Death by Diet

Uploaded: Sep 24, 2016

So I went to the doctors this week for the general checkup. They ask so many more questions now than they ever used to.

There’s the ones we expect:

- Do you smoke?

- Do you drink and if so, how many days a week?

The one they added a couple years ago:

- Is anyone at home hurting you physically or emotionally?

And this time there was a whole slew of new ones:

- How many times a week do you drink more than 3 glasses of alcohol at a time?

- Do you smoke marijuana?

- In the past month have you felt depression, anxiety, fatigue, stress or insomnia?

- Do you have a health care agent?

I told the nurse it was good to hear the new questions, but how about a question asking what I eat?

- Ms. Stec, how many sugary beverages do you drink a week?

- Ms. Stec, do you eat processed foods every day?

- Ms. Stec, how many servings of vegetables do you consume daily?

She looked at me quizzically.

Isn’t it true that nearly 40% of all the deaths in the U.S. are caused by diseases directly related to our diet? The Center for Science in the Public Interest tells us “unhealthy diet contributes to approximately 678,000 deaths each year in the U.S. (out of an approx 2.5 million deaths per year per CDC), due to nutrition- and obesity-related diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, and type 2 diabetes. In the last 30 years, obesity rates have doubled in adults, tripled in children, and quadrupled in adolescents.”

Same week, this silly but timely graphic made it’s way around social media.

And again I ask, where’s the beef?

Or for that matter, the sodium, processed foods, simple carbohydrates and overeating in general?

Isn’t that what we all should be dying to talk about?

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