see link at the end of this post
George Will is not my favorite journalist. He says some stupid things sometimes. Recently he mentioned illegitimate births among African Americans --- these days, many scholars know full well you don't mention something like that without giving a background.... I guess George W. doesn't know that white women are more likely to have abortions....hence a high rate of births among African American single mothers....
anyway
he got it right this time. I wish he would use his clout with the dairy industry.... get them to diversify into soy products ---
Where the Obesity Grows
by George Will
Washington Postexcerpt:
...During World War II, when meat, dairy products and sugar were scarce, heart disease plummeted. It rebounded when rationing ended. "When you adjust for age," Pollan writes, "rates of chronic diseases like cancer and type 2 diabetes are considerably higher today than they were in 1900." Type 2 diabetes -- a strange epidemic: one without a virus, bacteria or other microbe -- was called adult-onset diabetes until children began getting it. Now it is a $100 billion-a-year consequence of, among other things, obesity related to a corn-based diet, which is partly because steaks and chops have pushed plants off the plate.
Four of the top 10 causes of American deaths -- coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke and cancer -- have, Pollan says, "well-established links" to diet, particularly through "the superabundance of cheap calories of sugar and fat." What he calls America's "national eating disorder" is not just that Americans reportedly eat one in five meals in cars (gas stations make more from food and cigarettes than from gasoline) and that one in three children eat fast food every day. He also means the industrialization of agriculture, wherein we developed a food chain that derives too much of its calories -- energy -- not from the sun through photosynthesis but from fossil fuels...
see "Obesity - a Weighty Issue for Children," Environmental Health Perspectives, October 2003.
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