I have never been a big-time environmentalist.\u00a0 Now, I believe it\u2019s important to protect the air and water from irresponsible dumping of toxins by industry but I\u2019m also not afraid of chemical and even nuclear materials just because they are hazardous.\u00a0 We have the technology to harness many of these materials without poisoning ourselves.\u00a0 So, I\u2019m not a disciple of people like RFK Jr. and I have nothing but scorn for the climate change alarmists like that demented dwarf Greta Thunberg.<\/p>\n
But looking around at the state of human health in the year 2024 AD I\u2019m forced to admit that modern life has become extremely unhealthy.\u00a0 The proportion of the population that is overweight (or even morbidly obese!) is shockingly high.\u00a0 There is something very wrong with how we live.\u00a0 So, to the extent that someone is calling attention to this dangerous situation I have to give credit where credit is due.<\/p>\n
Over the course of the last fifty years many American presidential administrations have declared \u201cwar\u201d on various health threats; cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer\u2019s Disease, you name it.\u00a0 But the truth is all we ever achieved was to fund government sponsored research facilities that never produced anything approaching actual cures.<\/p>\n
But what seems to be clear is the sedentary lifestyle we now lead is killing us.\u00a0 And not only that, but even before we\u2019ve been finished off by the fat, we are unhealthy and unhappy.\u00a0 It\u2019s obvious that this situation is the product of more than just one aspect of modern life.\u00a0 It is caused by the way that we live together (or rather apart), it\u2019s caused by the way we raise our children, how we spend our time and it has to do with how and what we eat.\u00a0 Almost every aspect of our lives has become less healthy than it was a hundred years ago.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start by looking at how we live.\u00a0 A hundred years ago we lived in towns and cities.\u00a0 But from the smallest village to the largest metropolis people had actual neighborhoods.\u00a0 Their kids had places to play together.\u00a0 The children\u2019s mothers could keep an eye on the youngest children while they played together and at least made sure that the older ones were theoretically safe among friends while they roamed the neighborhood looking for some kind of a ballgame to play.\u00a0 But at least they were outside getting a substantial amount of exercise, instead of just sitting around the house.\u00a0 Compare that to modern suburbia where most kids now grow up.\u00a0 Most homes aren\u2019t adjacent to each other on a sidewalk so the kids are isolated from each other and need a parent to bring them to a friend\u2019s house or a playground.\u00a0 No one walks anywhere.\u00a0 We sit in our cars.\u00a0 But there aren\u2019t any parents around to drive them anyway.\u00a0 Their mothers are now full-time employees of some corporation.\u00a0 The kids instead spend their time inside the house playing video games on their \u201cphone\u201d and eating whatever snack food has been left around the house to sedate them.\u00a0 This leaves them lonely, socially inept and obese.<\/p>\n
And what happens to these kids when they grow up.\u00a0 If they\u2019re lucky enough to get jobs it\u2019s probably in a cubicle where they\u2019ll get no exercise other than walking to a cafeteria once or twice a day to eat a highly processed meal made from some combination of high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated fat and cardboard.\u00a0 To be perfectly fair I think we\u2019re actually surviving this regimen better than should be expected.\u00a0 Laboratory rats are given a more humane existence than what we have relegated ourselves to.<\/p>\n
The solution to our problems is some combination of reclaiming the family and urban planning.\u00a0 We need to get women back to raising children.\u00a0 And we need to build communities that allow neighborhoods to exist for the majority of people.\u00a0 As far as food, a meaningful analysis of the health risks for processed foods should be scientifically run.\u00a0 I think forcing the CEOs of food manufacturing corporations to ingest their own products should be stringently applied and the impact on their health and longevity carefully studied.\u00a0 But in addition to that meaningful guidelines should be published and warning labels should be affixed to the packaging of any of the most dangerous products.<\/p>\n
And I think we all need to start walking a lot more.\u00a0 And if we had a neighborhood to walk in, we\u2019d even probably have to talk with our neighbors more than once a year.\u00a0 And if we did that, we might even talk about all the problems around town and what we want done about them instead of just complaining about the politicians we don\u2019t bother to vote for.<\/p>\n
What would it take to make these changes?\u00a0 A great majority of Americans would have to want these changes and then they\u2019d have to elect leaders who cared whether we live or die.\u00a0 So, of course, none of these things will ever happen.\u00a0 Instead think of how you can make these things happen for yourself and your children.\u00a0 You would have to marry a woman who wants to raise her children from home.\u00a0 Then you would have to work hard enough to afford this \u201cluxury.\u201d\u00a0 Then you would have to buy a house in a town or city that still had safe neighborhoods.\u00a0 And finally, you would have to do research to make healthy choices with respect to food and lifestyle (exercise).<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a tall order.\u00a0 But it\u2019s food for thought.<\/p>\n
Updates:<\/strong><\/p>\n Milo Mindbender commented:<\/strong><\/p>\n There is a meme regarding the fact the there comes a \u201clast day to play with your friends\u201d and you will not know that it happened until afterwards.<\/strong> War Pig commented:<\/em><\/p>\n The preservation of foods was a great boon which allowed us to eat fruits and veggies year round and curing meat greatly extended its edible life. But overprocessing said food, especially the junk ingredients used to do it are most of the problem. Bread used to be flour, milk or water, yeast, a dab of sugar to get the yeast happy and maybe butter. And we kept the starter for our sourdough around as sourdough bread is good for us. Now I read the ingredients on bread and cannot pronounce most of them. My brother\u2019s wife has the starter grandma used. She divided it and distributed it out among the family before she passed. Supposedly it came from Germany with our ancestors in 1820 or so. How old it really is, is unknown. It may be well over 200 years.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have never been a big-time environmentalist.\u00a0 Now, I believe it\u2019s important to protect the air and water from irresponsible dumping of toxins by industry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2860],"tags":[95,66,4688,4687],"class_list":["post-30592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-reclaiming-the-family","tag-food","tag-health","tag-lifestyle","tag-neighborhoods"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nMy generation circa 65, mostly stock, some aftermarket parts installed played outside, drank hose water, had fewer than 10 channels of TV, watched bugs Bunny drop anvils, yosemite sam carry guns, and a coyote chase a road runner forever without success. We knew what we couldn\u2019t do in real life, and was cartoon, but we played anyway.<\/strong>
\nWe were taught about a food pyramid that actually looked more like a finishing diet for hogs, ate what we wanted, rode our BMX bikes everywhere, and had no guilt about global affairs.<\/strong>
\nChildren today are gifted with generational guilt by their parents, teachers, and both public and social media. We crushed them before they developed into functional beings, added out phobias, and psychosis to the mix, and to make ourselves as a society feel better plastered over the cracks with SSRI type meds to conceal we were trying to adult the children before they were ready for it.<\/strong>
\nSimilar to a vegan cat, or a teams toddler we were ready to teach the youth that they were recipient of a bounty they didn\u2019t deserve and needed to be guilty as charged, my children were not allowed video games, and they were teenagers before we got Internet or a computer. They grew up gloriously feral, and are now still relatively socially maladjusted, but healthy physically, if not mentally according to society. They got home cooked meals, and played outside weather permitting, with no siren call of cable to keep them indoors, there was less off a fight to get them outside. My grandchildren are sofar following the same direction and I don\u2019t feel that this is a bad thing. Feral children are more interested in the world around them that sedated, and electronically stimulated zombie children can be, because they look at and into what\u2019s around them instead of the screen.<\/strong><\/p>\n