scapegoating and the bankruptcy of health promotions

[undergroundpanther]

The concept of "preventing" chronic illnesses and social problems, arises from a premise that seems like simple common sense. That is - if individual's lifestyle and consumption choices can be statistically correlated to the probability of their developing chronic illness, then All We Have To Do to stop disease is...get everyone to make healthy choices! If individual's lifestyle and consumption choices can be "demonstrated" to contribute to the probability of their developing criminal behaviours, then All We Have To Do to stop crime is...get everyone to make socially responsible choices!

Unfortunately for this wonderfully optimistic attempt to escape from reality, the genetic-biological-social-economic dynamics involved in the development of chronic illnesses and criminal behaviours are about as complex as quantum mechanics. The concept of "All We Have To Do"..., is an unrealistic, utopian oversimplification.

Because Health Promotion and other 'prevention' industries cannot accomplish what they have caused the rest of society to believe in and expect will happen, they develop an endless series of scapegoats to blame for their failure.

When 'prevention' industry propagandists are pointing fingers of blame, there should be reflexive questioning in our minds, such as: "If Health Promotion and other 'preventions' are valid concepts, why is all this new regulation necessary? Why are these health or social issues still such a problem, supposedly requiring ever greater intrusion into our liberty & autonomy through laws and regulations, if 'prevention' really is capable of stopping them from occurring?"



http://surrealitytimes.blogspot.com/


It has a Darker side too

Fruit and vegetable consumption was encouraged, as was the use of wholemeal bread and the avoidance of fat.1 A key figure in Nazi medicine, Erwin Liek, predicted that cancer would come to be seen as a product of diet.2 The consumption of whipped cream seems to have been a particular target of disapproval. The official newspaper of the SS, Das Schwarzes Korps, reported on German tourists in Austrian coffee houses and said that anyone would “think Greater Germany was only created so that this raving Philistine rabble can wolf whipped cream.” A prominent promilitarist slogan read, “Fighting power or whipped cream?”

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=535959


I don't think even I could exaggerate the pain these women suffer because they are large. In the face of their obesity our normal standards of humanity vanish and we are possessed by a form of racist revulsion for the bodies of these women.

Again and again, Chernin asks us to look at the fat woman, with her "rounded cheeks, plump arms..., broad shoulders,... full thighs, rounded ass... of a woman made that way according to her nature, walking with head high in pride of her body, however it happened to be shaped." We need, she insists, to see each woman as she is meant to be, ripe and full of promise, not cut her down to some Procrustean ideal.

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/06/14/143250.php

[JDPriestly]

1. It's a matter of probabilities. "All we have to do" does not work, that's true.

For instance, I know someone who eats eggs, sausages and things that are supposed to be bad for your cholesterol, but who has very low cholesterol. I know another person who restricts her diet and takes medications to try to lower her cholesterol, but who struggles constantly with the problem. I'm kind of in the middle. My cholesterol is neither too high nor very low.

My two friends represent opposite extremes of the statistical spectrum. I'm in the middle. Avoiding foods that will have been shown to correlate with higher cholesterol could make a difference in my health and may make a big difference in the person whose cholesterol count tends to be high. Obviously, eating a "bad" diet is not hurting my friend with low cholesterol.

The key is to know your own dietary or lifestyle needs and to realize that, for example, if you smoke, you may or may not get heart disease or cancer, but your chances of getting those and other conditions you may want to avoid are, from a statistical point of view, much greater.

Hey, we all die someday. We make choices based on our personal goals, the information available to us and our own capacity to make choices that work for us. I feel lucky to have the information I need to help me make choices. I don't go to extremes, but I want to live healthy, so I try to make choices that will keep me healthy.

[undergroundpanther]

2. Health is ok

But I find being happy is way more important than being healthy through the kind of "self control" which is really shaming of yourself,to conform to what people THINK might be healthy and live stressed out and miserable just hurts too much to do it.

I am one of the low cholesterol types.I eat eggs and all and it does not affect me . But I got a gut. So? No need to fear it or feel ashamed of it.As our culture demands so many of us to do.
Fuck the fat phobic culture it's sick..it is a spreader of misery.

One thing I do know is I have a lot of stress in my life and if being happy has granted me a gut for enjoying the few foods that are considered sinful sensual and demonized like vain body obsessed Nazis hated whipped cream,than so be it.

My life is mostly NOT happy, so instead of the pursuit of happiness which just feels futile I try to let myself feel happy.The "goal based" future thinking style as some do as in when I get my cholesterol at __ and lose___ pounds I will be happier for it all on some rainy day.It's well pointless that rainy day may never come or it's always raining..so??. I just prefer to be happy any way I can get it, in any way that works for me.

My life will end regardless..I think the best revenge is living fully instead of living a long time. I hate this world and I look forward to escaping it,or whatever..So I don't care about being vain or thin or perfect health anymore. I'd just like to get through a day without pondering suicide..If perfect health requires my life to be more devoid of joy than it already is..why live?

That's where I am coming from.