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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32854 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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How bad can America’s health actually get? And what shall we do?

All kinds of ill health are steadily increasing, from age-adjusted obesity to autism and depression. Anxiety in young adults nearly doubled in the decade pre-pandemic. Type 1 and type 2 diabetes has risen dramatically. Deaths of despair have also risen. There seems to be no actionable plan, ready for implementation, to halt the rising tide of ill health. The numbers are steadily increasing adjusted for age, with some numbers rising faster in the young than in the old.

I find the willpower discussions to be missing the point. Unless there is a plan that we can implement in schools to significantly increase or teach willpower, then it hardly matters whether the will is relevant. The diseased from poor choices and the diseased from poor environment equally hurt the security of the nation, costing trillions from decreased productivity, decreased fertility, and healthcare expenditure. It is curious how much discourse in America is spent quibbling on issues that are so much less important than the health question. Health is something that directly impacts every aspect of the country, not the least of which is the plain happiness and fertility of citizens.

What I would like to see is a harm tax put in place that adds onto every unhealthy item the cost per item of its societal harm: the projected healthcare costs, the loss from intelligent citizens working for corporations that poison us, the projected loss of productivity. Now, this will always be an estimate, but so are many taxes. I think this would largely make sodas prohibitively expensive.

I think this would largely make sodas prohibitively expensive.

Sure. And people might switch to drinking plain water. Or they might spend more of their food budget on sodas and skip buying any vegetables at all. And people who earn enough won't be hurt by a soda tax, just the very poor, who are already eating badly and living in bad conditions.

Cigarettes are one of the "old reliables" in Irish budgets, where the government increases taxes on them every year in order to 'encourage people to stop smoking'. The rules around advertising have been tightened, and cigarette packets have to be in standardised packaging (so no more brand logos, instead health warnings with graphic imagery ).

Has it helped? Yes and no. People moved on to vaping and to roll your own cigarettes, and of course there is always the trade in smuggled cigarettes/selling loose cigarettes. Smoking has declined, but the gap between the better off and the worse off is stark:

A new report published today to mark World No Tobacco Day reveals that there is a three-fold difference (11% versus 31%) in smoking between the highest and lowest socio-economic groups.

This gap has widened considerably as prevalence among the highest socio economic group in 2015 has dropped from 16%, while smoking among the lowest socio-economic group rose by 2%.

Dr Paul Kavanagh, HSE Public Health Medicine Specialist said overall the proportion of people who currently smoke reduced from 23% in 2015 to 18% in 2021.

So "don't be naughty" taxes may work, but the biggest shift in behaviour is likely to be amongst those who are already trying to make healthy choices, and the effect will simply be punitive but not behaviour-changing on those who are least healthy.

Maybe this time, the carrot (pun intended) is better than the stick. Somebody lecturing and finger-wagging about 'don't drink soda' is going to go in one ear and out the other; getting directly involved with people who, for instance, will give a baby soda in their bottle and teaching them how to live normally will do much more. But that kind of community nurse regular visits programme would cost a lot more than simply slapping on a soda tax, so I don't think it's likely to happen.

people who, for instance, will give a baby soda in their bottle

Do people actually do this? Why would anyone ever do this?

I give my kid fruit juice and it's not much better for ya.

Maybe stop doing that?

Nah, it tastes good and I do it sparingly or water it down. Life's too short even if you're two.

That seems fine then, as long as it's freshly-squeezed natural juice and not industrially-produced junk.

I'm told my grandmother gave me Dr. Pepper in a bottle long after I was otherwise done with bottles. This was blamed for the wretched state of my teeth when I started Kindergarten, though I've personally believed that the part where nobody told me that rensing your mouth with Dr. Pepper immediately after brushing your teeth is a bad idea had something to do with it.

(I feel obligated to defend myself by pointing out that I quit sodas when I was 13 and haven't looked back since. It's just that, when I was 5, I started school with no upper incisors and silver canines making me look like a sleepy robot vampire.)

I was skeptical myself. This survey looked at three different locations in Australia, Singapore and Vietnam and asked parents to report whether different high calorie beverages (HCBs) had been introduced to their child:

HCBs, such as cordial, flavoured milk, 100% fruit juice, fruit drink, and non-caffeinated soft drinks ... were introduced at an early age in all localities, but more frequently in Vietnam. 36.9% of respondents in HCMC [Ho Chih Minh City, Vietnam] reported giving HCBs to children at six months or less, compared with 13.0% in Campbelltown [Australia] and 12.1% in Singapore. At one year, 72.6% of participants in HCMC had introduced HCBs, compared to 32.4% in Campbelltown and 36.3% in Singapore.

The most common high calorie beverage seems to be fruit juice. In Campbelltown and Singapore, soft drinks appear to be fairly uncommon before age 1 -- maybe around 5 percent in Singapore and well under that in Campbelltown.

I can't be sure what the numbers would be like in the USA, and they would probably vary by region.

Also, note that the numbers before 6 months are even smaller, and that 1 year olds are often not bottle fed any more, for what it's worth.

Edit: Actually, reading further, it appears that none of the parents in Singapore or Campbelltown gave their children soft drinks of any kind by 6 months:

Non-caffeinated soft-drinks (Fig. 8) were introduced by 2.4% of participants in HCMC by six months, but none were introduced in Campbelltown and Singapore. At one year, the rate rose to 11.9% of participants in HCMC, compared to 1.9% in Campbelltown and 5.5% in Singapore.

...

Caffeinated soft-drinks (Fig. 9) were introduced by six months by 3.6% of participants in HCMC, but by none in Campbelltown and Singapore. By one year, 9.5% of participants in HCMC had introduced caffeinated soft drinks, compared to 0.9% in Campbelltown, and 1.1% in Singapore.

This reinforces my skepticism about soft drink bottle feeding, I have to say.

Yes, people do this. Underclass women without good role models make absolutely horrendous childbearing decisions and that’s one of them.

I had an accident one winter and damaged a part on my car just before spring break. So I took greyhound that trip. I learned many things about people, and I'm pretty sure Greyhound should change their motto to, It's not just a ride, it's an adventure.

One of the many memorable people was a young lady with a roughly 6mo old baby. Who she said cried if her baby didn't get a bottle of cola about once an hour (I kept my guess about caffeine withdrawal as the cause to my self).

(I kept my guess about caffeine withdrawal as the cause to my self).

Are not babies crying every hour the default? Regardless of caffeine withdrawal or not. Babies cry if they are hungry, sleepy, in an uncomfortable position, need their diapers changed, etc.

My guess (yet to have a baby) is that the baby was crying because hungry, and the mother in question discovered that soda works in replacement of milk.

It's abnormal for a six month old to need to eat that often, six month olds eat about 4-5 times a day (with 3-4 hours between feeds) and nap 3ish times a day.

Usually a watchful parent can tell if a baby needs something (food, sleep, etc) before it reaches the point of crying. If a baby cries, a parent should be able to resolve the issue without soda. A six month old is past the point of colic.

That's a pretty short time for a child older than a few months to be getting hungry or sleepy in my admittedly limited experience. Yeah, babies seem to love all things sweet, so I'm sure soda was pretty easy to get him to drink.

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