On Hot Dogs, Senators, and Prescriptions for Beans, Broccoli, Bananas, and Blueberries.

Photo by call me hangry on Unsplash

What’s your reaction when you look at this picture?

My reaction? I’m like a Pavlov dog – I start salivating. Put a brat with mustard on a white bun within a city block of me and I’m off my heath-and-wellness rails in a heartbeat in my clamor to indulge – and I can’t stop at one.

Hey, I’m a health and wellness advocate with an above-average awareness of the ills embedded in our profit-driven food system and an understanding of the long-term ill effects of eating garbage.

OK – yeah! I’m a weak hypocrite!

That picture above, folks, can be found right next to Webster’s definition of garbage in the dictionary. It’s typical of  the garbage that props up the shareholder value of the giants of our presumably benevolent food industry.

What’s happening here?

Aside from my inherent lack of self-discipline, a collection of cells at the back of my tongue were captured and kept captive years ago as I innocently, naively allowed creative food engineers to seize my taste buds with scientifically-crafted, addictive combinations of fat, salt, and sugar.

Home Depot shortened my life!

You’ve probably come across the media announcement that consuming a hot dog takes 36 minutes off your life.

Bummer! There’s goes my goal to hit 112 1/2.

I luv hot dogs!

Especially Home Depot hot dogs.

I went through a multiyear spell of finding any excuse – legit or lame – to visit Home Depot. Often multiple times a week.

You should see my collection of screws and mollies.

Every trip ended with two mustard-lathered hot dogs from the street vendor they allowed at one of the main exits.

They were cheap – $1.50 each. Just good ‘ol plain Hormel tubes of you-don’t-want-to-know ingredients generously injected with salt.

My captive taste buds overrode any semblance of knowledge and common sense!!

Each trip = over an hour off my life.

Washington is coming – fear not!

What are we to do to protect weaklings like me from ourselves?

Why, of course, we call in the politicians. Let’s sic Congress on this one also.

It appears that Senator Cory Booker believes so. I quote the distinguished Senator from a recent article in MedPage Today:

“Currently in the United States, half of the U.S. population is pre-diabetic, or has type 2 diabetes. In 1960, approximately 3% of the U.S. population was obese. Today, more than 40% of Americans are obese and more than 70% of Americans are either obese or overweight.”

“–now we face that second food crisis — one of nutrition insecurity where too many Americans are overfed but undernourished and are seeing these staggering rates of disease and early death.” Although the U.S. is the world’s wealthiest nation, “we have created a food system that relentlessly encourages the overeating of empty calories, literally making us sick and causing us to spend an ever-increasing amount of our taxpayer dollars … on healthcare costs to treat diet-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, certain types of cancer, and chronic kidney disease.”

Don’t you love it – this bandwagon game?

And we wonder why Congress has a 27% approval rating.

I’m biting my tongue –

Excuse me, Senator, but how long have we known all this? How long have legions of respected physicians and nutritionists been beating this drum?

How long has our government been issuing unhealthy nutritional guidelines that are heavily influenced by the same food industry that is killing us slowly?

Oh, maybe like nearly forever – or at least a couple of decades.

But that doesn’t deter any able politician from jumping on another band wagon even when the wagon is really late.

Simple – slap a fancy name on the issue, call it nutrition insecurity, and rage against the machine – a machine that fakes its concern about our health and nutrition and rakes in billions by exploiting our biological affinity for sugar, salt, and fat and our bent toward comfort and convenience.

-but, not holding my breath.

We did effect major behavioral change through government action driving smoking cessation.

But, not everybody smoked.

Everybody eats.

Picture warning labels on every Big Mac or bag of fries. Or Big Gulp. Or Hormel hot dog or Johnsonville brat.

Maybe there’s an easier way to turn this messiness around.

Just suppose we started teaching physicians how and why to write prescriptions for beans, broccoli, bananas, and blueberries.

Can you imagine?

Your Primary Care Physician looking up your nose, in your ears, tapping your knees for reflex, doing the deep breaths and the “turn your head and cough” and the rubber glove digital exam thing (sorry ladies – I can’t speak to your physicals – I haven’t been allowed in the room when in progress) then looking up from his computer (if you are lucky) and writing a prescription to fill at your local super market.

No, not at the pharmacy or the middle aisles – along the perimeter in the produce section.

“Here”, he or she says, “fill this list and take several days a week – for the rest of your life. No, your insurance won’t cover the beans, brocolli, bananas, blueberries. But, there’s a good chance you won’t be needing insurance much if you take this prescription as directed.”

Who do we respect and trust more – senators or doctors?

Suppose, instead of trying to legislate behavior change, we legislate change at the medical school level and require nutritional training that forces doctors to be honest about their oath to “do no harm” by being proactive in counseling patients on proper diet and the consequences of a poor diet.

I wrote about this a few months back (see the article here) and included a video by one of the greatest champions of good nutrition, Dr. Michael Greber, that documents the shortfall in nutritional training in our medical schools.

It’s an outrage.

This could be a culture change that could beget another – and huge – culture change.

Maybe you are lucky and have connected with a physician who is nutrition savvy and proactive in nutrition counseling.

They are out there – and growing in numbers, slowly.

But, we need to find a way to increase the numbers faster – fast enough to prevent the Cory Bookers from grabbing the spotlight and sending the issue into neverland.

What are your thoughts on this? Anybody have a magic formula for retraining taste buds? Leave a comment below and tell your friends to join the tribe/diatribe at www.makeagingwork.com.