Dr. Thorpe also said that if the incidence of obesity fell to its 1987 level, it would free enough money to cover the nation’s uninsured population.

(via Health Care Savings May Start in Employee Diets in the New York Times)

File this one under “news I am not at all surprised to hear, but am glad for the affirmation anyway.”

I’ve talked a lot about food this year for some reason. And health care has been a national concern since Obama strolled in the front door in January. So someone helping us tie the two together in a way that’s been needed for a long time is a welcome thing to see.

I read somewhere once that if you take a fast food meal, factor in the cost of weight gain (new clothes, gas mileage, etc.) and negative effect it has on your health in the long term, the meal would actually cost more than an equivalent meal made up of fresh produce that many claim is “too expensive.”

Another challenge for the new year: find a partner and make a bet to not eat fast food all year. Keep each other accountable and make the wager high if you lose the bet (kinda like I did).

When the last tree falls, when the last river is polluted and when there is not a breath of clean air left, people will realize you can’t eat money.

Anonymous

Okay, maybe not exactly what my blog is about, but it seems to be an extreme version of a general statement I seem to be making lately.

Us humans, we suck at taking care of the world. Especially us Americans. We worry about money and comfort before anything else. And, surprise! Not only is the level of comfort we’ve created dangerous due to complacency, lack of personal growth and physical and emotional health, but the resources we’ve depleted for these comforts could bring about some extreme situations if nobody did anything to slow it down.

I believe that, beyond personal morals, there are natural consequences to our actions. If we are selfish we lose our friends. If we eat too much it kills us. If we continually seek bigger ways to satisfy our desires, the earth won’t always be able to support it. I don’t think that’s God, necessarily; it’s logical cause and effect. (Whether God created that logic is another idea entirely.)

Do I think we’re going to get to the extreme highlighted in the above quote? No. Do I think it’s no coincidence that our wasteful lifestyle caused a recession to help prevent that? Yes. Plus, we have people like the TEDsters who are actively seeking out solutions to many of our problems.

This week’s episode of Radiolab presents an interesting hypothetical that in turn presents some bigger-scale questions.

The hypothetical is this: you are wearing a thousand dollar suit. You are walking along the edge of a lake and see a girl drowning nearby. She screams for help. If you jump in to save her, you will ruin your thousand dollar suit. So do you save her? Common morality says yes, right?

Skip forward a couple days. You are now walking downtown and you pass a man at a booth saying that, for a thousand dollar donation, you can save the life of some girl you don’t know in another part of the world.

My guess is you’d be less likely to donate that money. But why? Because she’s not an immediate, tangible concern? Because, if you didn’t save her, nobody would judge you negatively for neglecting a child?

Radiolab goes on to discuss how this difference in thinking is due to a long-standing human mentality, that we have evolved to the point that emergencies in our physical location are those of importance and all others are easily ignorable.

What does it take for humans to evolve to the next level? To be aware that there is always an emergency somewhere? To gain a global consciousness?

Certainly the resources are there. Despite our recent economic crisis, America still has most of the world’s money; a small fraction of it could end the plague of starvation, ensuring every man, woman and child on earth did not go hungry. If only we’d think globally instead of locally. (That said, why do we buy burgers for homeless people when our local homeless shelters seem to be able to feed them just fine? Why not donate the money to fund relief in Africa?)

So the growing pains are there. People are making attempts at solving this, at pushing forward to encourage people to think about emergencies globally. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Is this a sign of mental evolution? How much longer until people react together to solve any emergency in the world? My guess is that we’ll get closer, but never quite there.

I’ve been excited about the effects of this recession. No, seriously. When the natural consequences of our irresponsibility arise, there is no choice but to adapt, learn from our mistakes and figure out how to be more responsible.

This video gives me hope for what might happen. The signs of hope seem small right now, but perhaps a few more years of this will help them to grow.

I especially love the part technology is playing in this. It’s amazing how it’s helping people work together to find ways to save money, spend it wisely and use the resources we have in the best way possible.

Sometimes I try to come up with ideas for how, as a web developer, I can play a larger part in promoting the responsibility of our culture. Do I build a directory for food co-ops? A wiki where people share tips on how they’ve saved on groceries or their gas bill? A Facebook application for ride-sharing?

Does anyone have any ideas for how the Internet, social networking or mobile technology would help you find ways to promote sustainability, local community and responsible living? Maybe we can do something together.

As if I needed another reason to talk about changing our eating habits, here comes a piece from TIME that’s equally insightful and shocking.

As the developing world grows richer, hundreds of millions of people will want to shift to the same calorie-heavy, protein-rich diet that has made Americans so unhealthy — demand for meat and poultry worldwide is set to rise 25% by 2015 — but the earth can no longer deliver. Unless Americans radically rethink the way they grow and consume food, they face a future of eroded farmland, hollowed-out countryside, scarier germs, higher health costs — and bland taste. Sustainable food has an elitist reputation, but each of us depends on the soil, animals and plants — and as every farmer knows, if you don’t take care of your land, it can’t take care of you.

Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food – Time Magazine

All of a sudden I have a large handful of reasons to eat even less meat and buy more local, sustainable and organic foods.

I read once that the average American eats seven times as much meat than their body needs. If meat products take significantly more energy to produce than the vegetables and fruits we should be eating and cost more to buy and prepare, we could have a major impact on the American obesity problem, the environment and the economy all at once if we cut our meat intake down to what it should be.

But will it happen? I doubt it. We Americans love our meat, and so do our government officials who get lobbied by meat lovers. Funded by steak- and hamburger-lovers everywhere!

I have a lot of friends that are just beginning their life after college. I feel privileged that I’ve had a few more years of experience so I can (hopefully) help them learn some fiscal responsibility.

A recent post by Ramit Sethi on his blog I Will Teach You To Be Rich made me feel good about myself. The flow chart diagram he has on there is, with no exaggeration, exactly how I handle my finances. In the current times, having things set up that way has made me feel safer about my future than many people around me are. (And I’m not saying that to be cocky at all, trust me.)

Sethi recently wrote a book by the same name. In it he outlines a six-week program to get your money under control. I haven’t read it, and I’m pretty sure most would be a repeat for me since I’ve followed his blog for years, but I do own a copy. If any of you, my friends, need help learning to be responsible with your money, I will gladly loan it to you.

A lot of the reason the country is in an economic mess is because people didn’t know or understand what they were doing with their money. Be responsible for your own future and the future of your country and get on it.

I hate to quote someone in full (technically a copyright infringement, coincidentally) but Umair Haque wraps up two seemingly separate issues into one larger one so efficiently, I had to pass it on.

Set up a torrent tracker, get fined, go to jail.

Join a bank, destroy the economy, profit.

Let’s draw out the distinction.

The Pirate Bay guys were criminally prosecuted for….violating (largely obsolete) copyright. Almost no one in finance has been held even civilly liable for vastly more economically damaging actions.

On the one hand, we have damages worth maybe (maybe) a few million. On the other, a few trillion.

On the one hand, innovation and better music is stifled — benefits are foregone. On the other, reform of a broken banking system is stifled — losses are incurred.

That’s everything that’s wrong with the economy in two sentences: the ongoing inability of today’s leaders to deal with 21st century economics.

[Umair Haque via Ryan Catbird]

What? Of course drugs are bad FOR you. It’s more the current mentality about how government should handle them that’s a little bit off. (Okay, a lot of bit off.)

I’ve seen a lot of talk in the past few weeks about how now is the time for a complete reformation of drug laws, in favor of legalization, strict taxing and an emphasis on addiction prevention and recovery rather than policing drug creators, traffickers and dealers. But so far, nobody has done a more effective job of hitting the nail on the head than The Economist:

Legalisation would not only drive away the gangsters; it would transform drugs from a law-and-order problem into a public-health problem, which is how they ought to be treated. Governments would tax and regulate the drug trade, and use the funds raised (and the billions saved on law-enforcement) to educate the public about the risks of drug-taking and to treat addiction.

That quote hardly does the article justice; please read the whole thing if you have the time.

I especially appreciate their reaction to a few of the big “but”s, highlighting the fact that many of the countries using prohibition tactics actually have higher drug use than countries that don’t. Innnnnterestinnnng. Certainly doesn’t hurt the legalization argument one bit.

Obviously legalizing drugs isn’t a good thing. Like the article itself says, this is the “least bad solution.” It’s time to acknowledge that we’re never going to have a drug-free world, and that prohibition does as much or more harm than this suggested alternative.

Even if the we can only convince the powers that be to legalize pot and tax the crap out of it, it would make a world of difference — both for public health and economic reasons — and a giant step forward for this country and the world.

Signing off,
Your favorite long-winded, amateur writer who’s never even used illegal drugs before

Similarly, I’d like to suggest whenever we hear the word “recovery,” we as a nation see it not as a call to get back our old addictive high, but rather as a call to face our corporate and personal addictions…

Thank you, Brian McLaren. (And thanks to Rachel for the tip!)

Over the last few weeks I have been thinking a lot about all the potential benefits of this recession. If nothing else, it’s a time to filter a lot of the crap out of our system. I’ve already seen it begin to happen. It’s unfortunate that it has to hurt so many people, but the end result is, hopefully, a much more streamlined and sustainable mentality towards business and money.

On the other hand, if “getting things back to the way they were” is the measure of success that signals the end of this recession, we will have learned nothing.

Simon Critchley gets right to the point of a lot of what went on leading up to this recession: “the cultivation of excessive pleasures” and the importance of poverty. (Skip to the second half if you don’t want to hear about David Hume.)

What he seems to be saying, in the loftier language of the philosopher, is that the great paradox of life, according to Epicureanism, is that when we seek pleasure, we ultimately only find pain and frustration. But when our lives are simple, when we expect no pleasure, when we train ourselves to live a simpler life, when we look for ways to be the lowest, all the good things in life are that much more significant.

Epicureanism itself is perhaps a bit more extreme than that, but the central point remains. Less is more.