Two things today

Personal Update:

I'm a bit more comfortable now, but my leg is still not quite up to trips off the second floor. Oh, but the way, day-time TV is a vast wasteland.

From today's Paper:

A brief note on an article out of Schenectady, there will be a diet and diabetes program for children and adults living with diabetes, "The Diabetes and Nutrition Awareness Program." This is a good idea, and in fact ought to be expanded into a universal nutrition awareness and diabetes screening program. In an era when diet and the increasingly early onset of type II diabetes have been linked (risk factors generally are increasing age, obesity, and physical inactivity), promoting good dietary habits is clearly a positive public health undertaking.

Consider for a moment that preventing diabetes (i.e., preventing early -- or any -- onset of type II diabetes) would have tremendous benefits not only for the day to day quality of life of the individual but also for the costs of treating long-term a person with diabetes, costs that ripple through the health-care system. Any expenditure on prevention would certainly ultimately pay rewards many fold.

Which raises a question: why don't we spend more money on prevention? Shouldn't we be blanketing schools and senior centers with nutritional awareness education? Shouldn't we be plastering bill-boards and the pages of newspapers with pubic awareness ads extolling the virtues of healthy eating and exercise (and, to go along with that, making sure there is an awareness of the problematic nature of the fast-food diet)? Why is this a bad idea?

Are we afraid of offending the fast-food industry? Certainly by now we are aware enough of the link between diet and health issues, and we are aware of the link between a fast-food diet and health issues, so why be afraid of offending anyone? Or does it just seem unseemly for the state government (or the feds, for that matter) to go to war with an entire industry of food providers? Can that really be all there is to it?