Serious Health Costs

I've heard people time after time speak of it just being too much trouble to cook for one, or they are too tired to go home from work and cook.  So they eat out frequently or purchase deli food, which is filled with nitrites and preservatives.  Eating out is becoming a health hazard unto itself.

Our food supply, even to prepare food at home, is not optimum, as we've reported; but ketchup, pickle slices, and onion bits on a double cheese burger do not count as vegetable servings.  French fries are not a vegetable, and most beverages we refer to as juice are only fruit flavored.  Flavoring is not the same as a portion of whatever it's flavored like.

I noticed on a ketchup bottle, just today, that it contains no high fructose corn syrup.  That's wonderful, but tomatoes were the first of our produce, to be genetically engineered.

Many Americans now eat like teen-agers on a date, most days of the week.  Few people take a lunch to work, as the Dollar menus really do make it so much cheaper and more convenient . . . but that doesn't really address the long term cost.  Our health is diminished and our health costs have skyrocketed for two reasons.  One, our diet is ridiculous. Second, we don't have to actually pay for our health problems out of our own pocket.  Between fast food and convenience stores, many are living on Elvis food, but . . . the difference is, with health care provided, the personal cost doesn't have to be considered.  Now you may say, but the cost to our health is personal.  Yes it is, but few, very few do anything personally about that.  The pharmaceutical profit margin proves that.

Most Americans will say they hardly go to the doctor, don't like to take medicine, and know they have unhealthy eating habits; but when it boils down to reality, they will schedule an appointment, even a surgery and take a prescription before they truly consider changing their lifestyle or diet.

Medicare requires more funding because senior citizens eat out much of the time, and often on their way home from yet another doctor appointment.  Medicaid cannot cover the demand of the younger generation who live on fast food, have babies without spouses, and have been taught their eating habits by the folks who stop and get something on the way home from work, so they don't have to cook.  The majority of the boomers have moved beyond a medicaid dependent household and not yet reached the medicare benefits, but when that happens, we will have an entire country doing what they want, eating what they want, while looking for a doctor to fix how they feel, and expect the bill to be covered by a program.  I'm not for Obama's Health Care Bill, but I can see that something had to be done.

If the majority from toddlers to seniors are going to eat like teen-agers, somebody's got to make the grown up decision that pays for all this!