is consigned to the innards of women's magazines and to trashy “how to keep your man” paperbacks. Acedia is looked upon with acceptance and indifference by those who might actually discover how it works and how to cure it. It is acedia I wish to single out as the most painful, the most costly, the most mysterious, and the least understood of the sexual disorders. And therefore the most urgent.

329 Leisure and Idleness. - There is an Indian savagery, a savagery peculiar to the Indian blood, in the manner in which the Americans strive after gold: and the breathless hurry of their work- the characteristic vice of the New World-already begins to infect old Europe, and makes it savage also, spreading over it a strange lack of intellectuality. One is now ashamed of repose: even long reflection almost causes remorse of conscience. Thinking is done with a stop-watch, as dining is done with the eyes fixed on the financial newspaper; we live like men who are continually " afraid of letting opportunities slip." " Better do anything whatever, than nothing "-this principle also is a noose with which all culture and all higher taste may be strangled. And just as all form obviously disappears in this hurry of workers, so the sense for form itself, the ear and the eye for the melody of movement, also disappear. The proof of this is the clumsy perspicuity which is now everywhere demanded in all positions where a person would like to be sincere with his fellows, in intercourse with friends, women, relatives, children, teachers, pupils, leaders and princes,-one has no longer either time or energy for ceremonies, for roundabout courtesies, for any esprit in conversation, or for any otium whatever. For life in the hunt for gain continually compels a person to consume his intellect, even to exhaustion, in constant dissimulation, overreaching, or forestalling: the real virtue nowadays is to do something in a shorter time than another person. And so there are only rare hours of sincere intercourse permitted: in them, however, people are tired, and would not only like " to let themselves go," but to stretch their legs out wide in awkward style. The way people write their letters nowadays is quite in keeping with the age; their style and spirit will always be the true " sign of the times." If there be still enjoyment in society and in art, it is enjoyment such as over-worked slaves provide for themselves. Oh, this moderation in "joy" of our cultured and uncultured classes! Oh, this increasing suspiciousness of all enjoyment! Work is winning over more and more the good conscience to its side: the desire for enjoyment already calls itself " need of recreation," and even begins to be ashamed of itself. " One owes it to one's health," people say, when they are caught at a picnic. Indeed, it might soon go so far that one could not yield to the desire for the vita contemplativa (that is to say, excursions with thoughts and friends), without self-contempt and a bad conscience.-Well! Formerly it was the very reverse: it was "action" that suffered from a bad conscience. A man of good family concealed his work when need compelled him to labour. The slave laboured under the weight of the feeling that he did something contemptible :- the "doing" itself was something contemptible. "Only in otium and bellum is there nobility and honour:" so rang the voice of ancient prejudice !

In the introduction, I wrote that COVID had started a war, and nobody won. Let me amend that. Technology won, specifically, the makers of disruptive new technologies and all those who benefit from them. Before the pandemic, American politicians were shaking their fists at the country’s leading tech companies. Republicans insisted that new media was as hopelessly biased against them as traditional media, and they demanded action. Democrats warned that tech giants like Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Alphabet, and Netflix had amassed too much market (and therefore political) power, that citizens had lost control of how these companies use the data they generate, and that the companies should therefore be broken into smaller, less dangerous pieces. European governments led a so-called techlash against the American tech powerhouses, which they accused of violating their customers’ privacy. COVID didn’t put an end to any of these criticisms, but it reminded policymakers and citizens alike just how indispensable digital technologies have become. Companies survived the pandemic only by allowing wired workers to log in from home. Consumers avoided possible infection by shopping online. Specially made drones helped deliver lifesaving medicine in rich and poor countries alike. Advances in telemedicine helped scientists and doctors understand and fight the virus. Artificial intelligence helped hospitals predict how many beds and ventilators they would need at any one time. A spike in Google searches using phrases that included specific symptoms helped health officials detect outbreaks in places where doctors and hospitals are few and far between. AI played a crucial role in vaccine development by absorbing all available medical literature to identify links between the genetic properties of the virus and the chemical composition and effects of existing drugs.

Beauty Junkies is the title of a recent book by New York Times writer Alex Kuczynski, “a self-confessed recovering addict of cosmetic surgery.” And, withour technological prowess, we succeed in creating fresh addictions. Some psychologists now describe a new clinical pathology — Internet sex addiction disorder. Physicians and psychologists may not be all that effective in treating addictions, but we’re expert at coming up with fresh names and categories. A recent study at Stanford University School of Medicine found that about 5.5 per cent of men and 6 per cent of women appear to be addicted shoppers. The lead researcher, Dr. Lorrin Koran, suggested that compulsive buying be recognized as a unique illness listed under its own heading in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the official psychiatric catalogue. Sufferers of this “new” disorder are afflicted by “an irresistible, intrusive and senseless impulse” to purchase objects they do not need. I don’t scoff at the harm done by shopping addiction — I’m in no position to do that — and I agree that Dr. Koran accurately describes the potential consequences of compulsive buying: “serious psychological, financial and family problems, including depression, overwhelming debt and the breakup of relationships.” But it’s clearly not a distinct entity — only another manifestation of addiction tendencies that run through our culture, and of the fundamental addiction process that varies only in its targets, not its basic characteristics. In his 2006 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush identified another item of addiction. “Here we have a serious problem,” he said. “America is addicted to oil.” Coming from a man who throughout his financial and political career has had the closest possible ties to the oil industry. The long-term ill effects of our society’s addiction, if not to oil then to the amenities and luxuries that oil makes possible, are obvious. They range from environmental destruction, climate change and the toxic effects of pollution on human health to the many wars that the need for oil, or the attachment to oil wealth, has triggered. Consider how much greater a price has been exacted by this socially sanctioned addiction than by the drug addiction for which Ralph and his peers have been declared outcasts. And oil is only one example among many: consider soul-, body-or Nature-destroying addictions to consumer goods, fast food, sugar cereals, television programs and glossy publications devoted to celebrity gossip—only a few examples of what American writer Kevin Baker calls “the growth industries that have grown out of gambling and hedonism.

Are you interested in medical marijuana but have no idea what it is? In recent years, there is a growing cry for the legalization of cannabis because of its proven health benefits. Read on as we try to look into the basics of the drug, what it really does to the human body, and how it can benefit you. Keep in mind that medical marijuana is not for everyone, so it’s important that you know how you’re going to be using it before you actually use it. What is Marijuana? Most likely, everyone has heard of marijuana and know what it is. However, many people hold misconceptions of marijuana because of inaccurate news and reporting, which has led to the drug being demonized—even when numerous studies have proven the health benefits of medical marijuana when it is used in moderation. (Even though yes, weed is also used as a recreational drug.) First and foremost, medical marijuana is a plant. The drug that we know of is made of its shredded leaves and flowers of the cannabis sativa or indica plant. Whatever its strain or form, all types of cannabis alter the mind and have some degree of psychoactivity. The plant is made of chemicals, with tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) being the most powerful and causing the biggest impact on the brain. How is Medical Marijuana Used? There are several ways medical weed is used, depending on the user’s need, convenience and preference. The most common ways are in joint form, and also using bongs and vaporizers. But with its growing legalization, we’re seeing numerous forms of cannabis consumption methods being introduced (like oils, edibles, drinks and many more). ● Joint – Loose marijuana leaves are rolled into a cigarette. Sometimes, it’s mixed with tobacco to cut the intensity of the cannabis. ● Bong – This is a large water pipe that heats weed into smoke, which the user then inhales. ● Vaporizer – Working like small bongs, this is a small gadget that makes it easier to bring and use weed practically anywhere. What’s Some Common Medical Marijuana Lingo? We hear numerous terms from people when it comes to describing medical marijuana, and this list continually grows. An example of this is the growing number of marijuana nicknames which include pot, grass, reefer, Mary Jane, dope, skunk, ganja, boom, chronic and herb among many others. Below are some common marijuana terms and what they really mean. ● Bong – Water pipe that allows for weed to be inhaled ● Blunt – Hollowed-out cigar with the tobacco replaced with weed ● Hash – Mix of medical weed and tobacco ● Joint – Rolled cigarette-like way to consume medical cannabis How Does It Feel to be High? When consumed in moderation, weed’s common effects include a heightened sense of euphoria and well-being. You’ll most likely talk and laugh more. At its height, the high creates a feeling of pensive dreaminess that wears off and becomes sleepiness. In a group setting, there are commonly feelings of exaggerated physical and emotional sensitivity as well as strong feelings of camaraderie. Medical marijuana also has a direct impact on a person’s speech patterns, which will get slower. There will be an impairment in your ability to carry out conversations. Cannabis also affects short-term memory. The usual high that one gets from cannabis can last for about two hours; when you overindulge, it can last for up to 12 hours. Is Using Medical Marijuana Safe? Medical cannabis is scientifically proven to be safer compared to alcohol or nicotine. Marijuana is slowly being legalized around the world because of its numerous health benefits, particularly among people suffering from mental illness like depression, anxiety and stress. It also has physical benefits, like helping in managing pain and the treatment of glaucoma and cancer.