I Have ESPN Or Something (And Other Random Items)

I am quite prescient, my friends. The blogosphere* is clearly following my lead by discussing orthorexia. Just thought I'd toot my horn there.

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Living in Washington, D.C. I often encounter those who like to argue about the pros and cons of things like defense spending, climate change and of course, the ever popular, health care overhaul. There are a million little pieces of this to discuss. While I'd prefer not to get bogged down in all of them I am interested in the way actual health affects health care. Its no secret that Americans are really quite unhealthy as a generalization. Basically we get fat, poison our hearts and lungs and then we cost everyone else lots of money. But its okay, because almost everyone else does it too.

Imagine my surprise this morning when the news was chock full of stories about how 75% of health care costs in America are due to diseases that could be potentially avoided if Americans weren't obese. That's right, according to the journal Health Affairs, we could potentially be spending close to 75% less as a society if we took care of ourselves. Its true that we'd likely still have some heart disease, diabetes and cancer. You have to admit that we'd likely be able to eliminate a large portion of that spending if we stopped stuffing our faces and got off our butts more. I could argue about the tenants of S 3962 until I was blue in the face but its hard to argue with the fact that a large majority of our problems stem from our personal choices and not with our PPO or HMO choices.

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Going back to yesterday's post where I ranted about Eat This, Not That. I realized I didn't suggest a solution to the problem of not knowing what to eat in fast food situations/on travel/insert problem here. Well, I have a really easy solution: be a pain in the ass. Find a place that is capable of grilling food dry and be annoying about the contents of your sides and sauces. I embarrass people when eating out somewhat regularly but on the flip side, I'm usually one of the healthier people at the table. I order fish grilled dry or chicken and sides of plain vegetables.

You're thinking: that sounds gross and boring. Did you really think the food at fast food establishment x was going to be awesome? Did you go there for the fine dining experience or because you need to eat something while traveling for work? If you went to that strip mall restaurant to have your favorite meal that's one thing. If that's the case, order the fat with extra fat and a dollop of lard on top. If you are going for utilitarian reasons, stop expecting the restaurant to change your life. Instead, get some quality calories and get out.

*Blogger's** spell checker doesn't recognize the word blogosphere!
**It doesn't recognize it's own name in the possessive either. Talk about not being meta***.
***It recognized meta as a word.