Missive from the road

I apologize for not posting over the past few days, but MD and I are on one of those multi-city trips we plan from time to time. We went to the Nutrition & Metabolism meeting in Brooklyn, then over to Manhattan for a few days to do some book stuff. We were wrapped up in a frenzy of activity there what with meeting with our agent, a number of friends, and a few business partners. We left from there a few days ago and came to Michigan for my mother’s 80th birthday.
Since arriving here it has been a non-stop visit-a-thon from early in the morning until 1 or 2 in the morning. We leave here on Tuesday to head for Dallas and our youngest grandson’s 4th birthday, then to Austin where we meet face to face with our website guru to take our website—including bulletin board—live. Until we get back from all this craziness, I can’t promise faithful posting, but I’ll give it my best.
It’s frustrating for me because I have about a million things to post on. I took a bunch of medical papers with me to read critically while on the numerous flights, many of which will be of interest to readers. I also have a ton of stuff to post on about the Nutrition & Metabolism meeting, but I need some time to organize the info to present it coherently. Just to give you a taste, at the meeting we learned that low-carb diets: decrease headaches, decrease fatty infiltration of the liver, decrease the incidence of prostate cancer, reduce progression of diabetes, improve lipid parameters, decrease atherosclerosis, and a host of other improvements in health. Stay tuned and I’ll bring you up to date on it all.
I slipped out for a few minutes today and got a copy of the New York Times. I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but in reading the first section, The Week in Review, I came across an interesting editorial by Nicholas Kristoff about the governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee about whom I posted recently.
I have a real love/hate relationship with Kristoff, but I never fail to read his columns because I think that, unlike Paul Krugman, he is evenhanded. If he finds someone he doesn’t agree with politically doing something he likes, he will laud him (or her) for it. Krugman would never do such a thing. (I defy anyone to show me one Krugman column in which he says anything positive about any Republican or conservative politician).
The thrust of Kristoff’s piece is that obesity is a major health problem confronting America (and the word, for that matter) today that most politicians are choosing to ignore. Arkansas’s Huckabee, since he lost 110 pounds, is making the prevention of obesity a major part of his administration. Huckabee realizes that sooner or later the chickens are going to come home to roost in the sense that obesity will ultimately cause government a fortune to deal with. Already health issues are causing huge expenses to industry.

“This year, G.M. will spend more on health care for employees and pensioners than on steel,” Mr. Huckabee noted. “Starbucks will spend more on health care than on coffee beans.”

I think the Huck is absolutely correct. And, especially after the Nutrition & Metabolism meeting, I believe that somewhere down the line (sooner rather than later, I hope) people are going to have to realize that the low-carbohydrate diet is the single best tool to prevent and treat obesity and its related disorders. When that happens, I think that we will start making strides in the right direction. Until then, I think we’re in for more of the same.
In an interesting take on the situation, Kristoff wrote the following paragraph:

Imagine if Al Qaeda had resolved to attack us not with conventional chemical weapons but by slipping large amounts of high-fructose corn syrup into our food supply. That would finally rouse us to action — but in fact it’s pretty much what we’re doing to ourselves.

I hadn’t thought about it that way before, but Kristoff is right. If an outside, hostile force introduced something as toxic as high-fructose corn syrup into the food supply, we would consider it an act of war. As it is, all the politicians on the payroll of Archer Daniels Midland keep it coming.