When I read this post I thought about what I had been through in the past couple of years. Last year my dentist found that I had 3 cracked teeth and it was unbelievably stressful to have 4 caps put on for me. I spent about $3k last year on my well cared for mouth. This year we moved to another state and I found a dentist close to our home listed by our insurance company. I called her and got in within a week.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered she is a one-woman show. She spent a very long time cleaning my teeth and I thought she did a great job. The x-rays were slightly painful with all that crap in my mouth but my mouth is small and it always hurts. I dealt with it.
The crazy part came to light when I went to pay. I wrote a check because she didn't accept debit cards (isn't this 2007?). I looked around behind the desk and everything seemed to be from another era. No receptionist, very old phone, very old answering machine and piles of yellowed paper she was using. It struck me as totally bizarre but okay, so she is thrifty. This will hold down the cost. Right? Won't it? WRONG! She is more expensive than most anyone in town. AND she didn't give me a receipt for services rendered. WHAT? She couldn't because she had only triplicate and she needed all 3 copies. She couldn't copy it because she didn't have a copier!!!!!! I requested that she mail me one and I never got it.
The second appointment rolls around. It is for a deep cleaning because last year they didn't do a good job and I get to pay the big bucks for it this year. I got one very old filling replaced. When I got the anesthesia for the filling I told her I am highly resistant to the stuff and I usually get several shots before I am numb. She shot me okay. She is so good at what she does that she ON PURPOSE hit the exact nerve that went to that side of my face. It was like a bolt of lightening in my tongue and I almost came off the chair. CRAZY had done this, knew it would work the first time and didn't bother to ask me or warn me about it. I'd have sooner had the usual 4 shots to be numbed up.
She did beautiful work and she is probably the best dentist I've ever been to in that way but she is weird, bizarre and comes across as crazy. She is also more expensive and doesn't give out receipts. She bills via telephone calls and charges you $18 for a written statement that is typed up on a manual typewriter. So, now the question is do I change dentists AGAIN?
I mean she did find the cause of why all my teeth are cracking and gave me the solution which is working...a mouth guard. I do have way less headaches. I have about 2 more months to ponder this and then it will be time for another cleaning.
I walked out of my dentist's office last month because he left me sitting there for 45 minutes without acknowledging me. He did, however, have 10 minutes of that time to spend consulting with his electrician about ceiling fans. I was sitting in plain view, but he never said a word to me. Two members of his staff apologized for him (hinting that he does this a lot).
That lousy dentist lost me and my husband as customers. And we're decent customers, too. We have good insurance and always pay on time. Well, not anymore.
I don't even mind that I have to look for a new dentist. Anyone's better than that arrogant jerk.
Teaching kids about money needs to start as early as possibly and by that I mean that parents must first understand how kids learn about money. They learn three primary ways: by what they see, by what they hear and by what they experience. The first, by what they see around them, may be the most important as it sets the child up in terms of belief systems about money that can literally influence the rest of their lives.
Creative Wealth International, a nonprofit in Santa Barbara, has been offering it's own unique brand of financial education for kids in the form of summer camps (Camp Millionaire and formerly The Money Camp), Creative Cash for Kids home programs, schools programs and other events for kids, teens, families and more. Their latest program, Wealth Rules! Financial Wisdom for Youth, will be unveiled at the Los Angeles Convention Center Feb. 15-17. This event is for teens and parents and will provide everyone with an opportunity to really explore money and it's workings.
Our philosophy at CWI is that our belief systems control everything and that the more we empower kids and teens to create their own lives, the less victims we will have in our society. We also teach kids that they can start businesses and learn to invest and produce cash flow without necessarily having to go to college (since a huge percentage of our population will never attend college), get a job and accumulate money for 40 years. The underlying principle there is that by creating more monthly cash flow than you need, you can go out in to the world and do a whole lot of good with the extra. For more information on our unique brand of financial education for the whole family or to help us sponsor a kid or two to one of our events, please visit: http://www.creativewealthintl.org or call us at 805-957-1024 or 800-928-1932.
There are so many other places to shop that treat people with respect and have excellent customer service. Why stay with people that treat you horribly?
I go to Dr. Burchfield on 20th St in Golden, CO. (Even though I now live in Pittsburgh, I'll still go back to see him above all other dentists.) I have never liked going to the dentist; Dr. Burchfield makes it not only tolerable, but even slightly pleasant.
The main reason I like him so much is that he's fast. He cleans my teeth in something like two minutes flat, and he never talks to me while he does it. (To himself, sure, but never to me.) Oh, and he knows I'm really sensitive to pain, so if I need Novocaine for cavity work, he'll give it to me first, then clean my teeth, then fill the cavities. Plus he even takes my Pittsburgh-based insurance.
I adopted a deaf Bull Terrier (looks like spuds mackenzie or the Target dog) recently..she is all white. The rescue gurus recommended that I add Dawn to her body soap to keep her fur white. So... I add about a quarter size amount to some bady soap with mousterizers for her weekly shower (yes) and she is almost painfully white. Her fur does not yellow and she is soft as you can imagine. As an added bonus since it was in my shower I started cleaning the shower with it weekly as well an it has worked out well.....good stuff.
It's true that when there's a good-enough solution, people tend to just go with that--meaning that they are then less likely to come up with a better solution.
On the other hand, time is the real limited resource. The more time you spend solving problems that already have an adequate solution, the less time you have to solve problems that don't.
Happily, creativity isn't a limited resource--the more creative stuff you do, the more you'll be able to tap into your creativity.
Reviews can be very helpful at times, and though it has saved me MUCH grief while buying computer parts, I have learned that some reviewers are just plain stupid. You just have to know how to tell which reviewers know what they're talking about. For example, when I purchased my computer monitor, so many people talked about how horrible it was, and all the problems it had. Of course, I love my computer monitor and have never had any of these problems; it's likely that those who complained simply hooked the monitor in wrong and messed something up with it along the way.
Who knows, it could be different with kitchen appliances, I'm only 16 and wouldn't know much about coffee makers, but I do know it's worth the time to read the reviews before you buy something, you just have to be sure it's not a bogus review or just and angry poster who doesn't know what they're talking about.
And to the poster before me, you have a good point. Those poor first reviewers!
I was adopted, paperwork signed and finished before I was even born, and then I was brought home the day after I was born.
I may have been breastfed on the first day or something.. but after that, I was fed by the bottle and cared for by my adoptive parents. So, I did not establish this romantic bond between mother, boob, milk and baby.
I grew up happy and healthy. I was a US dress size 2 until I was 14, and since then have become and settled at a dress size 6~8. I am considered slightly overweight by the definitions currently in circulation, although I feel just fine with my body.
I don't drink, I tried smoking one cigarette, then quit, I've never been interested in drugs, and I have monotonous long-term relationships, in which I don't cheat, or stalk, or do anything strange.
It's funny that you mention all these brain studies, since I remembering reading a study in college that went over Humans being the only humans whose major behaviors are not controlled by instinct. Remember, that whole conscious thought thing? Perhaps some babies who were not breastfed grew up to be criminal crackheads with relationship problems, and perhaps some of the breasthead babies grew up to be the same.
However, I believe that breastfeeding is not at ALL some failsafe way to guarantee a healthy and virtuous life for your child, and for a person to be so stuck on one idea is silly.
I reply to you now, only in the hopes that if someone comes through here and reads your comments, they don't suddenly feel terrible if they did not breastfeed. I reply, because us non-breastfed babies didn't grow up to be emotional wrecks with binge eating disorders.
The situations you list in your article are part of why I think it's key for those of us who have gardens to donate our extras to the local food banks and soup kitchens. I often run into times when I'm awash with plums, green beans or what-have-you, and charities are always happy to get them.
The local paper used to run a program called "plant a row for the hungry" and even provided seeds for free or a minimal price. I don't know who thought of it or whether it's common across the country, but it was a great thing.
It does not take a lot of money to eat well and be healthy.
The photo is interesting because the parents and the 3 children look thin but not starving. This what we strive for today!
I've watched in line at the grocery store, other peoples carts filled to the top with non-foods, lots of over-packaged processed 'foods' and cases of pop and cakes.
Frozen veggies are cheap and healthy and not fattening.
Ripe bananas are cheap and full of potassium (good for your heart)...bake a banana bread and use a 1/3 of the sugar.
Bake something tasty and good for you..bran muffins, no trans fats...
Root vegetables, rice dishes, it's all cheap and stretches out into a few meals. Read the ingredients.
I eat really well and buy good foods. I cook and don't keep junk food around.
My food costs are just a bit less than what my pension allots for food/ month.
The era of that drawing of the family, didn't have the abundance of junk food, nothing like what we have today.
They were more active. Doesn't look like they had TV yet.
It's a mind set.
Medications are often weight gainers, and being educated about foods sure helps a lot.
Starving ones self only puts the stomach into hibernation mode, because it is now storing fats, etc., because it's starving.
Lots of little snacks and meals of non sugar,processed, no deep fried type foods, actually speeds up the stomach and burns calories faster.
Often a person with a big gut, is a constipated person, from not enough fiber and too much sugars and fats. Messes up a person's colon.
Take a few extra minutes and make your lunch and some healthy snacks, when you're going outside. Say bye to fast food restaurants and being fat.
I shop frequently at a 99 cent store--everything is 99 cents. It carries food, and on a recent trip I bought a sack of apples, a sack of pears, a sack of potatoes, a package of Romaine (two heads)and a package of assorted bell peppers. All for $4.95. There were a lot of people who looked fairly poor there (not that I'm wealthy--my income is pretty small, as I retired early). They were passing over all the vegetable bargains and were buying stacks of cheap frozen pizza, packages of cheap lunch meat, and loaves of white bread. They weren't even buying the sacks of potatoes--they were buying frozen french fries. Although I eat a lot more junk food than I need, these folks were skipping really great bargains to buy empty foods. That appears to me to be an education problem. The schools really need to address this need for nutritional information.
I shop frequently at a 99 cent store--everything is 99 cents. It carries food, and on a recent trip I bought a sack of apples, a sack of pears, a sack of potatoes, a package of Romaine (two heads)and a package of assorted bell peppers. All for $4.95. There were a lot of people who looked fairly poor there (not that I'm wealthy--my income is pretty small, as I retired early). They were passing over all the vegetable bargains and were buying stacks of cheap frozen pizza, packages of cheap lunch meat, and loaves of white bread. They weren't even buying the sacks of potatoes--they were buying frozen french fries. Although I eat a lot more junk food than I need, these folks were skipping really great bargains to buy empty foods. That appears to me to be an education problem. The schools really need to address this need for nutritional information.
This is a thought provoking article. I think you are correct that if Da Vinci had access to modern art supplies he would have been more productive and his works would have been of better quality. But, I also think that the passion and innovation Da Vinci demonstrated may have been somewhat stifled by an easy way out.
This could be the same with your other examples. Having to create your own mediums forces you to innovate and think outside the box. Van Halen is a recent musical example. The guitar from his first major tour was pieced together from a cheap store brand model and many after market parts.
Those with the talent and desire will find a way. Still, I think this is a wonderful article.
Did you ever consider it might not ALWAYS be food related for a person to be fat? Prior to 2006 and starting one very specific medication, my weight was approx 120 lb which for my height was about average even with the new gov't guidelines. I'd struggled until then to keep my weight that high in fact. After starting the medication, my diet didn't change, my activity level didn't change, my economic status didn't change. But in over a year, I packed on approximately 60 lbs which is common with this medication. To others though, I'm just a fat, poor, uneducated slob who eats too much. Except I honestly have to force myself to eat one meal a day because of a lack of hunger; I'm not uneducated; and while, to many people's standards, I may be poor, I'm doing better money wise than before. As an example of the issue of forcing myself to eat, today from 8 am until 10 pm I ate the equivalent of 2 pudding cups of applesauce and a slice of pizza. So please feel free to generalize. I don't really care because the opinion of others doesn't make or break me. But, in light of the fact that there are others out there who do feel hurt by the stupid generalizations, maybe think before you attribute someone's obesity to lack of money, education, will power, or exercise.
Craigslist is an awesome resource for free firewood. Many people have it, you just need to cut it yourself! With already cut wood going for $90-120 a cord in my area, it definitely pays to invest in a good chainsaw and get chopping!
and they accepted it completely. I think my insurance covered 70% off all the dental fees, a filling worked out at around $40 out of pocket for me.
As a customer, I have a card that gives you some extra money off your first visit. Let me know your address (through the contact us section) and I'll mail you the card.
Thanks for reading, and I hope your visit is as good as mine was.
...but now grocery prices are through the roof. It becomes harder and harder to countenance the waste when people are hungry. If it's still good it should be going to hungry people. Look, you are paying twice. You pay to feed the less advantaged through the social service organizations in your communities and you pay a premium to have fresh food in your paradisical grocery (where nothing is ever spoiled). It would probably be cheaper for communities to purchase the food that is about to be pulled. The grocery would have less overhead and could lower prices.
Here's something else different about the poor family you saw 20 years ago - you saw two parents.
You probably didn't see cigarettes.
I'll bet a nickel they didn't have cable tv , either.
I used to live in the projects.
No tv, shopped pretty much as you describe, don't smoke *anything*, and buy clothes for the kids and I at a thrift store.
Most of my neighbors were single parents, had tobacco - and other - expensive habits - and were too proud too shop in thrift stores.
Beans and rice ? Tacky. Veggies ? Kids won't eat 'em.
I own my own home now - I'm still friends with some of the same people 10 years after I got out and they didn't.
They think I 'got lucky'.
I think they just don't get it.
Norman Swan: Are you postulating here a fructose conspiracy, the way the tobacco industry had a nicotine conspiracy?
Robert Lustig: Well I can't call it a conspiracy per se. I certainly know, and they certainly know that they sell more of it when they add the fructose to it. That's why it's in there, otherwise why would it be in there? Do they know that this is actually harmful? That's what I don't know. There's no smoking gun, ultimately we found the smoking gun for smoking, you know we found the documents. I'm not prepared to say that about the food companies. I do not know that they know that they are hurting us. However, they definitely know they sell more, and it temporally coincides with the advent of fructose being added to our diet.
Norman Swan: And of course you could argue that it's going up because they are responding to the market and they've got sugar-free, fat-free etc. etc.
Robert Lustig: Well in fact fat-free doesn't help, if anything as the fat content of our foods has gone down, and it has gone down, it's gone from 40% to 30%, in fact our obesity prevalence has gone way up. So that's not the answer.
Norman Swan: This is because they're adding carbohydrates and sugars to it to replace the fat.
Robert Lustig: Absolutely, in fact fat does not raise your insulin but certainly sugar does. And fructose has been bandied about...because after all it doesn't raise your insulin directly because there's no fructose receptor on your beta cell in your pancreas. So people say well it doesn't raise your insulin, but in fact it does because it's a chronic effect not an acute effect. This has nothing to do with one fructose meal, this has to do with a year's worth of fructose meals, or a lifetime's worth of fructose meals, because as you become insulin resistant, which fructose clearly does and has been shown by many investigators not just me -- that interferes with that leptin signal which causes you to eat more.
Norman Swan: Insulin-resistance increases your insulin levels because your pancreas pumps out more to get the insulin working.
Robert Lustig: Exactly, especially since your liver is not responding to it because of that effect on the serine phosphorylation of the insulin receptor. So that's going to cause you to make a whole lot more insulin, that's going to interfere with your leptin, that's going to make you eat more so the whole thing just keeps going out of control.
Norman Swan: One way of proving this would be to put you on a fructose free diet, has anybody done that?
I laughed aloud at this sentence: " I was skeptical to say the least, but she was so happy that I had to admit, I was curious."
To the guest who made comment #5, if your insurance is that crappy, it may be fine to just go to a dentist that is not on your insurance. It may not cost much more, especially if you are able to get a discount for paying cash the same day. Plus if you are motivated to go regularly, things will be more likely to be fixed while it's still relatively cheap.
Luke brought up a great point. High carb foods make you feel hungrier faster and more frequently. So if your eating lots of the cheap poverty foods you are consuming large amounts of carbos.
I had to seriously restrict my carbohydrate intake as part of some dietary changes my doctor had me do for some various reasons. The biggest thing I noticed was after I made these changes I don't crave food anymore. I get hungry, I eat but it is more of a thought process about what to eat based on nutrition rather than OMG I need potato chips right now. When you eat really carbo heavy food you get those blood sugar swings and cravings and need to eat something to turn that off. Low blood sugar really can't be ignored away.
I'm sure that leads to some of the extra eating of empty calories on top of it being the main stay of someone's diet. But the kind of dietary changes I had to make are really expensive. We do try to lessen it by picking veggies and fruit that is in season and on special, same with meats and use brown rice, lentils, split peas and beans to round it out.
A good social observation, but the author needs to distinguish one small thing, only in western cultures are poor people fat. Asiatic, Middle-eastern, and African countries certainly do not have fat poor people, even the middle-class of these countries are not obese, unlike the American middle-class, who make up the largest percentage of our grossly obese.
Well, see the thing is, this site isn't meant to be a forum for free speech for everyone. We don't go to the trouble of writing posts so that trolls can come along and abuse the writers. It's not hypocritical to take down comments that don't add to the discussion, or are particularly snarky (that's a word, dollface, look it up), and it's site policy to remove such comments.
From a blogger's standpoint, the biggest problem in the web today is that anonymity allows people to say incredibly stupid, hurtful things with no fear of ever being found out. THAT is disobliging. Your toes would curl at some of the comments we've had to remove from this site.
Now, people are free to disagree with what I write - many do. That doesn't mean that I can't respond to their criticisms. An engaged blogger enjoys discussing these things with commenters.
People are obviously free to do whatever they want - you can buy all the bottled water in the world. It's just hilarious to me that people are so concerned over things like fluoride ("It'll be absorbed through your skin!!!!"), but not the pollutants created in the process that it took to get that water from a tap to your mouth. Buying bottled water may seem like a great way to keep toxic chemicals out of your body, but in the long run, supporting such a a wasteful method for obtaining water is hazardous to EVERYONE'S health.
"Fluoride is not an added ingredient in DASANI or any of our carbonated beverage brands. However, since our brands contain water from the local water supply where the product is produced, whether they contain fluoride or not will depend on whether fluoride is present in the local water supply. The Reverse Osmosis process does remove more of the fluoride, thus DASANI will contain less fluoride than our carbonated beverage brands." [emphasis mine]
I realize that a Brita or Pur filter isn't the answer to everyone's concern about clean drinking water, but it still strikes me as a better solution than buying cases of water that are trucked in from out of town (depending on where the nearest plant is, you're still probably drinking the same water you'd get out of your tap, but filtered).
As to the cost of municipal water - I suppose that can vary from home to home, but my water bill and my Brita filters are significantly less than $300 per year. But your point about costs varying is well-taken. And now that there is so much drought in the Southeast, I won't be surprised bottled water becomes more and more common.
I should add that I recently tried Fiji water at a luncheon, and damn, it was good. I can see why people enjoy it so much.
When I read this post I thought about what I had been through in the past couple of years. Last year my dentist found that I had 3 cracked teeth and it was unbelievably stressful to have 4 caps put on for me. I spent about $3k last year on my well cared for mouth. This year we moved to another state and I found a dentist close to our home listed by our insurance company. I called her and got in within a week.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered she is a one-woman show. She spent a very long time cleaning my teeth and I thought she did a great job. The x-rays were slightly painful with all that crap in my mouth but my mouth is small and it always hurts. I dealt with it.
The crazy part came to light when I went to pay. I wrote a check because she didn't accept debit cards (isn't this 2007?). I looked around behind the desk and everything seemed to be from another era. No receptionist, very old phone, very old answering machine and piles of yellowed paper she was using. It struck me as totally bizarre but okay, so she is thrifty. This will hold down the cost. Right? Won't it? WRONG! She is more expensive than most anyone in town. AND she didn't give me a receipt for services rendered. WHAT? She couldn't because she had only triplicate and she needed all 3 copies. She couldn't copy it because she didn't have a copier!!!!!! I requested that she mail me one and I never got it.
The second appointment rolls around. It is for a deep cleaning because last year they didn't do a good job and I get to pay the big bucks for it this year. I got one very old filling replaced. When I got the anesthesia for the filling I told her I am highly resistant to the stuff and I usually get several shots before I am numb. She shot me okay. She is so good at what she does that she ON PURPOSE hit the exact nerve that went to that side of my face. It was like a bolt of lightening in my tongue and I almost came off the chair. CRAZY had done this, knew it would work the first time and didn't bother to ask me or warn me about it. I'd have sooner had the usual 4 shots to be numbed up.
She did beautiful work and she is probably the best dentist I've ever been to in that way but she is weird, bizarre and comes across as crazy. She is also more expensive and doesn't give out receipts. She bills via telephone calls and charges you $18 for a written statement that is typed up on a manual typewriter. So, now the question is do I change dentists AGAIN?
I mean she did find the cause of why all my teeth are cracking and gave me the solution which is working...a mouth guard. I do have way less headaches. I have about 2 more months to ponder this and then it will be time for another cleaning.
Paul, I am indeed jealous!
I walked out of my dentist's office last month because he left me sitting there for 45 minutes without acknowledging me. He did, however, have 10 minutes of that time to spend consulting with his electrician about ceiling fans. I was sitting in plain view, but he never said a word to me. Two members of his staff apologized for him (hinting that he does this a lot).
That lousy dentist lost me and my husband as customers. And we're decent customers, too. We have good insurance and always pay on time. Well, not anymore.
I don't even mind that I have to look for a new dentist. Anyone's better than that arrogant jerk.
Teaching kids about money needs to start as early as possibly and by that I mean that parents must first understand how kids learn about money. They learn three primary ways: by what they see, by what they hear and by what they experience. The first, by what they see around them, may be the most important as it sets the child up in terms of belief systems about money that can literally influence the rest of their lives.
Creative Wealth International, a nonprofit in Santa Barbara, has been offering it's own unique brand of financial education for kids in the form of summer camps (Camp Millionaire and formerly The Money Camp), Creative Cash for Kids home programs, schools programs and other events for kids, teens, families and more. Their latest program, Wealth Rules! Financial Wisdom for Youth, will be unveiled at the Los Angeles Convention Center Feb. 15-17. This event is for teens and parents and will provide everyone with an opportunity to really explore money and it's workings.
Our philosophy at CWI is that our belief systems control everything and that the more we empower kids and teens to create their own lives, the less victims we will have in our society. We also teach kids that they can start businesses and learn to invest and produce cash flow without necessarily having to go to college (since a huge percentage of our population will never attend college), get a job and accumulate money for 40 years. The underlying principle there is that by creating more monthly cash flow than you need, you can go out in to the world and do a whole lot of good with the extra. For more information on our unique brand of financial education for the whole family or to help us sponsor a kid or two to one of our events, please visit: http://www.creativewealthintl.org or call us at 805-957-1024 or 800-928-1932.
There are so many other places to shop that treat people with respect and have excellent customer service. Why stay with people that treat you horribly?
I go to Dr. Burchfield on 20th St in Golden, CO. (Even though I now live in Pittsburgh, I'll still go back to see him above all other dentists.) I have never liked going to the dentist; Dr. Burchfield makes it not only tolerable, but even slightly pleasant.
The main reason I like him so much is that he's fast. He cleans my teeth in something like two minutes flat, and he never talks to me while he does it. (To himself, sure, but never to me.) Oh, and he knows I'm really sensitive to pain, so if I need Novocaine for cavity work, he'll give it to me first, then clean my teeth, then fill the cavities. Plus he even takes my Pittsburgh-based insurance.
He's great.
I adopted a deaf Bull Terrier (looks like spuds mackenzie or the Target dog) recently..she is all white. The rescue gurus recommended that I add Dawn to her body soap to keep her fur white. So... I add about a quarter size amount to some bady soap with mousterizers for her weekly shower (yes) and she is almost painfully white. Her fur does not yellow and she is soft as you can imagine. As an added bonus since it was in my shower I started cleaning the shower with it weekly as well an it has worked out well.....good stuff.
It's true that when there's a good-enough solution, people tend to just go with that--meaning that they are then less likely to come up with a better solution.
On the other hand, time is the real limited resource. The more time you spend solving problems that already have an adequate solution, the less time you have to solve problems that don't.
Happily, creativity isn't a limited resource--the more creative stuff you do, the more you'll be able to tap into your creativity.
Thanks for the kind words.
Reviews can be very helpful at times, and though it has saved me MUCH grief while buying computer parts, I have learned that some reviewers are just plain stupid. You just have to know how to tell which reviewers know what they're talking about. For example, when I purchased my computer monitor, so many people talked about how horrible it was, and all the problems it had. Of course, I love my computer monitor and have never had any of these problems; it's likely that those who complained simply hooked the monitor in wrong and messed something up with it along the way.
Who knows, it could be different with kitchen appliances, I'm only 16 and wouldn't know much about coffee makers, but I do know it's worth the time to read the reviews before you buy something, you just have to be sure it's not a bogus review or just and angry poster who doesn't know what they're talking about.
And to the poster before me, you have a good point. Those poor first reviewers!
I was not breastfed.
I was adopted, paperwork signed and finished before I was even born, and then I was brought home the day after I was born.
I may have been breastfed on the first day or something.. but after that, I was fed by the bottle and cared for by my adoptive parents. So, I did not establish this romantic bond between mother, boob, milk and baby.
I grew up happy and healthy. I was a US dress size 2 until I was 14, and since then have become and settled at a dress size 6~8. I am considered slightly overweight by the definitions currently in circulation, although I feel just fine with my body.
I don't drink, I tried smoking one cigarette, then quit, I've never been interested in drugs, and I have monotonous long-term relationships, in which I don't cheat, or stalk, or do anything strange.
It's funny that you mention all these brain studies, since I remembering reading a study in college that went over Humans being the only humans whose major behaviors are not controlled by instinct. Remember, that whole conscious thought thing? Perhaps some babies who were not breastfed grew up to be criminal crackheads with relationship problems, and perhaps some of the breasthead babies grew up to be the same.
However, I believe that breastfeeding is not at ALL some failsafe way to guarantee a healthy and virtuous life for your child, and for a person to be so stuck on one idea is silly.
I reply to you now, only in the hopes that if someone comes through here and reads your comments, they don't suddenly feel terrible if they did not breastfeed. I reply, because us non-breastfed babies didn't grow up to be emotional wrecks with binge eating disorders.
The situations you list in your article are part of why I think it's key for those of us who have gardens to donate our extras to the local food banks and soup kitchens. I often run into times when I'm awash with plums, green beans or what-have-you, and charities are always happy to get them.
The local paper used to run a program called "plant a row for the hungry" and even provided seeds for free or a minimal price. I don't know who thought of it or whether it's common across the country, but it was a great thing.
It does not take a lot of money to eat well and be healthy.
The photo is interesting because the parents and the 3 children look thin but not starving. This what we strive for today!
I've watched in line at the grocery store, other peoples carts filled to the top with non-foods, lots of over-packaged processed 'foods' and cases of pop and cakes.
Frozen veggies are cheap and healthy and not fattening.
Ripe bananas are cheap and full of potassium (good for your heart)...bake a banana bread and use a 1/3 of the sugar.
Bake something tasty and good for you..bran muffins, no trans fats...
Root vegetables, rice dishes, it's all cheap and stretches out into a few meals. Read the ingredients.
I eat really well and buy good foods. I cook and don't keep junk food around.
My food costs are just a bit less than what my pension allots for food/ month.
The era of that drawing of the family, didn't have the abundance of junk food, nothing like what we have today.
They were more active. Doesn't look like they had TV yet.
It's a mind set.
Medications are often weight gainers, and being educated about foods sure helps a lot.
Starving ones self only puts the stomach into hibernation mode, because it is now storing fats, etc., because it's starving.
Lots of little snacks and meals of non sugar,processed, no deep fried type foods, actually speeds up the stomach and burns calories faster.
Often a person with a big gut, is a constipated person, from not enough fiber and too much sugars and fats. Messes up a person's colon.
Take a few extra minutes and make your lunch and some healthy snacks, when you're going outside. Say bye to fast food restaurants and being fat.
I shop frequently at a 99 cent store--everything is 99 cents. It carries food, and on a recent trip I bought a sack of apples, a sack of pears, a sack of potatoes, a package of Romaine (two heads)and a package of assorted bell peppers. All for $4.95. There were a lot of people who looked fairly poor there (not that I'm wealthy--my income is pretty small, as I retired early). They were passing over all the vegetable bargains and were buying stacks of cheap frozen pizza, packages of cheap lunch meat, and loaves of white bread. They weren't even buying the sacks of potatoes--they were buying frozen french fries. Although I eat a lot more junk food than I need, these folks were skipping really great bargains to buy empty foods. That appears to me to be an education problem. The schools really need to address this need for nutritional information.
I shop frequently at a 99 cent store--everything is 99 cents. It carries food, and on a recent trip I bought a sack of apples, a sack of pears, a sack of potatoes, a package of Romaine (two heads)and a package of assorted bell peppers. All for $4.95. There were a lot of people who looked fairly poor there (not that I'm wealthy--my income is pretty small, as I retired early). They were passing over all the vegetable bargains and were buying stacks of cheap frozen pizza, packages of cheap lunch meat, and loaves of white bread. They weren't even buying the sacks of potatoes--they were buying frozen french fries. Although I eat a lot more junk food than I need, these folks were skipping really great bargains to buy empty foods. That appears to me to be an education problem. The schools really need to address this need for nutritional information.
This is a thought provoking article. I think you are correct that if Da Vinci had access to modern art supplies he would have been more productive and his works would have been of better quality. But, I also think that the passion and innovation Da Vinci demonstrated may have been somewhat stifled by an easy way out.
This could be the same with your other examples. Having to create your own mediums forces you to innovate and think outside the box. Van Halen is a recent musical example. The guitar from his first major tour was pieced together from a cheap store brand model and many after market parts.
Those with the talent and desire will find a way. Still, I think this is a wonderful article.
Did you ever consider it might not ALWAYS be food related for a person to be fat? Prior to 2006 and starting one very specific medication, my weight was approx 120 lb which for my height was about average even with the new gov't guidelines. I'd struggled until then to keep my weight that high in fact. After starting the medication, my diet didn't change, my activity level didn't change, my economic status didn't change. But in over a year, I packed on approximately 60 lbs which is common with this medication. To others though, I'm just a fat, poor, uneducated slob who eats too much. Except I honestly have to force myself to eat one meal a day because of a lack of hunger; I'm not uneducated; and while, to many people's standards, I may be poor, I'm doing better money wise than before. As an example of the issue of forcing myself to eat, today from 8 am until 10 pm I ate the equivalent of 2 pudding cups of applesauce and a slice of pizza. So please feel free to generalize. I don't really care because the opinion of others doesn't make or break me. But, in light of the fact that there are others out there who do feel hurt by the stupid generalizations, maybe think before you attribute someone's obesity to lack of money, education, will power, or exercise.
Craigslist is an awesome resource for free firewood. Many people have it, you just need to cut it yourself! With already cut wood going for $90-120 a cord in my area, it definitely pays to invest in a good chainsaw and get chopping!
Good article, Nora! Keep up the good work.
Mark P. Cussen, CFP, CMFC
and they accepted it completely. I think my insurance covered 70% off all the dental fees, a filling worked out at around $40 out of pocket for me.
As a customer, I have a card that gives you some extra money off your first visit. Let me know your address (through the contact us section) and I'll mail you the card.
Thanks for reading, and I hope your visit is as good as mine was.
...but now grocery prices are through the roof. It becomes harder and harder to countenance the waste when people are hungry. If it's still good it should be going to hungry people. Look, you are paying twice. You pay to feed the less advantaged through the social service organizations in your communities and you pay a premium to have fresh food in your paradisical grocery (where nothing is ever spoiled). It would probably be cheaper for communities to purchase the food that is about to be pulled. The grocery would have less overhead and could lower prices.
Here's something else different about the poor family you saw 20 years ago - you saw two parents.
You probably didn't see cigarettes.
I'll bet a nickel they didn't have cable tv , either.
I used to live in the projects.
No tv, shopped pretty much as you describe, don't smoke *anything*, and buy clothes for the kids and I at a thrift store.
Most of my neighbors were single parents, had tobacco - and other - expensive habits - and were too proud too shop in thrift stores.
Beans and rice ? Tacky. Veggies ? Kids won't eat 'em.
I own my own home now - I'm still friends with some of the same people 10 years after I got out and they didn't.
They think I 'got lucky'.
I think they just don't get it.
From The obesity epidemic -- the health report -- ABC RADIO NATIONAL
Norman Swan: Are you postulating here a fructose conspiracy, the way the tobacco industry had a nicotine conspiracy?
Robert Lustig: Well I can't call it a conspiracy per se. I certainly know, and they certainly know that they sell more of it when they add the fructose to it. That's why it's in there, otherwise why would it be in there? Do they know that this is actually harmful? That's what I don't know. There's no smoking gun, ultimately we found the smoking gun for smoking, you know we found the documents. I'm not prepared to say that about the food companies. I do not know that they know that they are hurting us. However, they definitely know they sell more, and it temporally coincides with the advent of fructose being added to our diet.
Norman Swan: And of course you could argue that it's going up because they are responding to the market and they've got sugar-free, fat-free etc. etc.
Robert Lustig: Well in fact fat-free doesn't help, if anything as the fat content of our foods has gone down, and it has gone down, it's gone from 40% to 30%, in fact our obesity prevalence has gone way up. So that's not the answer.
Norman Swan: This is because they're adding carbohydrates and sugars to it to replace the fat.
Robert Lustig: Absolutely, in fact fat does not raise your insulin but certainly sugar does. And fructose has been bandied about...because after all it doesn't raise your insulin directly because there's no fructose receptor on your beta cell in your pancreas. So people say well it doesn't raise your insulin, but in fact it does because it's a chronic effect not an acute effect. This has nothing to do with one fructose meal, this has to do with a year's worth of fructose meals, or a lifetime's worth of fructose meals, because as you become insulin resistant, which fructose clearly does and has been shown by many investigators not just me -- that interferes with that leptin signal which causes you to eat more.
Norman Swan: Insulin-resistance increases your insulin levels because your pancreas pumps out more to get the insulin working.
Robert Lustig: Exactly, especially since your liver is not responding to it because of that effect on the serine phosphorylation of the insulin receptor. So that's going to cause you to make a whole lot more insulin, that's going to interfere with your leptin, that's going to make you eat more so the whole thing just keeps going out of control.
Norman Swan: One way of proving this would be to put you on a fructose free diet, has anybody done that?
I laughed aloud at this sentence: " I was skeptical to say the least, but she was so happy that I had to admit, I was curious."
To the guest who made comment #5, if your insurance is that crappy, it may be fine to just go to a dentist that is not on your insurance. It may not cost much more, especially if you are able to get a discount for paying cash the same day. Plus if you are motivated to go regularly, things will be more likely to be fixed while it's still relatively cheap.
Luke brought up a great point. High carb foods make you feel hungrier faster and more frequently. So if your eating lots of the cheap poverty foods you are consuming large amounts of carbos.
I had to seriously restrict my carbohydrate intake as part of some dietary changes my doctor had me do for some various reasons. The biggest thing I noticed was after I made these changes I don't crave food anymore. I get hungry, I eat but it is more of a thought process about what to eat based on nutrition rather than OMG I need potato chips right now. When you eat really carbo heavy food you get those blood sugar swings and cravings and need to eat something to turn that off. Low blood sugar really can't be ignored away.
I'm sure that leads to some of the extra eating of empty calories on top of it being the main stay of someone's diet. But the kind of dietary changes I had to make are really expensive. We do try to lessen it by picking veggies and fruit that is in season and on special, same with meats and use brown rice, lentils, split peas and beans to round it out.
A good social observation, but the author needs to distinguish one small thing, only in western cultures are poor people fat. Asiatic, Middle-eastern, and African countries certainly do not have fat poor people, even the middle-class of these countries are not obese, unlike the American middle-class, who make up the largest percentage of our grossly obese.
Well, see the thing is, this site isn't meant to be a forum for free speech for everyone. We don't go to the trouble of writing posts so that trolls can come along and abuse the writers. It's not hypocritical to take down comments that don't add to the discussion, or are particularly snarky (that's a word, dollface, look it up), and it's site policy to remove such comments.
From a blogger's standpoint, the biggest problem in the web today is that anonymity allows people to say incredibly stupid, hurtful things with no fear of ever being found out. THAT is disobliging. Your toes would curl at some of the comments we've had to remove from this site.
Now, people are free to disagree with what I write - many do. That doesn't mean that I can't respond to their criticisms. An engaged blogger enjoys discussing these things with commenters.
People are obviously free to do whatever they want - you can buy all the bottled water in the world. It's just hilarious to me that people are so concerned over things like fluoride ("It'll be absorbed through your skin!!!!"), but not the pollutants created in the process that it took to get that water from a tap to your mouth. Buying bottled water may seem like a great way to keep toxic chemicals out of your body, but in the long run, supporting such a a wasteful method for obtaining water is hazardous to EVERYONE'S health.
In addition, you might be interested in the following statement from Dasani:
I realize that a Brita or Pur filter isn't the answer to everyone's concern about clean drinking water, but it still strikes me as a better solution than buying cases of water that are trucked in from out of town (depending on where the nearest plant is, you're still probably drinking the same water you'd get out of your tap, but filtered).
As to the cost of municipal water - I suppose that can vary from home to home, but my water bill and my Brita filters are significantly less than $300 per year. But your point about costs varying is well-taken. And now that there is so much drought in the Southeast, I won't be surprised bottled water becomes more and more common.
I should add that I recently tried Fiji water at a luncheon, and damn, it was good. I can see why people enjoy it so much.