Wait! Don’t Open That Restaurant! We’re Getting Healthier. Well, maybe.

“The mythology of nutrition is immense and confounded by culturally acquired eating habits and prejudices. For our hunter-gatherer ancestors, nutritional supply and mobility were tightly linked. Today we have uncoupled this relationship.”

That’s a quote from one of my favorite virtual health and wellness mentors, Dr. Walter Bortz, retired Stanford geriatric physician. At 89, he is still “out there” pounding the drum in favor of sanity restoration regarding lifestyle habits.

The quote came from one of the seven books he has written: “We Live Too Short and Die Too Long: How To Achieve and Enjoy Your Natural 100-Year-Plus Life Span.”

What a coincidence. Front-page Denver Post today features this headline and story from the New York Times:

“Obesity tied to severe coronavirus, especially in young.”

A “new” study now says that obesity may be one of the more important predictors of severe coronavirus illness, second only to “old age”, whatever that is. Always quick to CYA, the report is based on “anecdotal reports” from doctors who have been shocked by how many seriously ill younger patients are obese.

Anecdotal or otherwise, I’ll bet showing up at the ER with a dry cough, fever, body aches, carrying 30 pounds of extra weight and being over-60 won’t put one high on the ventilator wait-list.

The article then proceeds to explain why obesity may have compromised respiratory function with a list of what I would call “duhs” that aren’t exactly revelatory but still cautiously called anecdotal.

Things like: ” – abdominal obesity, more common in men, can compress the diaphragm, lungs and chest capacity. And obesity causes chronic, low-grade inflammation and an increase in circulating, pro-inflammatory cytokines” which they now think may contribute to fatal COVID-19 outcomes.

I think we’ve known most of this for a long time but are hesitant, for some reason, to confront. We don’t seem to like to admit that we Americans are getting really fat. It’s a trend that has continued and is now endemic.

According to the American Medical Association, with most of our population overweight, 50% of the U.S. population is pre-diabetic and 70% don’t know it.

I’m not trying to put that on all restaurants but for many of them, if the shoe fits – – -. Truth is, it’s mostly on us.

I’m gonna try to link some things up here, so bear with me.

• American purchases of restaurant and bar food crossed over and surpassed food purchased in grocery stores in 2015. So what?  We’ve got a much better chance of getting good nutrition at the grocery store than at most restaurants, depending, of course, on how we shop the grocery store. We can just as easily load up on C-R-A-P (Calorie-Rich-and-Processed) foods there if we hang out in the interior aisles.

• Forty-two percent of American adults (80 million) are obese. What is obese? Here’s the body-mass-index calculation formula and scale from the CDC:

Calculate BMI by dividing weight in pounds (lbs) by height in inches (in) squared and multiplying by a conversion factor of 703.

Example: Weight = 150 lbs, Height = 5’5″” (65″”)
Calculation: [150 ÷ (65  x 65)] x 703 = 24.96

Underweight = <18.5
Normal weight = 18.5–24.9
Overweight = 25–29.9
Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater

Confession time: I’m at 26.4 – and embarrassed.  This “fat” thing is easy – and we don’t eat out. I’ll blame it on the virus if that’s OK.

• Fast-food and full-service restaurant consumption, respectively, was associated with a net increase in daily total energy intake of 190.29 and 186.74 kcal, total fat of 10.61 and 9.58 g, saturated fat of 3.49 and 2.46 g, cholesterol of 10.34 and 57.90 mg, and sodium of 297.47 and 411.92 mg over home-prepared meals.
• We weigh, on average, 15 pounds more than 20 years ago but we didn’t get any taller, just a lot rounder.
• The Standard American Diet (SAD) is deplorable and is killing us early.  According to the website Forks Over Knives:
  • 63% of America’s calories come from refined and processed foods (e.g. soft drinks, packaged snacks like potato chips, packaged desserts, etc.)
  • 25% of America’s calories come from animal-based foods
  • 12% of America’s calories come from plant-based foods
  • Unfortunately, half of the plant-based calories (6%) come from french fries. That means only 6% of America’s calories are coming from health-promoting fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and seeds.

There’s a good reason we abbreviate standard American diet to S.A.D. The Standard American Diet leads to standard American diseases that lead to standard American deaths.

Here in Denver, our brown cloud of air pollution has been absent for several weeks now as the highways have emptied. Grocery stores are booming. People are rediscovering their cookbooks, spice shelves, and cooking utensils. We seem to be outside, moving more.

People might just be getting healthier. And, for sure, saving money.  That is if they don’t resort to delivered food.

This is a pipe dream.

OK – I know this isn’t going to happen. We love our little favorite, secret restaurant haunts -and the convenience – too much to ever think of giving them up. Plus, what normal red-blooded American woman today would redon a Donna Reed apron to prepare three squares?

Red-blooded American male stepping up?  Yeah, right!

The restaurant business is a tough business run by a lot of great people, and sustaining livelihoods for a lot of hard-working people. I’m not intending to rag on restaurants in general but more on our own individual lack of awareness of how we eat impacts our endemic obesity. It’s a rare restaurant that hasn’t taken note of the increase in health consciousness and modified their menus to accommodate the more health-conscious.

I’m guessing, however, those “healthy” meal options aren’t the big sellers. Our sugar-salt-fat cravings ignite at the first step into the restaurant – clogged arteries be damned.

But, just suppose this forcing of families together for home-prepared food puts us on a healthier track for the long run. If we knew what we were doing to our systems insidiously with each undisciplined restaurant visit, we probably wouldn’t be doing it. But lifestyles are hard to change, taste-buds hard to retrain. And the food manufacturers have been incredibly clever and successful in capturing ours. Restaurants are their most effective medium.

Over 60% or early American deaths are due to poor diet, pandemic or no pandemic. Will we take advantage of this “new” awareness of how vulnerable our lifestyle decisions leave us when the next virus rolls around?

P.S. It will roll around.

We’ll all be older when it does. But we don’t need to be rounder. Let’s hope we pay attention and learn something about waistlines while we keep our six-foot separation.

Like getting reacquainted with the perimeters of our local grocery store – or selecting the salad option at your irresistible restaurant.

Perhaps we could even go neanderthal and get back to the ELMM diet:

Eat Less, Move More.

Leave a comment below or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com. We’d love to know how you are doing through all this mess.

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