No April Fool: It’s time to put an end to nutritional pornography.

            In a few months we will reach the end of the first quarter of the 21^st century with no end in sight of the three epidemics that threaten to overwhelm our health system and our economy: obesity, type 2 diabetes and osteoporosis. The first two were almost non-existent at the beginning of the preceding century. The obesity rate in 1900 was approximately 5 percent; it is now 42 percent. Diabetes was almost entirely type 1, the juvenile form, a totally different disease from type 2 diabetes. The latter now affects 12.2 percent of the general population, more than one-third of people over the age of 65 and increasing numbers of children below the age of 18, some as young as six years! Type 2 diabetes was so uncommon in the pre-World War One era that it wasn’t clearly distinguished from type 1 diabetes until the 1950s.

Osteoporosis, the Third Epidemic, is going to crash down on us with a vengeance in about 30 years, as today’s young people fail to build a strong skeleton during the bone-building window between ages five and twenty-five. They transport themselves on electric bikes, scooters and skateboards, and replace childhood sports and games with screen-watching, eliminating the muscle stresses that nature intended to form a strong skeleton.  

            Someone recently sent me an insightful post: “Ninety percent of today’s supermarket food didn’t exist a hundred years ago. Neither did ninety percent of today’s diseases. Think about that.”

            Government edicts will determine what supermarkets will offer us in the coming decade. Trans fats have already been outlawed. Food coloring restrictions are imminent; the sugar content of processed foods is probably next; saturated fat and salt mandates will reach us in a few short years. SNAP (welfare) recipients are not allowed to use those funds to purchase alcohol or tobacco. It’s likely that they will see junk food added to that list during the current administration. Legislation is pending now in Tennessee to disallow the purchase of candy and soft drinks with SNAP funds. Other states will follow suit, and so will the federal government.