Big Pharma and Big Food: Conspiring to make you healthy or to get your money?

Make no mistake, there are already "death panels" here in the medical establishment of the United States, and it decides who lives and who dies by how much money they have. Sorry, that was supposed to be light-hearted!

There is a medical researcher employed by the Feds who is talking to reporters off-the-record,  casting aspersions on the government's "war against fat". Scientist X seems to think that the government's medical wing is acting in the interests of Big Pharma when they cancelled a study that was looking to see if altering diet and exercise could treat diabetes more effectively than traditional medical intervention. This is the master plan according to Scientist X:

• Step 1: Convince Americans that not being thin is a disease that needs to be cured.
• Step 2: Encourage the government to implement public health programs that, through lifestyle interventions, will purportedly make people thinner, and, by hypothesis, healthier.
• Step 3: Document the complete failure of these programs in the medical literature.
• Step 4:  Get the government to approve a host of new diet drugs, since it’s now been demonstrated that lifestyle interventions don’t do anything to help reverse this deadly epidemic.
• Step 5: Profit!

The study that was cancelled (after 11 years!) called losing only 5% of your body weight a success, so perhaps it did not push it's subjects hard enough or long enough, allowing for a certain conspiratorial thinking to lead to the conclusion that the government doesn't want people to be thin if it doesn't profit someone. (I suggested a few weeks ago that if the study showed that diet and exercise is as effective as taking meds, isn't that a success?) The study suggested that being fat is not the problem when it comes to health problems like diabetes, therefore contradicting Big Pharma's push to find profitable weight-loss drugs.

No need for a soda ban when you can buy a pill to lose the fat. Shut up and keep buying!

A blogatrix over at Jezebel has a pretty cutting addition to the doctor's suspicions:

You often hear anti-fat crusaders complaining that "fat people don't want to have an honest conversation about fat," while refusing to acknowledge things like multi-billion-dollar industries that market candy cereal to children and then diet pills to adults. Or the ways that a lifetime of consuming hyperrich foods (deliberately saturated with high fructose corn syrup thanks to federal subsidies) can literally change people's body chemistries and leave them largely powerless to maintain significant long term weight loss..... Or the fact that some people, regardless of lifestyle, are just fat. 

To willfully ignore all of those complicating factors means that you DON'T want to have an "honest conversation about fat"—you want to have a masturbatory conversation about your preconceived notions about fat people's self-control.

It's a big and complicated ball of wax, and western medical thinking tends to zero in on singular causes then look to eliminate them without disturbing the ecosystems around them, which is near impossible.  It becomes even less possible when entrenched interests in the reigning ecosystem prevents research from coming close to questioning the possibility of causes that would threaten profit-centers. Big Food & Big Soda, I'm looking at you.

Though on the surface I am eating less/doing more, I've also changed what I'm eating and what I'm doing. In changing the "whats", I've reallocated my grocery funds from more refined & sugary foods to less refined whole fruit and veg and whole grains, and my time and funds from hours and hours of expending calories to minutes and minutes of building muscle. (I'm also discovering that sugar addiction is real.)

Getting yourself right in terms of weight and health should cost you less in terms of expending money on food and exercise, and less on medical care and, cough cough, Big Pharma. I think there is a book in that assumption. For now, this blog post will have to do.

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We celebrated our youngest's first birthday on Saturday, centered around a side of salmon I cured over the week to put on bagels, and a big 3 layer white cake with sugary frosting and vanilla ice cream that I also made. The cake and ice cream was killer, one of those things that definitely benefit from my culinary training, but there was an odd juxtaposition. 

An actual photo, if you replace burger with cake and ice cream, and Paris Hilton with  me.

While I was shovelling in some cake and ice cream (hey, it was the weekend!), a friend of the family who I haven't seen in months and months made note of my weight loss, and said she thought she saw me in the park with my daughter from a distance, but who she saw was too thin to be me. It was me, yep. I wish I had the ability to not see myself for a few months, so I could appreciate how different I look. I still see a puffy fattish dude, but my belt size has shrunk and all my tight-clothes now fit well. I hope I ease up on myself in the next 10-20 lbs, or losing weight will be the least of my problems!

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DAILY AVERAGE: 2666
This week passed at a furious clip, trying to return to normalcy. Two things prevented that: now that our main supermarket is out of commission due to the storm, I've been buying at the local smaller, more expensive, less fresh market and it's bumming me out. On top of that, our baby sitter and her teenage daughter stayed with us for three days, as her home in the Rockaways sustained major damage and still has no power. To have her haul ass all the way here to help us out, it would be wrong to send her home to suffer through a Nor'easter in an unheated place. 

Eating was heavier than I would like, and only lifted weights once, as I was too beat up from pushing the bike through storms and snows to do a second lift.

MONDAY COUNT: 2870
Betsy back to work, Edie back to school, me back to...lifting weights, doing laundry, making proper food to eat, running chores, Milli Milling it up. Wholefoods on Houston is about 90% restocked, but the Pathmark I do the majority of my shopping is still has no power and is flooded.

Tried to have a good eating day, but got so hungry in the evening, just wore me down. Considered "cheating" and not reporting it, but that would be incredibly....lame. Just gotta give myself a pass and hope my will power helps me through tomorrow. It's not a war of individual days, but battle days that average out to a monthly war....

AM SNACK: 7:45am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 10am, steel cut oatmeal with butter, brown sugar, vanilla, cinnamon and salt, 375 cal

LUNCH: 12:15pm, sardine & avocado on whole wheat toast, baby carrots, 7oz diet coke, 580 cal
In the rush to restock from undersupplied stores, I picked up sardines packed in water instead of olive oil, and the avocado was waaaay too unripe. Still, it was nice to have a normal, healthy meal.

PM SNACK: 3:45pm, frozen chicken nuggets, 7oz diet sprite, 250 cal

DINNER: 6:45pm, teriyaki meatballs, roasted brussel sprouts, whole wheat cous cous, water, 1140 cal

EVENING SNACKS: 10-11pm, handful of pretzels, small bowl of chocolate chips & peanuts, 3 mini knishes, +/- 500 cal

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TUESDAY COUNT: 3025

Again, stress & tiredness came together in a tsunami of hunger at the end of the day, and I found myself eating half a pint of ice cream. Our childcare-giver lives in the Rockaways, and her home was wiped off the face of the earth. She made it in today with her teenage daughter, and me n' B immediately offered to let them stay with us for a few days. It's the right thing to do, but ice cream makes it a little easier, he he.

AM SNACK: 8am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 9:45am, smoothie, 350 cal

No pomegranate juice on hand, substituted whole milk. Bananas were very unripe due to the supply disruption, so the smoothie was oddly unsweet.

PM SNACK: 12:30pm, momma salad, 100 cal

LUNCH: 2:45pm, quarter pounder, fries, diet coke, 900 cal

DINNER pt 1: 6:30pm, slice of pizza, 7oz diet sprite, +/-250 cal

EVENING SNORT: 7:30pm, bourbon on ice, +/- 200 cal
Whiskey, when watered down a little, is delicious.

DINNER pt 2: 9pm, hijiki tofu patty, spinach salad, +/- 700 cal

EVENING SNACK: 10pm, ice cream, +/-500 cal

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WEDNESDAY COUNT: 2240

Made it to Red Hook to teach. The school is open, but also being used as a relief center, as the whole hood was underwater in the hurricane and parts of the neighborhood still doesn't have power. Had four students to cook with, pumped out about 150 meals to be distributed through a church tomorrow. Road the big bike home through the start of a Nor'easter, snow and wet and wind, was fine except on the Manhattan Bridge, had to walk over slowly.

Not the greatest eating day, but I was busy and was able to keep it relatively reasonable. A little left over ice cream snuck in at the end, hrumph.

AM SNACK: 8:45am, iced green tea, 25 cal

AM SNACK: 11:30am, momma salad, pickle, 115 cal

LUNCH: 12:15pm, whole wheat pasta with sauce and chicken sausage, 900 cal

SCHOOL SNACK: 4pm, brownie, +/- 300 cal

DINNER: 7:45pm, chicken marsala, rosemary potatoes, spinach with garlic, water, a little ice cream, +/- 900 cal

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THURSDAY COUNT: 3220

Woke up early and road a loaded cargo bike slowly over 14 miles to Queens Village in the remnants of a Nor'easter, where I was on my feet for most of 8 hours cooking knishes and cleaning dishes, followed by another 14 mile bike ride home in the dark loaded with knishes. I was invited to cook with friends catering a kosher event, so it was a good opportunity for experience. Sure, I ate over the budget, but when I passed out a little after 8pm, my body could have eaten more -- due to extra calories burned in a 30 mile bike ride, I think I accommodated it appropriately.

BREAKFAST: 5:30am, cornflakes and whole milk, a banana, handful of chocolate covered espresso beans, +/- 450cal

AM SNACK: 7:30am, sausage biscuit, hash brown, diet coke,  570 cal

LUNCH: 2pm, Indian food, +/- 1000 cal

PM SNACK: 5pm, 20oz diet ginger ale, 0 cal

DINNER: 6:30pm, 2 slices pizza, packaged pastra +/- 1000 cal

EVENING SNACK: 7:45pm, ca taste of pie & ice cream, +/- 200cal

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FRIDAY COUNT: 1975

Must have been a calorie hangover, as it was almost accidental how low I came in today.

AM SNACK: 3:30am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 10:15am, Fage full fat yogurt with honey, vanilla and roasted almonds, 460 cal

LUNCH: 2pm, momma salad, pickle, two PB&J on whole wheat potato bread, water, 860 cal

DINNER: 7pm, Andouille chicken sausage, steamed string beans, whole wheat Israeli cous-cous, cheesy poofs, 7oz diet sprite, 630 cal