Fixing Health Care isn`t the Answer

Politicians of all stripes have solutions to our heath care crisis, whether it's giving everyone access or letting the free market rule.

But you can't solve health care without solving health. Otherwise the current cycle just continues.

That cycle, discussed in my previous column, is based on health fads, each promising to fix our health with new supplements and enhanced foods, and each fad in turn proving to be insignificant or counterproductive. Look for example at the now discredited low-fat craze still driving many diets.

Will today's fads (super fruits, omega-3 fatty acids, and vitamin D) follow the same pattern?

It's taken us 10,000 years to adapt to dietary changes resulting from the invention of agriculture. Some of us still can't eat wheat and dairy. How can we thrive on foods invented in the past few decades or less?

Is an antioxidant really better than fruit? Refined flour better than whole grains? Factory-raised meat better than wild game? Pasteurized non-fat hormone-treated milk better than fresh whole milk? Vitamin water better than real water? "Natural flavor" better than any real food?


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Real Health Foods

Imagine that you are the owner of a health food store who is cryogenically frozen for 200 years. When you wake up, you are told that everything you sold at your store is actually bad for you, and all the stuff that was supposed to kill you is actually good for you.

That's what Woody Allen finds out in his science fiction movie, "Sleeper." But it may also be the key to America's health care crisis.

It turns out that the food industry in this country has been lying to us for decades. Every time they come out with a new product they say is supposed to be good for you, it most likely is just the opposite.

Industry has accomplished much positive. Food is now much cheaper, it transports more easily, it doesn't spoil as quickly and it is much more convenient. People that were starving before are much more likely to be able to afford food.

But this progress has come at a huge cost. Each bit of processing brings a food item one step further removed from the foods we evolved to eat.


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From Fat, Dumb and Happy to Healthy, Wealthy and Wise

Manufacturers use a tool called Pareto analysis to evaluate quality issues. They rank the problems and attack the biggest ones first.

I don't have to draw a Pareto chart to see where to start with health care costs. More than 75 percent of medical expenditures are for treating people with chronic diseases.

Chronic illnesses include cardiovascular disease, cancer, respiratory disease, and diabetes. A large percentage of cases are preventable, or can at least be managed less expensively.

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Welcome to Pharma Springs

Hi, my name is Mike, your guide here at Pharma Springs, and I'd like to point out some of the highlights of our resort. I know that you came here because of what you heard about our healing waters. I'm pleased to tell you today that our waters match those from the finest urban water treatment plants.

First up, if you have any low-level pains, take a dip in the relieving waters of our Ibuprofen Inlet. If the thought of unknown levels of multitudinous drugs in your tap water gives you a big headache, you'll find that a dip here will cure more pains in the neck that even a big drink from the tap in the City of Brotherly Love.

Worried about that infectious-looking fella who jumped in just before you? No worries. A follow-up cleanse at Antibiotic Bay will cure what ails you even before you know it hit you. And, as a bonus, you get a free souvenir basket filled with mutant, resistant bacteria. I guarantee you, you won't get such a gift on your next trip to Tucson.

Too much stress on the old ticker? The old angina doesn't stand a chance once you jump into the Nitrate Natatorium. Plus, our drugs are premetabolized, to give your own body a break in having to deal with them in the "raw" form. You'll remember how good you felt on your last trip to Jersey.

In the mood to experiment with your gender identity? In a nod to our friends in San Francisco, we present Hormone Harbor. Pick your side -- Estrogen Estuary or Testosterone Tide Pool. If fish that swim downstream of our cities can change gender, so can you!

Or maybe you just want to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame (or perhaps testify at a Senate hearing). If you do, go no further than Steroid Stream. No trip to Nebraska to drink the water downstream from a feedlot will be necessary. We can't guarantee a trip to the Olympics, but (wink) our treatments don't require any injections into the buttocks!

Is all of this making you freak out a bit? Jump right into Level-Headed Lake, where the anti-anxiety drugs (better than Southern Cal) will even out the highs and lows caused by excessive dips in our other pools.

Pick the pool of your choice. We promise that you will come out healthier than when you went in, and that we will cure diseases you didn't even know you had (or that you didn't have before coming here).

We are pleased that you chose Pharma Springs for your healing visit. We know you have a choice of any major metropolitan water supply to meet your unintended pharmaceutical needs, and are proud that our water contains ALL of the waste drugs that you could possibly want.

Be Prepared (for Coronary Heart Disease)

It's time for my annual rant against the Girl Scouts' sale of cookies with misleading health claims. I got the call from my niece today asking me to buy some of these cookies, and I can't turn her down. But that doesn't keep me from whining to my loyal readers.

As I've reported for the past two years, the cookies are advertised by the Girl Scouts as having zero grams of trans fats. But if you read the ingredient lists carefully, you will find partially hydrogenated oils in them all. This means they claim zero grams on merely a technicality -- the FDA's rule that companies can say they have none even if they have up to a half gram per serving. And they get to determine the serving size. This means that the typical real-life serving likely has a gram or more of trans fats.

Message to the girls: It's ok to lie to make a sale, as long as that lie is sanctioned by the U.S. government.

Trans fats are not in any way required or beneficial to health. They have been strongly linked by research to coronary heart disease. There is no safe level of consumption -- any increase leads to a corresponding increase in risk of heart disease. 30,000 people die each year because of trans fats. Therefore, the National Academy of Sciences has recommended that consumption be as low as possible.

In addition, trans fats have been linked to increased obesity, liver dysfunction, and infertility. Questions have been raised, but links haven't been proven, relating to cancer and diabetes.

Message to the girls: Making money for the troop is more important than the health of the customer.

Girl Scouts of the USA, I call on you to force your bakers to reformulate your cookies to actually and totally remove the trans fats from your cookies. Teach your girls that you don't have to lie to make a sale, and stop contributing to the heart disease and obesity epidemics in this country.

By the way, if you read the ingredients closely, you'll notice that partially hydrogenated oils are listed before cocoa, peppermint, and everything else other than flour and sugar. But they clearly don't advertising the cookies as having zero chocolate or zero mint.

Un Poco Local: The Carbon Next Door

I previously advised against buying carbon offsets. However, lest you think there's nothing you can do about global warming, I wanted to give you some ideas. Something more than the standard "use compact fluorescent bulbs, drive a hybrid, install insulation, ride a bike." This the first in a series of posts on real things you can do to reduce your "carbon footprint".

Here's something you may not have thought about. Every time you buy something, you are paying somebody else to use energy and emit carbon on your behalf. The product was transported to the store where you bought it. It was manufactured. It was packaged. The things that went into its manufacture and packaging were themselves transported, manufactured, grown, and otherwise processed. And every step along the way, energy was used and carbon was sent into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. This is true for everything from the simplest (like a head of lettuce) to the most complex (like a house or a car).

You can't just stop buying stuff, and I'm not going to suggest you do so. And, without a huge grant and access to proprietary info from every company you do business with, there is no way to calculate the true impact of what you buy. But there are a few things you can do to get a clue, and you can use that clue to influence your decision on what to buy.

1. Look at the number of ingredients. This is easier with some things than others. But next time you are at the grocery store, pick up two packages of the same type of product made by different companies. Count the number of lines of ingredients listed. You can guess that the one with the longer list had a bigger impact when it was manufactured.
2. Buy the product with the least processing. Every step someone took to create this wonderful product used energy and contributed to global warming. That's right, organically grown, whole-grain, unenriched, zero additives, and all those other things that are supposed to be good for you also have less of an impact on the environment. Oh, and packaging also counts as a step in the processing chain, so less packaging is better.
3. Buy local. This is not just to support your local economy, local farmers, and local businesses. Local products don't have to be transported over long distances to get to you.

Remember, every time you buy something with one less ingredient, one less layer of packaging, one less manufacturing process, or one less shipping step, you are paying one fewer person to spew carbon on your behalf.

Drinking to an Early Grave

I gotta get more readers in Sacramento. If only the (ex-)DJs of the Morning Rave show had read my rant about drinking too much water. Or any of the other folks who worked at KDND and created the contest to see who could drink the most water. Or perhaps one or two of the contestants in their contest. Especially Jennifer Lea Strange, who died as a result of that contest. Or the people who called into the show and were unable to convince the DJs to call off the contest.

As part of the contest, Jennifer drank close to two gallons. That's about four times the oft-quoted recommendation to drink 8 eight-ounce glasses of water per day. But, if you drink eight glasses per day and they happen to be 12 or 16-ounce glasses, you're getting closer. Or, if you just haul around a water bottle wherever you go and constantly remind yourself to drink, who knows.

The scientific fact is that, in order to stay hydrated, you need to drink -- get this -- when you are thirsty. Yes, there have been scientific studies on how reliable the thirst mechanism is. And guess what? It's pretty darn reliable. Drink alot less or alot more, and you will get sick, even in extreme cases die.

So, please, put down your Nalgene bottle and save a few trips to the bathroom. And, if a radio morning DJ asks you to sign a waiver to enter a contest and then brags on-air that it doesn't matter if you die because you signed the waiver, it's time to go home.

Oh, one more thing, a pet peeve of mine. (What do I have, about 9000?). If you claim to be an environmentalist, or if you are watching your budget, forget about buying bottled water. Not only are the health standards lower than for tap water, it probably is just tap water anyway. Tap water is practically free, you don't have to go somewhere to buy it, there is no packaging made from petroleum products, and transportation does not add to our fuel usage, pollution, or carbon generation. And, if you live here in Boulder, you have some of the best tap water around, straight from the mountains.

Girl Scouts Gone Wild

It was one year ago today that I wrote about the scandal of Girl Scouts lying about the content of their cookies. And, right on cue, I received a call today from my young niece, soliciting me to buy some of these treacherous cookies.

While I was talking to her, I checked online. Yes, the ingredients lists of the cookies (at least the varieties I checked) still include hydrogenated oils. Yes, they still claim zero trans fats.

Again, I call on the Girl Scouts of America to stop teaching their members to lie just to make a sale. Ok, the FDA has said it is ok to claim zero grams of trans fats even if there is a small amount. But that does not make it right to teach these young girls that it is ok to make a sale based on a false claim.

What did I do? Ok, I admit, I bought four boxes. But that doesn't mean I'm going to eat them.

Hmm, maybe I should set up a table down at the mall and sell them. I would certainly have to put a health warning on them, though.

Hydrate And/Or Die

I read yet another newspaper fit section encouraging people to work out, and listing important tips, "do"s and "don't"s. It continues to amaze me how so-called experts can give such bad advice. Items I often see on advice lists:

• Drink lots of water -- don't wait until you're thirsty. Typically those telling you to not trust your thirst are the same people who want you to learn to listen to your body. Imagine, these experts can't even listen to themselves. In point of fact, you can die from drinking too much water while exercising. It won't happen unless you are in a multi-hour session, but if you train yourself to drink as much as possible, and then run a five hour marathon, you are putting yourself at risk. There is zero scientific basis anywhere for the claim that you should drink eight glasses of water per day. In fact, the latest studies show that drinking when you are thirsty while you exercise is just as good for your performance as any formula for number of ounces per hour.


• Don't exercise too intensely -- you burn the most fat at 70% of your max heart rate. The fact is, you will burn more fat by going harder. Your body will continue to burn fat longer after you stop. And not only that, you will get stronger, faster, or better at what you are doing by stressing your body occasionally. Not all the time. But if you don't spend 10-15% of your workout time per week breathing hard, you are not making good use of your exercise time. And do you really think there is much difference between casually pedalling the recumbent bike while reading a book and sitting on the couch watching TV?


• Don't forget to warm up. Ok, warming up before going hard is good. But doing all your favorite stretches is not warming up. In fact, stretching without first warming up can easily injure you. Warm up by doing some light aerobic exercise, throw in a couple short harder efforts, make sure you are starting to breathe hard. Then you can do your stretches (and your hard workout).


• Don't eat during exercise unless you are going longer than two hours -- you don't need the calories. Yes you do. If you don't fuel your workout, you will lose more than you gain from it. Less than an hour you're probably ok. But anything longer and your body will start breaking down those muscles you are trying to build. And definitely eat before your workout. Don't do a long or hard workout in the morning before breakfast and expect it to be a positive experience.

Bottom line: just because someone is an expert or because something is common wisdom, doesn't mean it's all that smart.

Unless, of course, the expert is me.

Ex-Prez Pushes Aspartame

President Clinton and his foundation, along with the American Heart Association, yesterday announced a deal with the three biggest soft-drink companies to pull their products from schools throughout the country. Under this plan, grade school and middle school kids will lose the soda completely from their cafeterias and vending machines, while high schoolers will only be able to get the diet versions of these drinks.

Hmmm. This deal was negotiated by the very model of a modern major heart attack. Do you think having quadruple bypass surgery a year and a half ago makes him more or less believable on this topic?

Think about those poor high schoolers for a moment. Regular soda has sugar, which (in moderation) at least has some nutritional value. Diet soda, which they will literally be forced to drink now, has aspartame (mostly), or saccharine, sucralose, or acesulfame potassium. None of them has any nutritional value, and all of them have either had questions raised about negative health effects or have no long-term studies.

All of this on top of a study a year ago that showed that people who drink diet soda actually gain weight, much more than regular soda! It's enough to make you give and just drink beer.

Girl Scout Scandal

I admit it, I stashed a few boxes of Girl Scout cookies on the shelf in my office, for days just like today. Today I broke open the Peanut Butter Patties. As I snacked, I read the label. Zero grams of trans fat. Good, I watch what I eat, and trans fats are right at the top of the list of things I avoid. When I bought them from my niece, I made sure that I picked the ones with none of that bad stuff.

Then my eyes glanced at the list of ingredients. There it was. "One or more of the following partially hydrogenated oils: palm kernel, soybean, cottonseed, palm."

Did my eyes deceive me, or did the box say there were no trans fat but list partially hydrogenated oil as an ingredient? I had to get to the bottom of this.

Well, here's the scoop. When the FDA created the new rule forcing food distributors to put the amount of trans fat on the label, they made an important exception. If the amount per serving is less than half a gram, they are allowed to list it as zero grams.

What this means is that when you sit down and eat your realistic serving of peanut butter patties (I won't tell you how many I ate today, but it was more than the official serving size of two cookies), you are probably getting a gram or more of trans fat.

So, the Girl Scouts are just playing within the rules supplied by the FDA, right? What could be wrong with that?

Well, when the Girl Scouts proudly announce that they have made several of their cookie flavors trans fat free and use that as marketing information, when in fact they are not trans fat free, they are sending a very bad message to the girls. They are teaching them that it is ok to lie just a bit, as long as it helps sell your product and as long as the lie is pretty much in line with government rules.

Sounds like these girls are going to grow up to be fine members of Congress!

I guess that's the way the cookie crumbles.