Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

I'm sure Donnie Sleazeball got a valentine from Mikey Pence earlier this week. Obviously he did. Just look at that adoring look Pence is giving his bossman. Of course, if Pence didn't give Trump a valentine and express total panting devotion, we might never see Pence again.

But this Elvis thing; what's with that? Do "people" really think Trump looks like Elvis? To me, Trump looks nothing like Elvis, but maybe to Pence he does. Pence and Trump are both so deranged and mentally damaged that anything's possible. And, I'm guessing Pence really goes for the later, fat, drugged-out Elvis, the "chubby" Elvis; the Elvis who died on his toilet and also had a fetish for gold. All that's OK with me, if that's what you're into, but imagine if Elvis could have had a twitter account. He could have died tweeting on the toilet. Your move, Donnie.

Many Trump Voters Are Obese-- But Not Jolly

We’ve been making the case here for over a year that one motivation for voting for Trump-- and to some extent for Republicans and their agenda that is part of a cult of death-- is because people hate themselves-- and their lives: their miserable jobs, their relationships, the mess they’re stuck in, the TV reality they can never realistically even aspire to… They hate their wives and their husbands and their in-laws and their kids. They hate the world and don’t care if Climate Change destroys the planet. They hate the planet too. They’ve been left behind by technology and by economic inequality and they just got even-- sending the most patently unqualified sociopath to the White House to run the country and rob it blind. Take that, you fuckers.

Trump voters are uneducated, unhealthy, filled with primitive superstitions and fears and too an incredible degree, addicted to prescription drugs that makes them even stupider than God made them. (Republicans want to drug test recipients of unemployment insurance; how about if we drug test voters instead?) And Trump voters are obese, making them even more unhealthy and unhappy and, in some cases, self-destructive. Niall McCarthy covered the American obesity epidemic for Forbes Friday. A third of American adults are obese-- suspiciously like the proportion of voters who support Señor Trumpanzee! “Back in 2000,” he reported, “no state had an obesity rate higher then 25 percent. According to the report, the adult obesity rate in 2016 exceeded 35 percent in five states, 30 percent in 25 states and 25 percent in 46 states, though the trend is starting to stabilize and actually decline in some places. Obesity levels increased in Colorado, Minnesota, Washington and West Virginia and decreased in Kansas, while remaining stable everywhere else.

The progress in stabilizing the trend of growing waistlines can be attributed to state policies improving access to healthy food and increasing physical activity. Early childhood education is particularly effective at preventing obesity early on, instead of having to reverse the problem in later life. When it comes to the states posting the highest rates of adult obesity, West Virginia leads the way, recording 37.7 percent in 2016. Mississippi comes close behind with 37.3 percent while both Alabama and Arkansas jointly round off the top three with 35.7 percent each.

With no exceptions, all the states with the worst obesity problems-- like all the states with the worse prescription drug addiction problems-- are Trump states… BIG Trump states.

And these are the states where Trump’s total exceeded 60%:

• West Virginia- 68.5%
• Wyoming- 67.40%
• Oklahoma- 65.32%
• North Dakota- 62.96%
• Kentucky- 62.52%
• Alabama- 62.08%
• South Dakota- 61.53%
• Tennessee- 60.72%
• Arkansas- 60.57%

And these are the states that Trump also won with huge margins but not over 60%-- but that made it into the obese Top 10:

• Louisiana- 58.09%
• Mississippi- 57.94%
• Indiana- 56.82%
• Texas- 52.23%

Tired Of Losing Yet?

As we pointed out this morning, the U.S. economy grew just 0.7 percent since Señor Trumpanzee's kleptocracy took over the Oval Office, the weakest showing in 3 years. And when he whined that the job-- of president-- was harder than he had ever imagined, former Mexican President Vicente Fox trolled him on twitter: "Being president ain’t easy... just go back to golfing."

But Trump did accomplish one thing that is sure to tickle the heart and soul of his base-- or at least will on Monday. The clownish new Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue will promulgate a new rule to make sure the kiddies in Trump counties as obese as their parents who voted Trump into the White House. Outsider Southern blackbelts the most obese counties in each state didn't just vote for Trump, they voted for Trump as though their next meal depended on it. I promise to come back to Perdue's "Let's Make America Fat Again" plan in a minute, but let's look at the obese counties full of Trump voters. Florida's most obese county is Calhoun, where 40.7% of the people are clinically obese. 76.6% of the voters there went for Trump. Breathitt is the most obese county in Kentucky (42.9%) and 69.6% of them voted for Trump. 41.4% of the folks in Washita Co., Oklahoma are obese and they went for Trump massively-- 83.2%. Campbell Co., Wyoming is the Trumpiest obese county in America. 33.6% over-do the eating thing and 88.0% voted for Trump. Logan County played a similar role in West Virginia, where 41.2% of the folks are obese and 80.1% voted for Trump. Thurston County, Nebraska has an obesity rate of 40,8% and 60.3% voted for Trump. Caldwell County, Missouri has an obesity rate of 39.2% and 75.0% went Trump. Similar story in Indiana's most obese county, Jackson (39.3%), where 73.3% went Trump You get the picture, right? Let me add Kansas in here. The most obese county is Cherokee County (38.7%), significantly higher than the state's overall obesity level (30.2%). Statewide, Kansas went for Trump 57.2% to 36.2% for Hillary. Cherokee County was far Trumpier-- 71.8% to 23.4%. I'm not sure if that's where Perdue is hooking up with Kansas Senator Pat Roberts Monday but the two of them will be announcing another Trump era WIN!

Republicans have long been trying to dial back the standards that became a pillar of former first lady Michelle Obama’s initiative to curb childhood obesity in the U.S.

Roberts introduced legislation with Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) last year to give schools two more years to meet new reductions on sodium, but the bill never passed.

Renewed efforts to ease the federal standards came as disappointing news to some advocates.

The American Heart Association was quick to push back. In a statement, the group’s CEO, Nancy Brown, said the current standards are already working and that 99 percent of schools are in compliance.

“Improving children’s health should be a top priority for the USDA, and serving more nutritious foods in schools is a clear-cut way to accomplish this goal,” she said.

“Rather than altering the current path forward, we hope the agency focuses more on providing technical assistance that can help schools get across the finish line, if they haven’t done so already.”

What more could anyone want from their president-- more diabetes and heart disease in their childrens' future-- coupled with less and less healthcare. That's winning in Trump's America!

Do Republican Politicians Cause Cancer In The States They Run? Oh, Absolutely

Do you ever listen to crackpots like Trump, Carson, Fiorina, Cruz... ranting and raving, just lying their asses off, and wonder who the hell is stupid enough to listen to these people-- let alone vote for them? Or wonder who's stupid enough to sit and listen to Hate Talk Radio and Fox "News" all day, not as a lark but as a source of "information?" Take a look at this chart of the dozen most obese states-- the states where people, literally, eat themselves to death.

Most of the serious diseases that kill Americans or at lest debilitate their lives substantially-- diseases like cancer and diabetes-- are correlated with obesity, but being a conservative in 2015 means you probably don't believe that, the way conservatives didn't believe that smoking tobacco correlated to disease and cancer just a few decades ago. Those states have among the highest death rates from cancer of any states in America. And they drive up the costs of health care for the rest of us. States, from worst to least bad:

• Kentucky 201.2 deaths per 100,000 residents
• Mississippi 200.0
• West Virginia 191.1
• Louisiana 190.5
• Oklahoma 189.6
• Arkansas 188.6
• Tennessee 187.9
• Alabama 184.8
• Indiana 184.2
• South Carolina 179.0
• Texas 160.6
• North Dakota 150.7

Every one of these states is what you would call a "red state." They all voted overwhelmingly for Mitt Romney against Barack Obama in 2012, Oklahoma, for example, giving Obama only 33% of its vote, West Virginia 36%. And except for West Virginia, all of these obese states have very backward Republican governors. And except for Kentucky-- which has a split legislature-- all these states have gigantic Republican majorities in both houses of their state legislatures. None are friendly towards environmental laws nor towards any kind of consumer protection legislation and almost all of them have-- for sick ideological and political reasons-- refused to expand Medicaid to help their citizens afford health care.

By way of comparison, states where normal people live don't have these large cancer deaths to add to their woes, according to the CDC. California's rate is 151.0; Colorado's is 143.7; Connecticut's is 152.0; and Minnesota's is 155.6. Now factor in these charts below of the top 5 state's in each category and see what you come up with-- aside from a certainty that all of these states will keep electing conservative Republicans who will keep enacting policies that will kill them and their children at a much higher rate than normal states do. They serve the interests of what Bernie calls "the billionaire class," especially the most viciously predatory billionaires like the Koch brothers.

That all said, I want to share an article by Sam Stebbins and Tom Frohlich from USA Today with you that explains that although the cost of healthcare in the U.S.-- covering a wide range of areas, from medical practitioner salaries and costly medical procedures, to pharmaceutical products and hospital administration-- is the highest in the world, the outcomes are certainly not the best. They start with a simple fact: "countries spending the most on health care today allocate between 8.9% and 16.4% of their total gross domestic product (GDP) to health care costs... The United States spends about $8,713 per person on health care annually, by far the most of any country in the world. By contrast, many countries, including Turkey and India, spend less than $1,000 on health care per person annually."

All of the 10 countries on the list spend at least 8.9% of their total GDP on health care. The difference, however, between the No. 1 spender, the United States, and the No. 10 spender, Canada, is quite large. Canada spent 10.2% of its GDP on health care in 2013, which amounted to $4,351 per person, while the United States spent 16.4% of its GDP that year, amounting to $8,713 per person.

According to Francesca Colombo, head of the health division at the OECD, "Higher health sector prices explain much of the difference between the U.S. and other high-spending countries." She added that the health care system in the United States is also fragmented and overly complex, with a larger share of uninsured individuals than is common among developed countries. While every country on the list has near universal health care coverage, only 88.5% of Americans are insured. However, under the Affordable Care Act, the U.S. uninsured rate is on the decline.

People living in the countries with the highest health spending also tend to have better health outcomes. For example, of the 10 countries spending the most on health care, seven have a lower infant mortality rate than the OECD average. Similarly, all but two countries on the list have a higher life expectancy than the OECD average of 80.5 years.

However, the relationship between spending and outcomes, and what causes good health is far from straightforward. A number of behavioral and lifestyle factors have a major influence on health outcomes. Colombo explained that "factors outside the health sector," including nutrition, alcohol consumption, and smoking "are important determinants of health outcomes."

Though the United States spends far more on health care than any other nation, life expectancy of the average American is only 78.8 years, lower than the OECD average and the lowest among the top spending nations. Lifestyle choices in the country may be partially to blame. Slightly more than 35% of American adults are obese, a higher share than in any of the 43 countries the OECD reviewed...

1. United States

• Health expenditure per capita: $8,713
• Expenditure as a pct. of GDP: 16.4%
• Obesity rate: 35.3%
• Life expectancy: 78.8

While higher health care spending generally leads to better health outcomes, this is famously not the case in the United States. The country, which is one of the world's wealthiest, spends by far the most on health care. The United States spends around $8,700 per capita each year on health care, more than double the OECD average and well more than second place Switzerland.

Despite the high spending, Americans are not anywhere near the world's healthiest. More than 35% of Americans are obese, one of the highest rate in the world, and exceptionally high compared with other countries spending the most on health. The United States is also the only top 10 country for health spending where the life expectancy does not exceed 80 years. Also, perhaps as a consequence of poor economic and social factors as well as the inefficient spending, adverse health outcomes such as infant mortality have increased in the United States. While in 2000, the incidence of infant mortality in the United States was lower than the OECD average, today it is higher.

2. Switzerland

• Health expenditure per capita: $6,325
• Expenditure as a pct. of GDP: 11.1%
• Obesity rate: 10.3%
• Life expectancy: 82.9

With universal health care for every citizen, Switzerland spends more on health care per capita than every country except for the United States. Higher spending in Switzerland is accompanied by better health outcomes. The national obesity rate of 10.3% is one of the lowest worldwide. A relatively low obesity rate likely contributes to the Swiss' perception of their own health. Nearly 81% of Swiss adults report being in good or very good health, a higher share than in all but six of the countries reviewed.

With more than 17 nurses for every 1,000 citizens, no country in the world is home to a larger concentration of practicing nurses than Switzerland. Switzerland also has a relatively high doctor to patient ratio with about four practicing doctors for every 1,000 residents. With a low obesity rate and plenty of health care providers, people in Switzerland can expect to live to be about 83, a higher life expectancy than in all but two of the 43 countries examined by the OECD.

3. Norway

• Health expenditure per capita: $5,862
• Expenditure as a pct. of GDP: 8.9%
• Obesity rate: 10.0%
• Life expectancy: 81.8

As in a number of other European nations, health care is universal in Norway. Through an agreement with the European Union (EU), all EU citizens are covered by the system, and undocumented immigrants are permitted free emergency treatment only. Due largely to Norway's centralized medical system, $4,981 of the $5,862 total per capita annual health spending comes from public sources-- the highest public contribution of all OECD nations. The high health care spending in Norway means more health practitioners. There are approximately four doctors and 17 nurses per 1,000 Norwegians, the fourth and second highest concentrations among countries reviewed.

As in other prosperous nations, Norway has a relatively high incidence of cancer at 318 cases per 100,000 people each year. However, this is largely due to the long life expectancy. Norway has one of the longest life expectancies in the world, at 81.8 years. Despite the high incidence, Norwegian cancer patients have relatively high survival rates.

4. Netherlands

• Health expenditure per capita: $5,131
• Expenditure as a pct. of GDP: 11.1%
• Obesity rate: 11.1%
• Life expectancy: 81.4

Residents of the Netherlands, except for conscientious objectors and members of the military, are required to purchase health care by a government mandate implemented in 2006. Only around 1% of country residents do not have insurance. The country's health care expenditure, which at $5,131 per capita trails only three other OECD nations, amounts to 11.1% of GDP, the second largest share after the United States. While residents are required to purchase health insurance, the cost is mostly covered by the government. Out-of-pocket expenses account for just 5.2% of the overall cost, the lowest such share among countries reviewed by the OECD.

Like most other prosperous nations spending the most on health care, people in the Netherlands-- even the elderly-- have a relatively positive perception of their own health. Nearly 60% of country residents 65 and over believe they are in good health, considerably higher than the OECD average proportion of 43.4%.

5. Sweden

• Health expenditure per capita: $4,904
• Expenditure as a pct. of GDP: 11.0%
• Obesity rate: 11.7%
• Life expectancy: 82.0

OECD nations spend an average of $3,453 per capita on health care annually. Sweden spends roughly $1,500 more than the average, the fifth largest sum among OECD nations. In 1970, Swedish citizens had a life expectancy of about 75 years, longer than citizens of any other country at that time. Although life expectancy in the Scandinavian country has increased since then to 82 years, Sweden now has only the ninth longest life expectancy as life expectancy globally has been on the rise over the past several decades.

Despite universal health insurance coverage, Swedes visit the doctor relatively infrequently. With an average of 2.9 physician consultations per person per year, people in Sweden see a doctor less often than people in most other countries reviewed. More than 81% of Swedish citizens report being in good or very good health, a larger share than in all but five nations examined by the OECD. This may partially explain the infrequent doctor visits in Sweden.

6. Germany

• Health expenditure per capita: $4,819
• Expenditure as a pct. of GDP: 11.0%
• Obesity rate: 23.6%
• Life expectancy: 80.9

Older people typically require more medical attention than younger people, and more than a fifth of Germany’s population is 65 and older, the largest share in the world after Japan and Italy. Germany spent roughly 11% of its total GDP on health care in 2013, or $4,819 per capita, each higher than all but a handful of other countries.

Compared to the United States, Germans are very well insured. While slightly less than 89% of Americans are insured through both public and private avenues, nearly all Germans are insured on either public or private plans. The country’s universal health care system likely encourages preventative care visits. On average, a German resident consulted a physician roughly 10 times in 2013, more than double the consultation rate in the United States.

7. Denmark

• Health expenditure per capita: $4,553
• Expenditure as a pct. of GDP: 10.4%
• Obesity rate: 14.2%
• Life expectancy: 80.4

Denmark spent 8.4% of its GDP on health care in 1980, the most of any country that year. Since then, however, health care spending has increased in all OECD nations. So while Denmark’s spending increased to about 10.4% of its GDP, it now spends the seventh most on health care worldwide, both in dollars terms and as a share of GDP. While spending in the Scandinavian nation is near historic highs now, it will likely grow in the future as the population ages. The share of the country’s population 65 and older is projected to rise from about 18.3% in 2014 to nearly 23.8% by 2050.

Though Denmark is one of many OECD countries with universal health care, no nation’s government absorbs more of the cost. The Danish government covers about 84.3% of health care costs compared to an average of 36.9% of total health care costs across OECD nations.

8. Austria

• Health expenditure per capita: $4,553
• Expenditure as a pct. of GDP: 10.1%
• Obesity rate: 12.4%
• Life expectancy: 81.2

As in most countries spending the most on health care, nearly all of Austria’s 8.5 million citizens have health insurance. Though Austrian citizens have some unhealthy habits, health outcomes in the country are generally very good. While alcohol consumption in the Central European nation is the second highest among countries examined by the OECD, only 12.4% of adults in Austria identify as obese, a lower obesity rate than in all but 10 of the 43 countries the OECD reviewed. As was the case in all of the countries spending the most on health care, health expenditure and life expectancy has increased over the past several decades. Austria spent about 7% of GDP on health care in 1980. By 2013, health care spending had increased to 10.1% of GDP. Over the decades from 1970 to 2013, life expectancy increased by over 10 years from 70 to 81, a slightly faster improvement than the OECD average change.

9. Luxembourg

• Health expenditure per capita: $4,371
• Expenditure as a pct. of GDP: N/A
• Obesity rate: 22.7%
• Life expectancy: 81.9

In the small, affluent European nation of Luxembourg, health care spending per capita is among the highest in the world at $4,371. As is nearly always the case, the lion’s share of funding comes from the public sector. Just $762 of Luxembourg’s health expenditure comes from private sources. Luxembourg is quite wealthy. With GDP per capita of $91,048, country residents are the wealthiest in the world. From 2005 through 2013, Luxembourg’s economy contracted by 2.1%, however, unlike all other countries spending the most on health care.

Strong economic conditions and high health care spending help reduce health risk factors and improve medical treatments. Due in part to these improvements, the incidence of mortality from cerebrovascular diseases such as stroke in Luxembourg was reduced by roughly two-thirds since 1990. Only two other countries reported such a strong decline in mortality from cerebrovascular diseases.

10. Canada

• Health expenditure per capita: $4,351
• Expenditure as a pct. of GDP: 10.2%
• Obesity rate: 25.8%
• Life expectancy: 81.5

Canada’s annual health expenditure of $4,351 per capita is the 10th highest in the world. As a share of GDP, health care spending has increased steadily over the past several decades from 6.6% of total GDP in 1980 to 10.2% of GDP in 2013. This compares to an OECD average spending share of 8.9% of GDP. Increased spending in Canada has come with improved health outcomes. Average life expectancy in Canada went from 73 years in 1970 to nearly 82 years in 2013. This was not an especially large improvement compared to many other countries. However, like other wealthy countries, life expectancy in Canada has been among the highest for some time.

Canada is one of a majority of OECD countries with a universal health care system. Universal insurance coverage often increases accessibility to preventative care. As a result, Canadian citizens consult a physician roughly eight times annually on average, a higher consultation rate than in all but nine other countries. Frequent doctor visits may play a role in Canadians’ perception of their own health. Though the measure is somewhat subjective, about 89% of the country’s adults consider themselves to be in good or very good health, a higher share than anywhere else in the world except for New Zealand.

What Do Politicians Eat-- Aside From Bribes From Food Conglomerates?

On his MSNBC show Friday, Chris Hayes, talked with socially conscious celebrity chef Tom Colicchio about the new food guidelines from the U.S.D.A. (above). Does anyone care what the U.S.D.A. suggests? Or, is there a way to implement their guidelines as part of social policy? As a society, for example, we eat way too much sugar. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died every year because over sugar over-consumption. Diabetes and cancer are rampant. As many as two-thirds of Americans are obese now. Social policy is based on bribes to corrupt politicians-- both parties, like Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio and DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz-- who make sure the multibillion dollar sugar empire of their benefactors are subsidized with taxpayer funds and protected from competition from cheap foreign-grown sugar. It seems like poor social policy that we spend $180 billion annually in healthcare costs related to bad diet. But the lobbyists are working this full-time and the politicians are lined up to line their pockets and fill their campaign war chests with their bribes.

Some local governments are trying soda taxes, the idea being to make the worst carrier of sugary death, more expensive. Not easy to do. Over 5 million people have watched this sugar documentary by Dr. Robert Lustig, Sugar: The Bitter Truth. How much impact will it have in changing public policy?



Yesterday, Steve Kornacki, also on MSNBC, interviewed another celebrity chef, Rocco DiSpirito, to talk about how some of our politicians eat. They focuses on two especially obese GOP fatties-- Jeb Bush and Chris Christie-- who decided they had to lose some serious poundage in order to run for president. DiSpirito: "I think you can draw an inference from how the candidates conduct themselves in their diet to how they lead. I don't think it's unfair to say that a candidate who's thinking and actually conscious about what he consumes is more likely to be conscious about other things... How well you preserve yourself is an indication of how well you might try to preserve our nation."

Courtesy of Bob Mankoff we have a cartoonists' guide through the delicate subjects of proper eating habits and weight control

"Is everything O.K., sir? We noticed
that you aren't constantly eating."

This delicious offering from Christopher Weyant comes from the slide show assembled by New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff for his latest blogpost, "Three Amazing Cartoon Diets You Won't Believe!"

by Ken

As noted in the caption above, the title of Bob Mankoff's blogpost this week is "Three Amazing Cartoon Diets You Won't Believe!" And while Bob does eventually get to the promised cartoon diets, I'm afraid you'll have to check those out for yourself -- we're not going to get to that. In fact, as Bob sets up his premise, he litters it with cartoon illustrations that you'll mostly also have to check out for yourself. I've allowed myself one two three exceptions:

Obesity, as the media informs us daily, if not hourly, is no laughing matter. The truth is, humor is not kind to any deviation from body norms . . .



. . . or one's mind. Whether you are fat or skinny, dumb or too smart for your own good, you are grist for the cartoon mill.

"I just figured out why we've
never had girlfriends."

Now, when it comes to “people of size,” I’ve been there and done that cartoon:

"Get off me, lard-ass!"

[Cartoons by Alex Gregory (more from Alex in a moment),
Matthew Diffee, and of course cartoon-master Mankoff -- Ed.]

AT THIS POINT, BOB IS JUST ABOUT TO
GET TO THE THREE CARTOON DIETS . . .

. . . which are, by the way, The Reverse-Meal Diet, The Tiny-Utensils Diet, and The Zeno's-Paradox Diet. But as I mentioned, we don't have time for that. You can make it an independent-study project. We're going to skip ahead to this disclaimer and announcement:

One final word: before embarking on any of these diets, it might be advisable to consult a physician or a psychiatrist.

While you’re awaiting that consultation, here’s a big helping of diet-related cartoons. Enjoy! In moderation, of course.

AND THIS IS WHERE WE'VE BEEN HEADING --
TOWARD ONE OF BOB'S BEST-EVER SLIDE SHOWS

In fact, the chosen cartoons are all so good that I hate to omit any of them. But life is a series of choices, and here are mine, starting with a pair by William Haefeli and P. C. Vey which invoke The Wisdom of Expert Authority Through the Ages. (I confess that the Haefeli zinger, despite its perfectly clear sense, took an extra couple of beats to register fully for me, but when it did -- ooh, that poor guy!)

"I really shouldn't have any dessert. My trainer
told me never to eat out of boredom."

"My doctor says you should be drawing
more fruits and vegetables."

There are two characteristically species-muddling contributions (no puppies, though!) from our much-loved late comrade-in-cartoons, the great Charles Barsotti:

"I start every diet with the best intentions, but it
goes to hell as soon as I sense blood in the water."

"Eat lots of carrots."

I think it's clear why Alex Gregory, who needed no caption at all -- just a map legend -- for the cartoon of his we saw above, was allowed an unusually long caption for this one:

"I started my vegetarianism for health reasons,
then it became a moral choice, and now
it's just to annoy people."

Whereas this inspiration from David Sipress also needs no caption:

#

Why Are Americans Fat And Getting Fatter? Ronald Reagan

NJ Gov. Chris Christie wants to be removed from this picture-- but without changing his eating habits

I fast every Sunday. It's a habit I picked up in the '70s when I worked at de Kosmos in Amsterdam, a meditation center. I was there for around 4 years and when I came back to the States, that Sunday fast was something I brought with me. In Amsterdam, I also used to do a 10 day fast-- just water-- once a year. I don't do that anymore, though I kind of wish I could. This weekend I decided I had eaten one too many restaurant meals lately and I had a nice salad Friday evening and began my Sunday fast a day early. I've been drinking water only. I'm feeling very energetic-- even after a two mile hilly hike-- and some laps. I have a dinner scheduled with Sheila Kuehl tomorrow or I'd let it go another day.

People keep asking me if I lose weight when I fast. I think it's different for everyone, but when I was younger I used to lose 2.5 pounds/24 hours. More recently it's closer to 3 pounds. It's not the best way to lose weight, although I heard there's a fasting fad that started in London and has arrived stateside. Oh... and a best-selling book! The authors claim 2 days of fasting a week will "limit inflammation, improve blood sugar levels and fats in circulation, as well as reduce blood pressure" and that their plan is "a cheaper, effective and less invasive method for treating obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease compared to gastric surgery and the use of drugs."

The latest diet craze that has taken Britain by storm in recent months has received a boost from a newly released study which found that intermittent fasting can help those with diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Published earlier this year, Dr. Michael Mosley’s bestseller The Fast Diet became a near instant success in the UK, developing a mass following for promising readers quick weight loss based on a ‘5:2’ principle: Five days of normal eating, followed by two days of drastic calorie restriction.

Yesterday, the U.K.'s Telegraph was celebrating the fad. Everybody's doing it, darling" and "for some it's old news-- their flat stomachs and radiant faces simply a way of life at this point... I like the idea of a bi-weekly detox, and the science behind resting the system is pretty convincing. There is increasing evidence from researchers that intermittent fasting helps repair cells which could help us avoid cancer and Alzheimer's; and I also like the connection with how humans lived for most of our history-- hunting and foraging in hunger, then feasting with the results, not constant nibbling on packaged foods without interval."

Funny, when I started this post, I hadn't even thought about this 5:2 fasting fad that a friend had mentioned to me a few weeks ago. What I really wanted to get into was a look at Douglas Kihn's post at Truth Out about the political roots of American obesity. And no, despite Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Tom Reed (R-NY) my aim wasn't to show that Republicans are greedy slobs whose ideology of selfishness can easily lead to obesity. It's an increasingly serious problem and "over a third of Americans are officially overweight and another 35.7 percent are obese, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Conventional experts blame the 'wrong food,' bad genes, lack of exercise, chemicals in food, and this or that hormone for the problem." Kihn asserts that to beat the obesity epidemic, "we have to ask why and when... we will need to go back in history and unearth its beginnings, to find out exactly when it all started. Then we can ask it why. When we do, we will discover that the obesity epidemic in America is essentially a mental health problem, whose underlying causes are economic and political" that started in 1980 when Reagan became president. "Something important," he writes, "changed between the Carter administration and the Reagan administration, something that drove American adults and children to dramatically increase their calorie intake and consequent body fat. Whatever that change was, it's still with us because American waistlines since that time have continuously grown bigger." Kihn traces it, at least in part, to Reagan's war against unions and working people, the principles behind "bean counting" that came into vogue, endless wars on one thing or another-- from drugs to Central America-- and the resultant social insecurity.

As social fear and insecurity rise, mental health declines.

Apparently, so does physical health. According to a new study from Rice University and the University Colorado at Boulder in Social Science Quarterly, despite modest gains in lifespan over the past century, the United States still trails many of the world's countries when it comes to life expectancy, and its poorest citizens live approximately five years less than more affluent people. The United States, which spends far more money on medical care than other advanced industrialized countries, has the sickest residents in every category of unwellness.

The result of all of this hysteria and whip-cracking on the backs of the American workforce is that we feel harried and harassed, with little reward to show for it. Mental health has been worsening for a long time in the United States, and this mental decline has been the culprit behind so many-- probably the majority-- of physical health problems as well. One of them, as we shall see later, is obesity.

Chinese medicine can help to make sense of most mental and physical problems in the United States and organize them into three main categories: those of chronic tension, excessive interior heat and excess weight. Together, they form a super-syndrome some would call the American Syndrome, since it seems to be a universal phenomenon.

Chronic tension is caused by worrying, and all its avatar-- anxiety, fear, guilt, remorse, dread. Excessive interior heat results from the friction caused by it hurrying and worrying, while excess weight-- which can manifest as obesity-- is the result of habitual overeating.

These three inappropriate and harmful activities-- worrying, hurrying, and overeating-- are daily choices that Americans make, and these choices are driving them crazy. Mental health in the country is going to hell in a hand basket.

...[T]he use of food and stored body fat as mood enhancers, especially among politically and economically disadvantaged groups, is widespread in obesity-plagued America.

Americans worry a lot. Many admit to worrying all the time.

Analyzing the past and planning for the future are useful activities, but worrying about them is neither helpful nor healthy. Worry causes people to tighten specific muscles in the body and keep them tight, leading to a long list of physical and mental disorders, referred to as "liver qi stagnation" in Chinese medicine.

Chronic fear, worry, anxiety, stress, insecurity, guilt, obsessive thinking and all forms of neurosis are behavioral choices. American culture, even more than Western Europe's, promotes the desire to control everything, including the uncontrollable, especially the past, the future and the actions and opinions of other people.

As American workers have lost more and more control over their worsening material existence, their fear and insecurity have risen. This fear reveals itself physically as a conscious, and in most cases unconscious, tightening or a constricting of muscles-- a continuous decrease in circulation-- as part of a fight or flight response to a perceived emergency. Literally any organ or tissue can become strangled and diseased in this manner.

A sample list of fear-based disorders in America would include colitis, Crohn's disease, urinary incontinence, sexual impotence, painful intercourse, irritated bowel syndrome, asthma, gastro-intestinal ulcers, heart attacks, growths, fibromyalgia, headaches and any disorder that responds well to the trust imparted by placebo treatments and faith healing.

While fear-based disorders do occur in other parts of the world, most international health practitioners will affirm the fact that fear-based disorders manifest at the highest levels in war zones and in the cities and towns of the United States.

The typical American scurries around like a mouse on double espresso. The daily habits of so many Americans now include fast driving and tailgating, fast walking, rapid speech, rapid continuous working without breaks, multitasking, constant productivity during waking hours that includes paid and unpaid work, working impossibly long hours, and most important, going without sleep... Keeping busy, achieving goals, earning money, competing for promotion, disparaging leisure, denigrating underachievers, and describing sleep as a waste of time have gradually become the Prime Directive since the workplace speedup of the early Reagan years.

...For at least 100,000 years, obesity gave homo sapiens an evolutionary advantage. During our long Stone Age, some of our ancestors needed to store and conserve large amounts of nutrition to survive six months of winter, when temperatures were below freezing and food was scarce or nonexistent. During these hibernation periods, strong emotions and high levels of mental and physical activity would have been counterproductive for survival. Any feelings of hunger would also have been self-defeating.

Greatly enlarged fat cells would have served other purposes as well. Fat insulates against freezing temperatures and also protects organs and blood vessels from injuries and bleeding.

This kind of survival strategy will allow primitive people to live and reproduce in very cold climates, but will not help Americans who wish to live into their 70s and beyond. Excess body fat has been proven to shorten chromosomal telomeres (not a good thing!), thus accelerating the expression of age-related disease genes, such as cancer, heart disease, stroke and dementia. This is partly why excess body fat is statistically associated with a long list of common medical conditions.

As more and more Americans have seen their standard of living sink and their stress factors increase, they have taken to the all-purpose, all-American sedative-- food-- in a big way. All of the many disorders connected with the over-consumption of food are part of a Chinese medical syndrome called spleen damp.

Adam Drewnowski, the director of the Nutrition Sciences Program at the University of Washington in Seattle, said in 2009, "Things are going to get worse. Obesity is a toxic result of a failing economic environment." Drewnowski's own research has highlighted the link between income levels and obesity.

In Seattle, he and his team found that there are five-fold differences in obesity rates depending on zip code-- low-income zip codes have a much higher proportion of overweight and obese people than high-income zips.

Studies in California suggested that a 10 percent rise in poverty translates to about a six percent increase in obesity among adults. And nine of the 10 states with the highest rates of new cases of diabetes 2-- a disease closely associated with excess body fat-- were in the US South, a region with huge pockets of poverty and glaring income disparities. Unlike all other periods in human history, today excess body fat is no longer associated with the affluent, but rather with those of lower economic status.

A team of American scientists who performed brain scans on seven overweight people found that the regions of the brain that controlled satiety of food were the same regions that light up for drug addicts after a fix. This means that the addictive payoff for eating a meal, especially for overweight people, is similar to taking a euphoria-producing drug. The larger the meal, the bigger the mental reward.

In 2009, researchers from the University of Arkansas and the National Taiwan University studied the eating and mental habits of 2,366 children between 2 and 12 years old. They found that the fatter the kids were, the less subject they were to bouts of sadness, anger and depression.

Obesity creates docile "citizens of the Empire." A study by researchers at NYU School of Medicine, which appears online in the September 3, 2012, issue of Pediatrics, reveals that obesity is associated with cognitive and brain impairments in adolescents and calls for pediatricians to take this into account when considering the early treatment of childhood obesity.

...Over the last three decades, harried Americans have essentially transferred their favorite addiction from tobacco to excess food. While tobacco addiction has been thoroughly vilified by the major media, food is still lauded and celebrated in every corner of the country. And food calories remain relatively cheap-- one can still buy a McDonald's hamburger for a dollar in most places.

The obesity epidemic helps American capitalism in two ways. On one side of the coin, it creates a population that is more compliant, tired, sick, self-hating and resigned to its misery. The last thing those sitting at the top want to see is a lean, clean and mean population.

On the other side of the coin, obese and overweight Americans bring in enormous profits for many vital industries-- agribusiness, food processing and transportation, food stores, restaurants, the medical industry, the diet industry and the pharmaceutical industry. If the 70 percent of Americans who are overweight or obese were to seriously back off of food until a healthy state of leanness were achieved, it's easy to imagine the economic catastrophe that would follow.

The complete cure for American obesity-- getting it off and keeping it off-- is elusive for most obese Americans.  Some individuals can rid themselves of this condition if they recognize that obesity is primarily a mental health issue-- an eating disorder.  People can fix this problem by greatly reducing or eliminating hurry and worry from their lives-- while simultaneously re-establishing mental calmness and self-trust.

   In the meantime, the American obesity epidemic will continue to spread until a political solution is found for this political problem.

Fat'n'happy? Not so sure, but look this table over and notice the correlation between increased obesity and increased voting for Republican authoritarian politicians.

Aaron Schock, GOP Closet Twink, Defends Twinkies' Right To Poison You Without Government Interference

Twinkies

Aaron Schock is still whining he just hasn't met the right gal yet but he isn't fooling anyone in Peoria-- and especially not anyone who went to Richwoods High School or Illinois Central College. He likes Ding Dongs a lot more than he likes ladies. And he did an OpEd for Politico about it this week. The overly ambitious closet case-- second youngest Member of Congress after the equally conservative Patrick Murphy-- wants to run for governor of Illinois. So he's burnishing his credentials as a pro-Business, anti-regulations Ayn Rand fanboy. Perhaps he hopes it will get voters' minds off his ethics problems. He's demanding that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stop warning people about junk food-- particularly junk food made in his district. (Keep in mind that Apollo Global Management, huge political contributors, has just bought Hostess Brands' Twinkies.) Schock:

Already, the CDC has awarded $650 million of grants to states and communities through a program called the Prevention and Public Health Fund. In many cases, the grant recipients have used these federal dollars to run advertisements against “sugary products” or other food and beverages that they believe have an adverse impact on the health of American citizens, regardless of the quantity consumed. We are talking about hundreds of millions of tax dollars that are being used to discourage the consumption of lawfully marketed American-made products.

Using taxpayer dollars to attack the beverage and food industry might seem like a good idea to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but it’s this exact type of harmful government spending that we can ill afford and serves no purpose in the overall wellness debate-- other than to be critical of domestic companies that employ thousands of hardworking Americans.

When a company like Hostess-- which employed hundreds of employees in my congressional district-- dedicates millions of dollars to market its products, it shouldn’t have to worry about the company’s tax dollars being used against it to dissuade the public from buying its products. In fact, the brand damage that occurs from these government-funded attack ads results in businesses having to dedicate even more resources toward marketing-- money that could otherwise be used to give pay raises to their employees or reinvest and grow their business.

...I believe the CDC-- which does great work on early detection and prevention of, and treatment for breast and cervical cancer, as well as work on immunizations, flu vaccines and a host of worthy efforts-- simply should change its priority from singling out one product and attacking American job creators to focusing its efforts on a more comprehensive approach to combating obesity.

As a result, I have introduced the Stopping Taxpayer Outlays for Propaganda Act, the STOP Act, which will ban taxpayer dollars from funding such ads so the public can focus on meaningful steps to address obesity and promoting a healthy lifestyle. This includes prohibiting the use of federal money for print, radio and television or any other media advertisement, campaign or form of publicity against the use of a food or beverage that is lawfully marketed under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

I fully support and try to live a healthy life, myself, by making smart choices about what I eat and drink and by working out regularly. These are the types of behavior we should be promoting-- not using our precious tax dollars to attack job creators in a time of sustained levels of high unemployment.

Last year, the NY Times took a look into what's in the Twinkies that Aaron Schock wants to see marketed without interference from government regulatory agencies charged with safeguarding the health of Americans-- and they found that not everything in a Twinkie comes from good old American-grown wheat. Let's take, for instance, the Chinese-made petroleum products that go into a Twinkie. And Twinkies aren't just filled with petroleum products; they also contain gypsum, trona, limestone and phosphorus ore. There's an interesting discussion of "the Twinkie Industrial Complex."

Processed food ingredients are made in large parts from the most common industrial chemicals, like phosphoric acid and sulfuric acid and ethylene, which comes from natural gas.

...One thing I noticed in my travels is there are certain food processing hubs in the Midwest where these large plants that process beans and seeds are located. The power needed to run these things is extraordinary. That was very unfoodlike, in my mind, and really surprised me.

...It seems that the “cream” is probably partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. I think the key ingredient is polysorbate 60, and possibly cellulose gum. The filling has to be of a consistency that works well in the pumps and tubes that make these things. On the label they call it a “creamy filling.” They don’t actually say what it is.

...They get hard, but they don’t spoil. I’ve got a bunch of them scattered around my office. I’ve got one from 2005 in my hand. It’s a little hard. I don’t think I’d want to eat it. It’s solid, but it hasn’t spoiled. As part of my research, I made Twinkies at home. We made cake from scratch with whole-food ingredients. It was yellow cake and cream filling from whipped cream with sugar and vanilla. It was absolutely delicious, and we devoured most of them right away. I wrapped one in plastic wrap and put it aside, and it was solid green in a week.

But Aaron Schock wants liberty-- not some regulators snooping around figuring out what's in Twinkies and what effect they have on children's health. When it looked like Twinkies might cease to exist, Michele Bernard, an RN wrote that "We’ll miss some of its wonderfully fattening ingredients,  like sugar, animal shortening, cottonseed and canola oil, beef fat, dextrose, mono and di-glycerides, artificial flavors, caramel color, yellow No. 5, red #40. There are also a who’s who of corn products in each delicious Twinkie including corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, modified cornstarch, cornstarch, corn flour, and corn syrup solids."

We bring this up because obesity has been closely linked to mental illness. Dutch researchers have found that adolescents who perceived their bodies as “too fat” were at greater risk for internalizing problems (e.g., depression, anxiety) and externalizing problems (e.g., aggression, substance abuse). Also, weight-based teasing and discrimination that are often inflicted on obese kids can have devastating effects on their emotional well-being.

The physical hazards of being overweight are already well-known and include an increased risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer, as well as generalized fatigue and weakness.

West Virginia And Mississippi Duke It Out For The Title-- The Most Obese State Of All

Mississippi is no longer the most obese state in the nation. No, nothing has gotten better there; it's just that as West Virginia sunk deeper and deeper into a depressing right-wing death spiral, their collective waistlines have exploded with stress-related compulsive eating disorders and the dominance of cheap, unhealthy fast food. West Virginia is now the #1 most obese. Mississippi is #2. But Mississippi isn't going to leave it at that. Their political leaders are fighting hard to regain the title of America's Fattest And Most Unhealthy State.

So contrary, secessionist-minded and pig-headed are Mississippi's white political leaders that the state legislature is willing to sacrifice the well-being of the state's impoverished working people with insane laws that encourage obesity just for the sake of being dicks. This isn't about "freedom;" it's about a generation of children being sacrificed on the altar of high fructose corn products.

Mississippi legislators have passed an anti-Bloomberg bill that bars counties from passing and enacting laws that require calorie counts to be posted or caps the size of beverages or foods.

...Americans tend to be surprisingly supportive of restrictive laws aimed at improving public health. The Harvard School of Public Health recently polled 1,187 adults on a slew of public health regulations that aim to do everything from reduce obesity to cutting smoking rates.

A number of the policies in the survey got widespread support. Seventy-five percent supported barring food stamps from being used on sugary beverages (New York City actually tried to do this, but was shot down by the federal government). The same number liked the idea of requiring chain restaurants to reduce their sodium contents (New York City also tried to do this, and failed).

Eighty-percent liked required posting of calorie labels.

There were some regulations that went too far for the respondents: The majority opposed making possession of junk food or sodas a disciplinary offense. Only 37 percent thought that insurers should be allowed to charge the obese a $50 surcharge on their premiums.

The Harvard survey didn’t ask about a ban on large, sugary drinks, so we don’t know from this research whether that specific restriction would garner much support. But the numbers do suggest that lots of people are open to a role for government in regulating unhealthy foods.

Less than a month ago, on my birthday in fact, the NY Times Magazine published an extensive report by investigative reporter Michael Moss (author of Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us) on The Extraordinary Science of Junk Food and made the case, quite convincingly, that the big corporate food conglomerates (Nestlé, Pillsbury, Kraft, Nabisco, General Mills, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Mars, etc.) are just about as concerned about poisoning children with toxic "food" as the tobacco companies were about causing lung cancer-- and are using almost identical tactics... and obviously for the same reason: profits. The CEO of Pillsbury is worried that his company-- and their rivals-- "have gone too far in creating and marketing products that posed the greatest health concerns... from the body’s fragile controls on overeating to the hidden power of some processed foods to make people feel hungrier still."

More than half of American adults were now considered overweight, with nearly one-quarter of the adult population-- 40 million people-- clinically defined as obese. Among children, the rates had more than doubled since 1980, and the number of kids considered obese had shot past 12 million. (This was still only 1999; the nation’s obesity rates would climb much higher.) Food manufacturers were now being blamed for the problem from all sides-- academia, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society. The secretary of agriculture, over whom the industry had long held sway, had recently called obesity a “national epidemic.”

...[A] quote from a Yale University professor of psychology and public health, Kelly Brownell, who was an especially vocal proponent of the view that the processed-food industry should be seen as a public health menace: “As a culture, we’ve become upset by the tobacco companies advertising to children, but we sit idly by while the food companies do the very same thing. And we could make a claim that the toll taken on the public health by a poor diet rivals that taken by tobacco.”

...[T]he one C.E.O. whose recent exploits in the grocery store had awed the rest of the industry stood up to speak. His name was Stephen Sanger, and he was also the person-- as head of General Mills-- who had the most to lose when it came to dealing with obesity. Under his leadership, General Mills had overtaken not just the cereal aisle but other sections of the grocery store. The company’s Yoplait brand had transformed traditional unsweetened breakfast yogurt into a veritable dessert. It now had twice as much sugar per serving as General Mills’ marshmallow cereal Lucky Charms. And yet, because of yogurt’s well-tended image as a wholesome snack, sales of Yoplait were soaring, with annual revenue topping $500 million. Emboldened by the success, the company’s development wing pushed even harder, inventing a Yoplait variation that came in a squeezable tube-- perfect for kids. They called it Go-Gurt and rolled it out nationally in the weeks before the C.E.O. meeting. (By year’s end, it would hit $100 million in sales.)

According to the sources I spoke with, Sanger began by reminding the group that consumers were “fickle.” (Sanger declined to be interviewed.) Sometimes they worried about sugar, other times fat. General Mills, he said, acted responsibly to both the public and shareholders by offering products to satisfy dieters and other concerned shoppers, from low sugar to added whole grains. But most often, he said, people bought what they liked, and they liked what tasted good. “Don’t talk to me about nutrition,” he reportedly said, taking on the voice of the typical consumer. “Talk to me about taste, and if this stuff tastes better, don’t run around trying to sell stuff that doesn’t taste good.”

To react to the critics, Sanger said, would jeopardize the sanctity of the recipes that had made his products so successful. General Mills would not pull back. He would push his people onward, and he urged his peers to do the same.

...The public and the food companies have known for decades now-- or at the very least since this meeting-- that sugary, salty, fatty foods are not good for us in the quantities that we consume them. So why are the diabetes and obesity and hypertension numbers still spiraling out of control? It’s not just a matter of poor willpower on the part of the consumer and a give-the-people-what-they-want attitude on the part of the food manufacturers. What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort-- taking place in labs and marketing meetings and grocery-store aisles-- to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive. I talked to more than 300 people in or formerly employed by the processed-food industry, from scientists to marketers to C.E.O.’s. Some were willing whistle-blowers, while others spoke reluctantly when presented with some of the thousands of pages of secret memos that I obtained from inside the food industry’s operations. What follows is a series of small case studies of a handful of characters whose work then, and perspective now, sheds light on how the foods are created and sold to people who, while not powerless, are extremely vulnerable to the intensity of these companies’ industrial formulations and selling campaigns.

Even if states like New York and California start to come around, there will be for General Mills, decades and decades of states like Mississippi and West Virginia, which insist on the freedom to doom their children to lives shortened by adult-onset diabetes and other symptoms of the obesity epidemic sweeping most of what we affectionately call "the red states."