It's Not the Calorie Counts, Stupid

[trigger warning: food, calories, fat shaming. please enjoy this completely nontriggering otter instead.]

Recently, as I have whinged about repeatedly, I discovered that my constant nausea and digestive problems* are a result of biliary dyskinesia, basically gallstones without the stones. The only treatment is a low fat, cholesterol free diet.

Do you have any idea what a fucking pain in the ass it is to have to eat low fat, no cholesterol? At every meal? (At first, I thought I could have 20 grams of fat in one meal as long as I stayed low fat the rest of the day. This is not true. Not true at all.) Admittedly, having to go gluten free would be exponentially worse, but this is bad enough.

Forget about fast food. They don't sell anything low fat other than the soda.

Forget about ordering in. There's no way of telling what's in anything from the menu descriptions alone, and forget about asking the person taking the order. They don't know or they'll lie to get you off the phone.

Is the food in question cheap, convenient and tasty? I can't eat it.

Hey, I can eat tha-- wow, that's expensive. If I buy this, I'll only be eating 3 days this week. Hey, that's cheap, and I can eat it. Yay! I have to soak it for how long? I was kind of intending to eat before tomorrow. A crockpot? I don't even own one of those.

This is every meal for me since January 4th. So you tell me, why is it such a mystery that posting calorie counts at fast food restaurants doesn't work? Short answer: desperation. Long answer: privilege.

Desperation: There's nothing wrong with occasionally eating at McDonalds, for the average person, anyway. Your body can and will absorb a few extra calories, grams of fat and teaspoons of salt. So the the occasional McDonalds visitor won't be swayed by calorie counts, and they're not who calorie counts are for.

Very few people are eating at McDonalds on a regular basis because they think it's a good idea. What McDonalds is is cheap, convenient, and quick. If you're low on money, time and transportation, McDonalds meets your immediate needs: food that you can get to that's cheap and quick. Calorie counts won't change that.

Large portions of the population of this country do not have access to grocery stores, let alone organic food, and couldn't afford it if they had access to it. If your choices are dinner from the convenient store down the street or McDonalds, um, well, yeah. There you go. I may not be able to afford the food I need, but at least I can go look at it.

Privilege: This is what the FDA thinks the problem is:

As the FDA lamented in a 2004 report, "It may be that consumers do not take advantage of the available information on the food label to control their weight, perhaps because they do not appreciate how the information could be used for weight management purposes or perhaps because they find it too hard to apply the available information to such purposes."

Yes, Official FDA Lamentor, the American public is simply too stupid to "appreciate" what "this sandwich contains more than one day's worth of calories" means. Fat people are mouth breathing morons who are lucky not to drown in the shower. (Don't look up!)

Let's imagine a situation in which a mother and two children have to choose what to eat for dinner. The mother knows she can buy 3 hamburgers and 2 regular fries for $5, not including tax. Hmmm . . . wow, that dinner is not healthy. At all. Well, it's that or walk 4 miles to the nearest grocery story and buy, what exactly, for $5? Anything that would feed 3 people for $5 would likely be as bad as the hamburgers and fries, so why not save a lot of time and effort and just eat the freakin' hamburgers while we're here?

Now ask yourself, "how useful is nutritional information in this situation"? The answer is "not very".

The answer to the "problem" of obesity isn't calorie count posters at fast food joints. It's better access to healthier foods for less money.

Hmmm . . . well, I guess I can see why they're sticking with calorie counts.

*Trust me, the whinging could have been worse. I could have told you exactly what my digestive problems are. You must have good karma!

Not Making Things Better

mackey, whole, foods, discrimination, health care,
Okay, it's well established I'm not a fan of Bob Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods.

His latest idea to "fix" health care (from AmericaBlog) is spectacular:

Keep in mind that the guy who runs Whole Foods is a right-wing Republican nutjob. His latest brilliant idea is to give employees greater in-store discounts if they have lower blood pressure, cholesterol, body mass index, and don't smoke. The idea is interesting, but also a bit unnerving. I have low blood pressure (good low blood pressure), but it's not because of anything I've ever done. It simply is. I've also been relatively skinny most of my life, again simply because I am. Why should I get more employee benefits for things I had zero control over? And an even bigger question, what does the Americans with Disabilities Act have to say about employers who decrease employee benefits based on their physical maladies (high blood pressure and high cholesterol)?

This is insane. I have no control over having porphyria. None. It's a genetic quirk, nothing more. So, because my blood pressure randomly skews from dangerously low to ER-doc-says-holy-shit! high, I will get a lower in store discount. I have done nothing to maintain my low weight (BMI) and low cholesterol. In fact, considering the crap that I tend to eat, I should have high both.

Things like blood pressure, BMI and cholesterol are far less controllable than you might think. My mother has had high cholesterol forever, and has been eating an extremely low fat diet forever. Her body pumps out way too much cholesterol. She can't control it. One of the lawyers here at work has a fantastic BMI, and dangerously high cholesterol. He eats right, exercises daily, and has had several stents put in. Another lawyer has a terrible BMI and fantastic cholesterol and blood pressure. He drinks scotch, smokes cigars, eats fatty foods, and according to his doctor, has the vascular system of a man half his age.

I think Bob Mackey should just go for it. I mean, high blood pressure and obesity are more common in African Americans, so let's give them a lower discount than whites. Latinos are more subject to diabetes, so they'll get a lower discount, too. Women are the only ones who get ovarian and cervical cancer, so they should get a lower discount as well.

I mean, if you're going to be discriminatory, own it. Go all the fucking way.

The Government Can't Do Anything Right

socialism, health care, obama, whole, foods, mackey, conservative, liberal, funny
MB Shopper, at the Whole Foods message boards, wins an internet for the following description of everything the government can't do right:

Sigh.

Once again, for the benefit of the goernment-can't-get-anything-right flock:

I AM AN AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SHITHEEL

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the national weather service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and tTechnology and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issed by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to ny house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all it's valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then log on to the internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and post on freerepublic.com and fox news forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.

----

And apparently, the Global Positioning Satellite system is POS, right?

The only reason government doesn't work is because conservative Republican administrations defunded and/or patronage staffed them with people with ties to special business interests: to wit the last FDA, Dept of Interior and Agriculture under Bush. No one seems to have a problem with pumping over $500Bil to the Defense Department which last I hear is a socialized entity.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if you don't like paying taxes, move to sunny Somalia. Your earnings will be entirely tax free.