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Guest Post: You Can't Fool Mother Nature For Long: Profiting from Sickcare
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
You Can't Fool Mother Nature For Long: Profiting from Sickcare
Sickcare, the fast-food/packaged food industries, the entertainment industry and the Marketing/Mainstream Media complex are all facets of one system.
In America, the implicit belief system promoted by marketing is that you can eat anything you want in whatever quantity you want, and if anything goes wrong with your body or mind, there is a pill or procedure to fix it. In other words, your diet and fitness level is given lip service, but what really counts is access to all the medications that are constantly touted and pushed by the Marketing/Mainstream Media complex.
It would be comical if it wasn't so tragic: if you've seen one advert pushing a med, you've seen them all: the description of the disorder, the fear and pain it inflicts, the solution in a pill, and then a voice-over, spoken at a manic pace to fit all the possible side-effects in the waning moments of a 60-second spot: suicidal thoughts, symptoms of heart attack, heart attack, itchy skin, dizziness, bizarre dreams, and on and on. Good golly, all these side-effects from one med? What happens when they're combined with 7 or 8 or 11 other meds with their own swarms of nasty side effects?
The core of sickcare is this: creating and treating illness is highly profitable. For creating illness, we have the packaged food, Big Food and fast food industries. Does anyone seriously believe that human beings can function healthily for decades on a diet of sugar water, fried potatoes, white-bread buns and fat-larded hamburgers?
Large family gatherings during the holidays are often interesting opportunities to witness the consequences of corporate brainwashing via the Marketing/Mainstream Media complex. For example, I heard more than once that So-and-So dislikes fish and vegetables, and only like burgers and fries or equivalents such as hamburger "steak."
In a surreal divergence of entertainment and reality, our society broadcasts popular food shows in which chefs routinely assemble impossibly complex dishes while our schools produce students who cannot identify a healthy home-cooked meal, much less actually prepare one.
In a similar fashion, fitness has been marginalized in much of American education; in our rush to raise math and science to "must haves," we have neglected finance and the science of nutrition and fitness--applications of math and science that really count.
In fitness, another surreal divergence has opened between the entertainment provided by "extreme sports" touting superhuman endurance and daring, and the average American's ability and desire to run a mile (or even a kilometer). We have been brainwashed into a nation of spectator/consumers who know very little about living a nutritious and fit life. We are content to watch extreme sports training on TV but are averse to becoming even marginally fit ourselves.
Preparing programming and food for spectator/consumers is highly profitable; teaching people how to prepare healthy meals at home and becoming fit on their own is not.
The food industry is the tangible analog of the entertainment industry. Both have access to reams of data about what activates the reward centers of the human brain--what tastes, sights and smells bypass the conscious mind and go directly to the primitive brain centers that control appetite and response to high-value, rare-in-Nature triggers such as sugar, fat and salt.
Fast food and packaged food are specifically engineered to trigger these reward centers. No wonder they "taste good"--they are super-saturated with tastes that are sparing and rare in natural food.
In a similar fashion, newscasters speak with an unnatural urgency and tone that we instinctively respond to as evidence of danger or threat.
The entire sickcare system that includes the food/diet industries and "entertainment" is engineered to maximize profit by triggering instincts wired to reward sensitivity to danger/threat and sugar, fat and salt. In addition to these instinctive triggers, corporate cartels and their handmaidens, the Marketing/Mainstream Media complex, have actively embedded the craving for sugar, salt, fat and "excitement" (of the profitable, corporate kind) in American culture. Consumption of these triggers is viewed as "cool," "hip," "elite" activities, or as culturally sanctioned expressions of self-reward, i.e. of "treating yourself because you deserve it" and self-indulgence, i.e. spontaneity as instant gratification.
Then there's over-treatment. If we test 1,000 people for cancer and treat 50 and end up with one person who received treatment that extended their life while 49 others suffered early deaths or negative consequences of needless treatment, then American sickcare calls it good.
Those statistics come from studies of treatment of prostate cancer, as detailed in a Scientific American report (February 2012 issue): The Great Prostate Debate: Evidence shows that screening does more harm than good. (Subscription required, or find the issue at a library)
These are difficult issues in any caregiving system, but the downside of overtreatment and overtesting is rarely addressed in American sickcare because somebody's making big money from administering the tests and treatment, and from suing anyone who "withholds" treatment-- even if the treatment helps one in a thousand and demonstrably harms 49 others.
Mother Nature cannot be fooled for long. A sedentary lifestyle and a diet heavy with sugar, empty carbs, salt and unhealthy fats derived from factory-farm animals cannot sustain a human body selected for an omnivorous, active hunting-gathering lifestyle. Health is simply impossible when the body is destroyed by this sort of diet and inactive life.
Infectious diseases can be miraculously cured by a pill--an antibiotic. But cancer and other "lifestyle" diseases are not caused by single-source infections; in these diseases and chronic conditions, health is rarely restored with a pill or even a handful of pills.
How can anyone be healthy in a culture whose most powerful industries are actively and ceaselessly promoting consumption of products and "entertainments" that derange the mind and body because they are unnatural super-doses designed to "hit" natural triggers so hard that resistance is futile?
Our caregivers are tasked with "giving lifestyle advice" to their patients, each of whom gets a few moments a month at best with their doctor/nurse, and then the patient goes home and absorbs 4-8 hours a day of Marketing/Mainstream Media pushing of illness-producing consumables and a fear-based desire for an endless array of costly "magic pills" to fix all the diseases which mysteriously ail us--for what we eat and our fitness levels are never mentioned as causal factors.
There are never enough tests and treatments--more can be added every year-- and of course there can never be enough money spent on healthcare. We just need to leave enough money to consume the food and lifestyle that spawns many of the illnesses, and then we can spend the rest on treating these diseases.
Mother Nature is not amused by the destruction of her systems for profit. Sadly, it isn't the corporate cartels who suffer the consequences of what they push for profit, it's the people who absorbed the marketing and consumed the fantasy.
"Without health there is no happiness. An attention to health, then, should take the place of every other object." (Thomas Jefferson, 1787)
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I'm sure free health care would go a long way towards making us all take more personal responsibility for our health.
;-)
Mother nature doenst exist.
You will still die, THEN WHAT?
Jesus is the answer.
Lol.
Jesus is the answer.
So are blankets infested with smallpox.
Peddle your archaic simpleton bullshit somewhere else.
Jesus was a template, a form-factor about what happens when you piss off both Church and State and don't cure youself by going for the monaaay!! Erin Brockovich did and does very well, Karen Silkwood 2-19-1946 - 11-13-1974 R.I.H.P. not so much. Something about cheap Truth that doesn't abide the Laws of Nature. If you don't pay, you don't properly value the education.
The price of Truth is worth the Rest of your life, and that's no mattress advertizing.
Making people sick and mentally retarded is the basis of the US economy. You can't walk five metres down the street without seeing the obese, the retarded, the lazy and the stupid.
But the sad reality is that Americans and others deserve it. They are just so stupid and lazy.
Read:
http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Wealth-Mr-Andrew-Costello/dp/1463523017/ref
I'd like to believe that's not my neighborhood, but you are probably correct in that observation.
I see the truth of this post everyday.
But let's be honest, shall we? The mortality for every single human is 100%. See the top right of this webpage.
If you exercise and eat right and plan on living forever, guess what - eventually you'll be in your 90s with dementia, your joints hurting, peeing over yourself, with your children cursing the fact that they have to take care of you.
No way out of this one people.
My mother is 92 and has dementia so bad right now I would classify her as insane. That is no way to live but there is not a thing physically wrong with her. Nothing. No heart disease, no liver problems, no diabetes, no lung problems, nothing ... nada. Doctor says she could say alive another 10 years easily. She'll be broke but she won't know it because her mind is so far gone. What is sad is the prevalence of obesity in young people and there is no doubt in my mind that it comes from processed sugars and carbohydrates. They might live a long time or they might not, but their years past 60 will be miserable. My mother's health didn't start down until she was 89. Before then she was very active and alert. As for me, I plan to stay healthy up until the end and die at age 77.
About sugar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z5X0i92OZQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Sorry about your mom. Peace
The best way out is to go out fighting. Bring it..wtf it is, just bring it, damn it!!
All this talk about animals.
I was looking at a chicken egg farm that was for sale. They have about 10 warehouses that they use for the chickens to lay their eggs. 3 of the them are for cages and the others are straight floor. That is about 40,000 chickens either in cages or sitting on their own shit. The farm produces about 20,000 eggs a day. I started to think about the free range option. Can you imagine 40k chickens roaming around laying eggs and crapping all over the place? or put them in cages that you can drag about the grass periodically? There is no way that one can run this business in a commercial way with natural methods. Now, the world has 7 billion people and soon 9 billion or carrying capacity for the world. How can you begin to feed all these people without putting chickens in cages as if it was a production line or monoculture? I to a certain degree blame all those people popping kids out like there is no tomorrow.
Honestly, I am not heartless, but I would feel good to own this business knowing that I am feeding people. I would try to provide the best feed that was available and do it as humanly as possible. At the end, I know that it will not be as nutritious, but it is still a good source of nutrition. It sucks, but as long as that couple in tv keeps on popping out kids, the chicken won't be free ranging. Like somebody said on a prevoius post, it is a complex issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19_Kids_and_Counting
There is one not far from us. (Unfortunately....)
They keep 8 structures, each one several hundred yards long. The fans that vent them are larger than a man. They have to be because down below is poison gas in a confined space not support of life.
And the other side where they process the birds, it's usually migrant or illegal labor. They dont even look you in the eye when they huddle at lunch time. But will slice you up if you are caught alone.
We still eat chicken but only from the bird, not any more processed crap in the bag or whatever.
Yes, I was reading about some of the problems with these types of operation. Aside from fumes and all the pollution (droppings, water, etc ) that it causes, you get a lot of problems with the chickens themselves. These chickens (not the caged ones) get to roam around in the warehouses which is a very confined space for the numbers. Therefore, the end up sitting on the droppings which gets caught in their feathers and feet. It causes fungi infections and god knows what parasite.
The illegal alien part is not a problem because the farm is in Uruguay and 30 miles away from the city in one of the lowest density population countries in the world. I would never do this business in the US. Small chicken farmers get big time screwed by the big boys and their contracts. Not to mention all those bleeding hearts.
Imagine the operation that I mention will provide about 10,000 people with part of the breakfast. It gives you a perspective on what it takes to feed even a modest size city. Here is a link of similar operation in the Philippines. It looks just like an assembly line.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&NR=1&v=DghMDEGIxe0
Have you seen the chicken house section on the film Food Inc.? They cover it pretty well. These things are not chickens. And the chicken growers are immediately placed in deep debt for corporate leverage.
Yes, I saw it. Eye opening really. They go in debt because they are contractually forced to buy equipment or change methods of production. They might even be told to kill off their chickens just so the price doesn't go down. Some of these farmers are slaves to the lords. Not much has changed from past history. I would NOT even consider commercial farming in this country.
p.s. Fuck corn subsidies.
As odd or distasteful as it may sound to some folks (like me), they can already "grow" meat in a laboratory, with no animals needed...other than their cells or whatever to begin with. Tastes identical to the "real" thing apparently. And folks in the developed world get way too much of their calories from meat to begin with. Many people globally eat no meat or very little....and many of them are healthier too
As odd or distasteful as it may sound to some folks (like me), they can already "grow" meat in a laboratory, with no animals needed...other than their cells or whatever to begin with. Tastes identical to the "real" thing apparently. And folks in the developed world get way too much of their calories from meat to begin with. Many people globally eat no meat or very little....and many of them are healthier too
I bought some organic ketchup not too long ago that is made without sugar and very low in sodium. I mixed a little horseradish sauce with it and have been using it on everything. Today I bought a Chik-Fil-A sandwhich (for convenience sake) and used a pack of Hunts ketchup and couldn't believe the difference. I could taste the sugar and it almost made me sick. This is something I am determined to pay attention to from now on.
I used to run out of Heinz in Ohio for Ketchup. The process that makes these is pretty similar to what makes vinegar.
The difference is that you need to make sure to do it right. There is life in those foods that can hurt you if it spoils.
Hell a long time ago in the city, you could walk past crates of tomatoes with a salt shaker and a knife and have a couple down the block as you go. They don't mind.
Now? It's all clean pavement, everything is inside no one allowed and every pound is tracked from field to your table.
http://www.medicalincmovie.com/Medical_Inc.html
You mean my £100 jar of Elemis Pro-Collagen Marine Cream won't stop me from getting wrinkles or saggy skin?
If you live long enough you will get wrinkles and sags.
Ultimately the Undertaker is the only one who can beautify you so that your death is not such a traumatic experience for those paying respects. Most of the funerals I attended were of the closed coffin and crematation. Messy.
What is really crazy is some years back our area needed funeral home vehicles to be equipped with air properly cooling the bodies, otherwise they have to stop at every gas station to empty the cooler with bags of ice in 125 degree heat to preserve the body for an hour or two for the trip.
The Cleveland 180 Diet (180 because it turns the diseases around 180 degrees) is someting to think about. They showed on TV people who kept to this diet and actually reversed the damage in their coronary arteries:
http://my.clevelandclinic.org/wellness/reclaim_your_health.aspx
I've read the various "green juices" do the same.
I love my doctors but I'd rather see them in the mall rather then in their office or on the OR table...not to mention the costs.
GL.
oops sorry, bad post
I just love the U. S. medical system, with its emphasis on "maintenance" diseases
where you have to go back to the doctor every week or two, for life.
AHDH, as a result of jailing our babies inside of plastic cocoons, not allowing them to walk, run, shout, go out and play ...
Allergies, totally invented by modern medicine, when the mind starts driving the bodily systems haywire in response to the lies and confusion it is being fed all the time.
Smoking and its attendant problems ... it stinks, its expensive, and the only good thing it does for anyone is to ping ping ping on that panic reation button to the point where it becomes anesthetizing ....
Fat, the craving for pleasure long after the pleasure is gone, and the diseases, the wekanesses, the lack of functionality, the loss of natueral beauty, the diets constantly conteributing to the loss of self confidence ....an excuse for injecting even more unatural chemicals (artificial sweeteners, etc.) into the body ... diabetes guaranteeing the need for constant care, pharmacy, special needs, for life ...
Heart attack resuscitation, so that bodies can be warehoused for decades and their health insurance and life savings sucked dry while the inhabitants consciousness erodes into nothing ....
Cancer, now the largest industry in the U.S.A, instigated by all the unatural chemicals in the air, the water, the food ....and used as an excuse for the most elaborate procedures and inhumane treatments since the abolition of slavery ....
yeppers ....
Tip: If your dentist looks at the insurance in your file before He looks at your face, change dentists.
It's called a wallet biopsy.
a number of scientists think allergies have exploded due to GMOs and the new level and nature of pesticides. How many people did you know who were gluten intolerant when you were in school?
I will eat what I fucking want. Ho Hos Mt dew Cracklins(rendered pig fat with a little salt) Mcdonalds dollar menu. Enjoy life.
YOU ARE ALL FOOD COMMIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just like it says at the top. No matter what you do in the end you are dead.
Have some fun once in a while for godsakes.
I bet all you live on your own 40 acres raise everthing organically. NOT
OH and I bet sitting sitting at a computer screen is completely unhealthy. If so than why are you posting?
The world is a shitty place with people doing anything to make a buck. You people are just waking up to this? Get a fricking clue.
I am voting for Ron Paul. FOOD FREEDOM!!!!
I bet most of you would would vote for that food control FREAK Bloomberg.
Right on Charles. What also needs to be discussed is how the medical estabishment preys on oder folks. I have an aunt who has now had 8 hip repacements plus a new heart valve (as a purely cautionary measure)over the past 20 years. I have an uncle who has had at east 20 stents put in various arteries and has spent an entire month on a ventiator (tube fed) fiighting pneumonia. Counting meds these 2 each average well north of 200k/yr in health care with the past few being over 500k each. The majority of their care is paid by the government. The medical community gets rich and has zero incentive to do anything but keep their patrons under their "care". Neither has any incentive (cash out of pocket?) significant enough to incent a change in lifestye. Solutions anyone?
...and how could I forget Alzheimer's ...
brought on by a lifetime of mental laziness
(no one who ever learns to speak more than one language ever suffers from this loss ....)
After reading all of the posts which I think are fantastic, I realized that no one even mentioned STRESS.
I think that today there is so much stress in our society. This stress in and of itself can make us sick. Constant stress can break down the immune system that keeps us well. And when you think about all of the stress caused by the failure of our Banks to assess risk, which caused a gobal meltdown. It makes you wonder.
Just how much stress has been caused by loss of Jobs, loss of a Home, loss of a Marriage, etc.
Yes, stress is also making us sick.
I know there are plenty of people out there who fit the author's description, no doubt. But as a 40 year old man, most of the people that I know care very much about their health these days. Guys who were never interested in fitness at all before tell me about a half marathon or triathlon they are preparing for...and I could probably name 10 women who run or bike as well out of our group of friends. And although everybody (well, the large majority) eats fast food from time to time, I know very few who eat it as their typical meal....though the few that do - you can tell it right away! Bottom line: yes, education is low...and lower income folks esp. eat poorly and don't exercise ("good" food is a lot more expensive than 99 cent hamburgers at rally's, though).....but there are LOTS of people who are my age that are taking care of themselves better than ever, or at least attempting to!
Trillions for "SICK and DYING" indeed.
Some people believe the linchpin for there being 7 billion people on Earth is [cheap] oil-fueled agribusiness, distribution, plastics, petrochemicals, and so on. The latest Zeitgeist movie treads on these subjects. I'm not endorsing the Zeitgeist movement, but financial and peak-oil parts of the latest movie are flat out awesome and the movie did predict OWS before it happened. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w
Max Keiser and the financial part is awesome, it starts around 0:42:00 and runs into the 1:20:00 range
The "Beyond The Peak" part for all you Peak Oil Non-Believers starts at 2:23:43
In this long comment thread (and associated links), I have read recommendations against the following: meat, dairy, sugar, fruit, potatoes, corn, legumes, salt, bread, pasta, (wheat in general), alcohol, etc.
All the exclusions combined result in a very narrow diet. I see this problem in the general literature. It seems to me that many recommendations are simply incorrect. But I don't have the specific education to determine which.
Failing the necessary expertise, my approach is to eat all in moderation while keeping the refined sugars low. Time will tell.
nothing about legumes (even specifically beans or lentils) was mentioned.
Nor did anyone say anthing against fruit. Imagine things much?
I don't believe my imagination is any more remarkable than anyone else's. However, I do think it exceeds your thoroughness and reading comprehension. Included in my post are the words, "and associated links".
The recommendation against fruit is on the following web site:
http://www.dietdoctor.com/lchf
Fruit is included in the category, "Avoid if you can".
Legumes are indeed mentioned in one the "associated links". See the following:
http://robbwolf.com/faq/
Under the section titled "Autoimmunity", grains and legumes are linked to autoimmune disease. The article suggests eliminating them from the diet.
my $0.02 for the discussion on healthy food.
Chia seeds. They keep things moving and a good source of some
other nutrients. Can be taken every day sprinkled into anything.
agreed, shame they make such a mess in the Vitamix tho
my $0.02 for the discussion on healthy food.
Chia seeds. They keep things moving and a good source of some
other nutrients. Can be taken every day sprinkled into anything.
overall I am quite impressed with this post y'all still managed to get in your quota of misogyny and racism (in a fucking food post but hey y'all work in mysterious ways sometimes) but overall it was pretty decent, I'm raising my kale-maca-goji berry smoothie to you :*
Seven chuckles in that itty -bitty can of kekekekekekeke, gotta' love it. Contadina had eight great tomatoes in the can, but hey, you're trying.
never heard of you
I don't agree with the premise that fat is rare in nature.
Science writer, Gary Taubes, in his book "Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It" claims that paleontologists say that our early ancestors preferred eating animals with the most fat. He also notes that cultures still living today as they did many centuries ago still eat diets high in fat. Eskimos get some 80% of their calories from fat, yet they don't have the diet related diseases western cultures do. Diabetes is virtually non-existent as are many types of cancers etc.
Check out this movie, which gives similar info from a lot of scientists saying low fat diets are a costly hoax foisted upon us:
Fat Head - Watch the full movie now - Hulu
Sugar and low fructose corn syrup are the worst. Simple carbs aren't far behind.