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"On the other hand, not eating your veggies just affects your own health."

Well, are you saying being vegetable deficient (or eating too much sugar and refined starch etc.) does not put everyone else's health at risk as well, by the same argument you use for promoting vaccination, if such an eating style compromises someone's immune system?

Example:
    http://www.google.com/search?q=immune+system+vegetables
    http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/587037/best_fruits_and_vegetables_to_help.html
"Regularly eating fresh fruits and vegetables is the natural way to boost your immune system."

I'm not saying whether that applies to you. That is just a general fact about health. And even the most casual glance at US Americans shows almost all are vegetable deficient.

I personally am not angry with you whatever you eat or why; you just sounded angry about the vaccination issue. I'm just asking you, if that anger exists and is justified, is it legitimate to consider such anger applicable for other contexts?

It's OK to be angry, even healthy; it's what we do with the anger that matters.
    http://pbskids.org/rogers/songLyricsWhatDoYouDo.html

Should I get angry when I see someone drive up to a fast food restaurant?

It would seem to me that if a person is not eating well, and then that person's immune system can't fight off infection well because that person is vegetable deficient by a lifestyle choice or unwillingness to break out of a "pleasure trap", then that person is creating a health hazard for other people?

Of course, not many people know about pleasure traps or how to break out of them, so the issue of willfullness is questionable, and in this society, the whole society essentially makes it hard to eat well:
    http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
    http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
    http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html
"These two senses are already quite far apart. Already someone trying to live well would seem eccentrically abstemious in most of the US. That phenomenon is only going to become more pronounced. You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly."

With that said, I can see your point about the issue of what public figures say as opposed to what private individuals do, which is indeed a very good point I can agree with.

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/autism-information.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/cancerMain.shtml
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/07/22/pregnant-women-advised-to-get-more-vitamin-d.aspx
http://www.iodine4health.com/

Both are involved with immune function in different ways. Adequate vitamin D is needed to make the brain's master antioxidant, glutathione. Adequate iodine helps excrete heavy metals. Both are involved with zapping cancer cells (it's said the average adult gets one cancer cell a day, but a good immune system deals with it). Vitamin D is essential to preventing pregnancy complications, including C-sections.

The US RDA for iodine may be way too low, especially considering how much bromine and fluorine kids are exposed to. The vitamin D RDA is also too low, even with being recently revised upward.

Eating fruits and vegetables also helps preventing lots of disease and is essential to good health.
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
    http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-the-food-pyramid-of-the-insane.html

One can tease out a lot of the individual nutritional and environmental causes in some cases of autism:
    "Autism Research: Breakthrough Discovery on the Causes of Autism"
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html

Let's get that all right before arguing too much over other stuff and what the true risk/reward assessment is for otherwise healthy kids and vaccines. A focus on magic bullets may be leading us to miss the big picture here about optimal health, which is earned by eating right and a lot of good lifestyle choices.

If pediatricians educated parents more about nutrition, we'd probably have a lot healthier population, even without vaccines.
"Disease-Proof Your Child: Feeding Kids Right"
http://www.amazon.com/Disease-Proof-Your-Child-Feeding-Right/dp/0312338058
"A groundbreaking book that explains the connection between nutrition and disease prevention-showing parents how to keep their children healthy by feeding them right. Bombarded by the media with stories about childhood obesity and dangerous hormones, pesticides and additives in foods, and told that allergies, asthma, and ear infections are on the rise, parents have never been more concerned about what to feed children. In this invaluable resource, featuring easy-to prepare, tasty recipes, Dr. Joel Fuhrman explains how cutting edge nutritional science can be brought to the family table with amazing results. "

See also for how to break out of the junk food pleasure trap:
    http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/autism-information.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/cancerMain.shtml
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/07/22/pregnant-women-advised-to-get-more-vitamin-d.aspx
http://www.iodine4health.com/

Both are involved with immune function in different ways. Adequate vitamin D is needed to make the brain's master antioxidant, glutathione. Adequate iodine helps excrete heavy metals. Both are involved with zapping cancer cells (it's said the average adult gets one cancer cell a day, but a good immune system deals with it). Vitamin D is essential to preventing pregnancy complications, including C-sections.

The US RDA for iodine may be way too low, especially considering how much bromine and fluorine kids are exposed to. The vitamin D RDA is also too low, even with being recently revised upward.

Eating fruits and vegetables also helps preventing lots of disease and is essential to good health.
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
    http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-the-food-pyramid-of-the-insane.html

One can tease out a lot of the individual nutritional and environmental causes in some cases of autism:
    "Autism Research: Breakthrough Discovery on the Causes of Autism"
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html

Let's get that all right before arguing too much over other stuff and what the true risk/reward assessment is for otherwise healthy kids and vaccines. A focus on magic bullets may be leading us to miss the big picture here about optimal health, which is earned by eating right and a lot of good lifestyle choices.

If pediatricians educated parents more about nutrition, we'd probably have a lot healthier population, even without vaccines.
"Disease-Proof Your Child: Feeding Kids Right"
http://www.amazon.com/Disease-Proof-Your-Child-Feeding-Right/dp/0312338058
"A groundbreaking book that explains the connection between nutrition and disease prevention-showing parents how to keep their children healthy by feeding them right. Bombarded by the media with stories about childhood obesity and dangerous hormones, pesticides and additives in foods, and told that allergies, asthma, and ear infections are on the rise, parents have never been more concerned about what to feed children. In this invaluable resource, featuring easy-to prepare, tasty recipes, Dr. Joel Fuhrman explains how cutting edge nutritional science can be brought to the family table with amazing results. "

See also for how to break out of the junk food pleasure trap:
    http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

After you get your level checked, you'll have to then decide what level is a good thing.

Here are four different recommendations for optimal levels in increasing order

IOM:
http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2010/Dietary-Reference-Intakes-for-Calcium-and-Vitamin-D/DRI-Values.aspx
>20 ng/mL (but their recommendations sort of imply not much more than that is important)

Dr. Fuhrman:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/vitamin_D_recommendations.aspx
35–55 ng/mL

Grassroots Health:
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/recommendation
40–60 ng/mL

Vitamin D Council:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
50–80 ng/mL (or higher for some specific conditions)

So, it's great to have a level. But even then there are disagreements about what is best.

Remember, parents have been warned heavily over the last decade or two to keep their kids out of the sun.

The vitamin D hpothesis easily explains stuff like the high rate (5X) of autism among Somali children or the high rate (9X) of schizophrenia among second generation Afro-Caribbeans in the UK.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/minneapolis-and-the-somal_b_143967.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2418996/
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/abstract/167/3/362

No doubt there are socieconomic issues at play in the disparity, but 5X and 9X?

Note that in the link you provide, the units were different (nmol/L which requires a higher level to be in the right range).

I'm still not following their logic to dismiss what they found: "Age-standardized means based on observed serum 25(OH)D concentrations were significantly (P http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/07/22/pregnant-women-advised-to-get-more-vitamin-d.aspx
"Please do not assume your levels are fine, as Drs. Hollis and Wagner found that over 87 percent of all newborns and over 67 percent of all mothers had vitamin D levels lower than 20 ng/ml, which is a severe deficiency state. As a result, the researchers recommended that all mothers optimize their vitamin D levels during pregnancy, especially in the winter months, to safeguard their babies' health. This finding could easily help to explain the disproportionately high numbers of poor outcomes among African American births, as deficiency is extremely common among people with darker skin colors."

However, another variable is how much vitamin D do people with different ethnicities or skin color need? So, even the general ranges above, are they appropriate for all ethnicities? Maybe people with darker skin have other adaptations to function well on less? So, there remains more to research about all this. But with that said, just look at how much sun people got 1000 years ago, and look at how much people get now, and considering how melanoma is one of the easiest to detect and treat cancers, how much sun or vitamin D supplements seems "conservative" considering the conditions human are adapted for? Pretty much no humans in the past spent all their lives in caves that I'm aware of (except maybe rich ones, but they probably got diseases of affluence like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and so on).

We got hit by this ourselves with health issues with our kid (as well as a C-section, which turns out to also be at increased risk with vitamin D deficiency). We just naively followed all the advice to stay out of the sun, etc.. I actually asked our pediatrician if we should be giving vitamin D sup

Type 2 diabates in most cases is curable within a week by superior diet. You don't have to look far to find lots of evidence for that.

Here are two videos by Dr. Fuhrman on that:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46_GInjBeQU
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw

But you can find many peopel who say similar things about type 2 diabete. Type 1 also benefits from such a diet, but you'd still need some insulin, but with less complications.

The other two I don't know much about. But I can believe diet effects them.

Dr. Fuhrman is involved with a non-profit to do clinical research on nutrition:
    https://www.nutritionalresearch.org/

Here is a study he was involved with that suggests his dietary approach is more effective than gastric bypass surgey for weight loss:
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/high_nutrient_diet_and_weight_loss.aspx

Dr. Fuhrman is a great hero of medicine. There just is not much money in preventing or curing disease. And, sadly, most people just say the same things you do. It's hard to get people to change their diet, and our society offers little support for that. Here is part of why that is true:
    http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

Anyway, I'd readily agree the field of alternative medicine has frauds in it, but I'd say the same thing of areas of mainstream medicine too. The Flexner Report from 100 years ago was part of what made US medicine become so messed up:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexner_Report

I collected lots of links here about how and why mainstream medical research has gone wrong:
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html

Just one example for there, from Marcia Angell:
        http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/drug-companies-doctorsa-story-of-corruption/
        "The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine."

Type 2 diabates in most cases is curable within a week by superior diet. You don't have to look far to find lots of evidence for that.

Here are two videos by Dr. Fuhrman on that:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46_GInjBeQU
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw

But you can find many peopel who say similar things about type 2 diabete. Type 1 also benefits from such a diet, but you'd still need some insulin, but with less complications.

The other two I don't know much about. But I can believe diet effects them.

Dr. Fuhrman is involved with a non-profit to do clinical research on nutrition:
    https://www.nutritionalresearch.org/

Here is a study he was involved with that suggests his dietary approach is more effective than gastric bypass surgey for weight loss:
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/high_nutrient_diet_and_weight_loss.aspx

Dr. Fuhrman is a great hero of medicine. There just is not much money in preventing or curing disease. And, sadly, most people just say the same things you do. It's hard to get people to change their diet, and our society offers little support for that. Here is part of why that is true:
    http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

Anyway, I'd readily agree the field of alternative medicine has frauds in it, but I'd say the same thing of areas of mainstream medicine too. The Flexner Report from 100 years ago was part of what made US medicine become so messed up:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexner_Report

I collected lots of links here about how and why mainstream medical research has gone wrong:
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html

Just one example for there, from Marcia Angell:
        http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/drug-companies-doctorsa-story-of-corruption/
        "The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine."

Please see (the page has references to the scientific literature):
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/disease/Other.aspx
"We routinely hear that asthma, acne, allergies, arthritis, herpes, reflux esophagitis, irritable bowel syndrome and many more have nothing to do with diet. This is simply not true. Doctors are trained as experts in prescribing and monitoring the risks and effectiveness of medications. They typically have little or no expertise in using nutrition as their primary modality of treatment. They are biased in favor of their own method of treatment (drugs) and do not have broad experience or training in motivating patients and utilizing nutritional and lifestyle interventions. ....
    A significant number of medical investigations have uncovered that, just like other diseases, people develop asthma and allergies for reasons. Asthma and allergies have been linked to nutritional factors:
                * Low levels of fresh fruits and flavonoids[iii]
                * Fried foods, protein-rich and fat-rich foods of animal origin[iv]
                * Low blood levels of fruit and vegetable derived antioxidants[v]
                * Dietary fatty acid imbalance—an excess of omega-6 over omega-3 fats[vi]
                * Increased intake of high saturated fat foods (meat, cheese and butter)[vii]
                * Bread and butter consumption, lower vegetable intake [viii]
My experience in working with hundreds of patients attempting to resolve asthma and allergies has been rewarding. The asthmatics gradually improve, and the allergic patients slowly reduce the severity of their allergies and many become entirely non-allergic. Many patients who had strong allergies to cats, dust mites and pollen, no longer have these sensitivities. From a combination of dietary advice and a limited amount of nutritional supplements, most people start to improve their condition in a few months. I have even had patients who surprisingly continued to be allergic a year late,r and then after about 20 months following my recommendations, their allergies faded away. Recoveries are the rule and not the exception. ... Working with patients with autoimmune diseases such as connective tissue disease, myositis, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus is very rewarding. These patients were convinced that they could never get well and are eternally grateful to be healthy again requiring no medication. I regularly get notes and letters, such as these unsolicited comments: ..."

Your mileage may vary, but if you have not looked into this, you might want to.

"Glad it worked for you. Trust me when I say it won't work for me."

Have you seriously looked at and tried Dr. Fuhrman's approach?
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/disease/Other.aspx
"We routinely hear that asthma, acne, allergies, arthritis, herpes, reflux esophagitis, irritable bowel syndrome and many more have nothing to do with diet. This is simply not true. Doctors are trained as experts in prescribing and monitoring the risks and effectiveness of medications. They typically have little or no expertise in using nutrition as their primary modality of treatment. They are biased in favor of their own method of treatment (drugs) and do not have broad experience or training in motivating patients and utilizing nutritional and lifestyle interventions. ... I have been utilizing a high antioxidant, acrlyamide-free diet for many years with marked success. Acrylamides are toxic substances produced by baking and frying carbohydrates. The diet-style I recommend for fibromylagia patients is rich in natural plant foods especially organic berries and green vegetables and restricted in animal products and baked grains. Vegetable soups and steamed vegetables are encouraged. Fibromyalgia patients routinely get well, and they get well quickly. Studies in the medical literature support this method of treatment.[ii] Though the researchers do not seem to have the experience and understanding of why what they are doing works, the effects are dramatic. ... A significant number of medical investigations have uncovered that, just like other diseases, people develop asthma and allergies for reasons. Asthma and allergies have been linked to nutritional factors:

                * Low levels of fresh fruits and flavonoids[iii]
                * Fried foods, protein-rich and fat-rich foods of animal origin[iv]
                * Low blood levels of fruit and vegetable derived antioxidants[v]
                * Dietary fatty acid imbalance—an excess of omega-6 over omega-3 fats[vi]
                * Increased intake of high saturated fat foods (meat, cheese and butter)[vii]
                * Bread and butter consumption, lower vegetable intake [viii]
My experience in working with hundreds of patients attempting to resolve asthma and allergies has been rewarding. The asthmatics gradually improve, and the allergic patients slowly reduce the severity of their allergies and many become entirely non-allergic. Many patients who had strong allergies to cats, dust mites and pollen, no longer have these sensitivities. From a combination of dietary advice and a limited amount of nutritional supplements, most people start to improve their condition in a few months. I have even had patients who surprisingly continued to be allergic a year late,r and then after about 20 months following my recommendations, their allergies faded away. Recoveries are the rule and not the exception. "

If you have not tried this, or at least reviewed the research, how would you know it does not work?

Now, if you are not following these dietary guidelines, should I get angry with you for putting my own family's health at risk by the same logic you are using in regard to vaccinations?

You make some good points. Please also look into these links for approaches to improving autism situations to build on the dietary interventions you are already doing:
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/vit-D-theory-autism.shtml
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
   

You wrote:

"Gates spends the money on the root of the problem, population control, then you won't have so many babies to die from disease, seriously there are 7 billion people on the planet and we aren't addressing population control but rather keeping more of them alive. We are in need of a 4 or 5 billion deaths from a super virus."

One can make arguments for an "occupancy limit" for the Earth based on aesthetics or some other issues, but the carrying capacity of the solar system is easily in the quadrillions of humans living in space habitats, and we have the general technology to do that (see Gerry O'Neill's work, for a start).
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_K._O'Neill#Space_colonization

See also this Wikipedia page to see how the sun shines more power on the Earth each day also than all those reserves.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)

PV power is expected to reach widespread grid parity real soon now, even with all the negative externalities of fossil fuels (pollution, war, sickenss) being ignored.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity

(A recent earthquake in Indonesia released more power than all the planet's known fossil fuel and uranium reserves combined also, but we don't know how to harness that power yet. :-)

The empowered human imagination is the ultimate resource.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource

Would you be around, using a computer, and posting on slashdot if people a couple of centuries ago has said that we should keep the Earth's population at a hundred million to make sure we did not run out of wood for cooking fires and to avoid the problems posed by Peak Whale Oil? Or if ten thousand years before that, people had said we should keep the Earth's population at around a million indefinitely to avoid using up the readily available flint supplies too soon?

I'm not saying limits do not exist at any given time based on our knowledge and infrastructure. But, we are no where near those limits as fare as the solar system. I just did a calculation that the recend SN 2011b supernova released enough energy in a month to power a trillion trillion human intellects for 10 billion years. There are 100 billion such stars in a typical galaxy, and a 100 billion or more such galaxies in the visible universe. That's a lot of energy, even if we can harness only a tiny fraction of it someday.

We could easily support tens of billions of humans on Earth, with plenty of room for wildlife, if we used solar power and ate a healthier diet with a lot less animal products.
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
    http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

Ask yourself, who might be making money off of selling you despair leading to your advocating for supergerms and a massive die-off of humanity?
    http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

You wrote:

"Gates spends the money on the root of the problem, population control, then you won't have so many babies to die from disease, seriously there are 7 billion people on the planet and we aren't addressing population control but rather keeping more of them alive. We are in need of a 4 or 5 billion deaths from a super virus."

One can make arguments for an "occupancy limit" for the Earth based on aesthetics or some other issues, but the carrying capacity of the solar system is easily in the quadrillions of humans living in space habitats, and we have the general technology to do that (see Gerry O'Neill's work, for a start).
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_K._O'Neill#Space_colonization

See also this Wikipedia page to see how the sun shines more power on the Earth each day also than all those reserves.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)

PV power is expected to reach widespread grid parity real soon now, even with all the negative externalities of fossil fuels (pollution, war, sickenss) being ignored.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity

(A recent earthquake in Indonesia released more power than all the planet's known fossil fuel and uranium reserves combined also, but we don't know how to harness that power yet. :-)

The empowered human imagination is the ultimate resource.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource

Would you be around, using a computer, and posting on slashdot if people a couple of centuries ago has said that we should keep the Earth's population at a hundred million to make sure we did not run out of wood for cooking fires and to avoid the problems posed by Peak Whale Oil? Or if ten thousand years before that, people had said we should keep the Earth's population at around a million indefinitely to avoid using up the readily available flint supplies too soon?

I'm not saying limits do not exist at any given time based on our knowledge and infrastructure. But, we are no where near those limits as fare as the solar system. I just did a calculation that the recend SN 2011b supernova released enough energy in a month to power a trillion trillion human intellects for 10 billion years. There are 100 billion such stars in a typical galaxy, and a 100 billion or more such galaxies in the visible universe. That's a lot of energy, even if we can harness only a tiny fraction of it someday.

We could easily support tens of billions of humans on Earth, with plenty of room for wildlife, if we used solar power and ate a healthier diet with a lot less animal products.
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
    http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

Ask yourself, who might be making money off of selling you despair leading to your advocating for supergerms and a massive die-off of humanity?
    http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

To reduce allergies, please look into eating more vegetables and fruits (Dr. Fuhrman) and getting the right amount of vitamin D (Vitamin D Council) -- worked for me.
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

There are lots of ways to promote wellness; I guess it should be no suprise the slashdot crowd is mostly interested in the magic bullet approach to health (vaccines) instead of holistic basics -- vegetable and fruit heavy diet, exercise, sleep, community, meditation, laughter, sunlight, fasting, two+ years nursing for infants, avoiding crowds, avoiding compulsory group labor in small (class) rooms, avoiding most junk food and most animal products, etc..

Anyway, given the logic you are using to encourage peopel to get vaccinated, it seems you might want to encourage people to move towards wellness in all these other areas, too?

Check out Dr. Fuhrman's nutritional approach to boost your immunity (the immune system both deals with infeciton diseases and also kills cancer cells where adults have been said to get one cancer cell a day that the immune system needs to zap):
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
    http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-food-dr-fuhrmans-anticancer-solution.html

Essentially, his approach entails resensitizing your taste buds (see the book "The Pleasure Trap") to enjoy eating a lot of vegetables, fruits, and beans (and some nuts, seeds, and whole grains, and a few supplements with a multivitamin, vitamin D, and sometimes some others).

Also, make sure you have your vitamin D and iodine levels checked, as both can relate to cancer. (Look up iodine 4 health and the vitamin D council).

Best of look keeping cancer and other illness at bay. If you do a good job at that with good nutrition (and some exercise, getting enough sleep, having good social interactions, and so on), your doctor may not recognize you. :-)

See also:
    http://www.ravediet.com/caResources.html
   

http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
http://www.healthpromoting.com/article/breaking-free-dietary-pleasure-trap

And also: "Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose"
http://books.google.com/books?id=HQlg3rQquUoC

All to support your concern...

Another aspect, that animals may turn to addictive-seeming behavior under stress:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

See also Larry Niven's fictional "Droud":
    http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=207

http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
"The great bulk of agricultural production goes toward forage production used primarily by livestock. A small shift in our diet away from meat could have a tremendous impact on the ground in terms of freeing up lands for restoration and wildlife habitat. It would also reduce the poisoning of our streams and groundwater with pesticides and other residue of modern agricultural practices. ... The U.S. has 2.3 billion acres of land. However, 375 million acres are in Alaska and not suitable for agricultural production. The land area of the lower 48 states is approximately 1.9 billion acres. ... About 349 million acres in the U.S. are planted for crops. This is the equivalent of about four states the size of Montana. Four crops -- feeder corn (80 million acres), soybeans (75 million acres), alfalfa hay (61 million acres) and wheat (62 million acres) -- make up 80 percent of total crop acreage. All but wheat are primarily used to feed livestock. The amount of land used to produce all vegetables in the U.S. is less than 3 million acres. ... Range and Pasture Land- Some 788 million acres, or 41.4 percent of the U. S. excluding Alaska, are grazed by livestock. This is an area the size of 8.3 states the size of Montana. Grazed lands include rangeland, pasture and cropland pasture. More than 309 million acres of federal, state and other public lands are grazed by domestic livestock. Another 140 million acres are forested lands that are grazed. ... Despite all the hand wringing over sprawl and urbanization, only 66 million acres are considered developed lands. This amounts to 3 percent of the land area in the U.S., yet this small land base is home to 75 percent of the population. ... "

Similar to suggested above, when you include grain production for animal feed to grazing land, literally half the land in the USA is devoted to animal product production, according to the movie this is a preview of:
http://www.ravediet.com/preview.html

Note that, overall, people in the USA would be healthier if they ate a lot less animal products and processed foods (including sugar and refined grains) and a lot more vegetables, fruits, and beans (and some nuts, seeds, and whole grains, and a few key supplements like vitamin D, B12, iodine, etc.). But the agricultural subsidies are the opposite of what we need for good health in the USA.

See also:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx

Thanks for the David Drake suggestion. I don't especially recall reading anything by him, though I have "The World Turned Upside Down" which he helped edit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Drake
Anyway, I'll have to look through my sci-fi collection. I can guess I've read similar things though. Maybe his stuff might be similar to themes in the Bolo (honor) or Beserker (survival) series? Or stuff like by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, like in The Mote in God's Eye (and the sequel someone mentioned to me recently, where biogenetic change of the Mote's was a theme)? Jack L. Chalker's Well World series also talks about the interplay of genetics, environment, and culture.

The non-fiction book (and DVD) called "The Pleasure Trap" by Doug Lisle (and a coauthor) talk about a human brain adapted for scarcity and not abundance (and the obesity epidemic being an example of things going wrong).
"The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force That Undermines Health & Happines"
http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

Another similar book (but with less good advice, but more general):
"Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpos"
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X

Also related on how people may turn to compulsive addictive-seeming behaviors in stressful environments:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

Anyway, how we express our genes is still related to environment and mind. So, even if there is a potential for violence, we have options as to what we do with out feelings.

Gregory Clark has a theory of evolution related to capitalism, btw (I'm not saying I agree, but it relates to your point):
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/science/07indu.html?pagewanted=print
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Clark_(economist)#A_Farewell_to_Alms
"A Farewell to Alms (the book's title is a non-rhotic pun on Ernest Hemingway's novel, A Farewell to Arms) discusses the divide between rich and poor nations that came about as a result of the Industrial Revolution in terms of the evolution of particular behaviors originating in Britain. Prior to 1790, Clark asserts, man faced a Malthusian trap: new technology enabled greater productivity and more food, but was quickly gobbled up by higher populations. In Britain, however, as disease continually killed off poorer members of society, their positions in society were taken over by the sons of the wealthy, who were less violent, more literate, and more productive. This process of "downward social mobility" eventually enabled Britain to attain a rate of productivity that allowed it to break out of the Malthusian trap."

However, that does not explain the Haudenosaunee. In general, "sexual selection" can drive a lot of evolution, as can just random changes, or other non-obvious things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection

Do whales and dolphins kill each other off? Still, I'm not saying humans don't have various different proclivities. But even then, environment and culture can shape how they are expressed. James P. Hogan's Voyage from Y

You're welcome. Thanks for the comment. I've been refining the message. I hope the meme continues to propagate and others adapt it for local circumstances and their own unique style. James P. Hogan's Voyage From Yesteryear is one big source of that meme for me. Marcine Quenzer was influential too:
    http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
As was Doug Lisle:
    http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm
And others (Gerry Pournelle to an extent with his "Survival with Style" essay, lots of other writers with a bit here and there, including Theodore Sturgeon and "The Skills of Xanadu"). So I'm just standing on the shoulders of giants. :-)

BTW, if you like Edgar Cayce, how do you feel about Herbert Shelton, Joel Fuhrman, and Blue Zones?
    http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/shelton.bio.bidwell.htm
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
    http://www.bluezones.com/

The Flexner Report (by Abraham Flexner, in conjunction with the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations) is where things really started to go wrong with US medicine, as someone with success doing hands-on stuff with K-12 education tried to apply it to medicine where it was less appropriate since prevention, infrastructure, and complex psychology/spiritual issues are more important for wellness:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexner_Report
Ironically, now we have hands-on treatment focused medicine, and abstraction-oriented K-12, mostly just the opposite of how it should be...

More on that from one perspective:
    http://www.sntp.net/fda/piper_griffin.htm
"In the meantime, while doctors are forced to spend hundreds of hours studying the names and actions of all kinds of man-made drugs, they are lucky if they receive even a portion of a single course on basic nutrition. Many have none at all. The result is that the average doctor's wife or secretary knows more about practical nutrition than he does."

More on how medical and other research has gone wrong in the USA (another post I made to this story):
    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1964112&cid=34989572

If this cold fusion thing does work out (or even if it does not), these issues may help explain why it (as well as alternative medicine) encountered so much resistance. Still, I hope things may have improved somewhat from the days of Ignaz Semmelweis:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

I do talk about escapism and drug addiction in passing here:
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/38e2u3s23jer/2

Summarized in a new way here:
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=360&cpage=6#comment-20270

As I say there, after talking about positive alternatives of a a basic income, a gift economy, democratic resource-based planning, and local subsistence: "There are some bad "make-work" alternatives also that could prop up the status quo for a time and are best avoided, like endless war, endless schooling, endless bureaucracy, endless sickness, and endless prisons. All of those just keep people busy in an addictive or destructive or mindless way to little good end and to little human happiness. Unfortunately, people turn all too quickly to those bad alternatives sometimes to deal with social problems related to abundance or uneven wealth distribution. I outline that in more depth in the knol."

So, I might consider drugs part of the "endless sickness". But maybe it deserves its own category for the reason you outline? Thanks for the suggestion. It also feeds into the prison "solution", too, as you point out. And, as you say indirectly, it connects to the notion of being a "Millionaire Wannabee" as well:
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47
"But here's something I'll bet the dittoheads haven't thought of. Maybe they're the chumps. Maybe they've been sold a bogus "American dream" that never existed. Maybe "the rules" they play by were written by the people who have "made it" - not by the people who haven't. And maybe - just maybe - the people who have "made it" wrote those rules to keep the wannabes chasing a dream that's a mirage."

BTW, here is a way to break out of food-related "drug" addiction, in the sense that refined sugar and cheap salt and excessive refined-oil/factory-farmed-animal fat are all drugs in a way too:
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm
Combined with this or something similar:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx

This 1970s study (ignored and terminated) showed that addictive behavior may be mainly a response to environmental stress:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
"To test his hypothesis, Alexander built Rat Park, an 8.8 m2 (95 sq ft) housing colony, 200 times the square footage of a standard laboratory cage. There were 16-20 rats of both sexes in residence, an abundance of food, balls and wheels for play, and enough space for mating and raising litters.[3] The results of the experiment appeared to support his hypothesis. Rats who had been forced to consume morphine hydrochloride for 57 consecutive days were brought to Rat Park and given a choice between plain tap water and water laced with morphine. For the most part, they chose the plain water. "Nothing that we tried," Alexander wrote, "... produced anything that looked like addiction in rats that were housed in a reasonably normal environment."[1] Control groups of rats isolated in small cages consumed much more morphine in this and several subsequent experiments."

A claymation about that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3swVNAaoDgw

Could that go for computer addiction and workaholism and so on, too?

Its ironic how the totalitarian USSR needed to guard its borders to keep people from escaping, and we in the USA rightly said that was awful, but the USA is finding it ne

http://www.ageofautism.com/2011/01/breaking-news-statement-from-dr-andrew-wakefield-no-fraud-no-hoax-no-profit-motive.html
http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/05/peer-reviewed-papers-support-findings.html

I'm not saying who to believe there; I'm just linking to his defense vs. Deer's accusations

See also for alternatives to prevent/cure/mitigate ASD:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/vit-D-theory-autism.shtml

In general, for good health through better nutrition:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx

And discussion comments here (pro and con):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jenny-mccarthy/vaccine-autism-debate_b_806857.html

Please see this post by another parent about how nutritional issues (dairy in that case) were the cause of autistic-seeming behavior:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1947552&cid=34849468

Also, while I'd agree that a lot of stuff that happens in the womb or the early years can't really be improved (short of Star Trek 24th century medicine we don't have), nutrition and vitamin D clearly can improve a lot of things, and not just for your son, but even in your own life, so you can take better care of your son for a long time. It is not natural for humans to get little sunlight exposure. It is not natural to eat processed and refined foods, or so much factory-farmed animal products (especially weird dairy). Neither is it normal to have so many heavy metals and other toxins in our vitamins, which *increase* the need for a better diet, when instead we have a worse one. Whether fixing all these issues can improve ASD, they certainly can help prevent (or in many cases reverse) heart disease, diabetes, cancer (prevention only mostly), arthritis, and other chronic diseases.

Other links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://www.drfuhrman.com/children/default.aspx

Genetics do affect part of health and part of behavior. But the vast majority of health and behavior reflects the interaction of genes and environment, and you can effect the environment.

Vaccines are a distraction in that sense, where even if they work to some extent, and even if they are safe to some extent, the focus on a "magic bullet" is like a permission slip for ignoring the big picture about wellness. Dr. Fuhrman's work is heavily based on science, so you can find thousands of studies he references in his works (more than anyone else probably).

And here is other scientifically based advice on wellness:
http://www.bluezones.com/

Anyway, call it "garbage" if you want. But science more and more is telling us the same thing that old wisdom told us about health -- eat a diversity of mostly whole plant foods for health.

Ask yourself, where have you gotten your nutritional and other health information? What conflict-of-interests or profit-making influences have been involved in shaping your opinions about what is "normal"?
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html

In general, if you read something like Dr. Fuhrman's advice on nutrition in its entirety, and use a basic supplement, plus others as he recommends like vitamin D, it is highly unlikey you would do "more harm than good".

Doctor Hyman, a different doctor I linked to who suggests in addition to many other things, chelation. I'd agree chelation is risky. I'd pass on the chelation until trying everything else (and even then, adequate iodine might help a kid excrete heavy metals rather than using chelation). But making sure a kid is not eating processed foods and is eating more whole foods is almost certainly not going to hurt them (one could probably invent behavioral scenarios or monodiets where there could be issues, so I'm not saying there are not things to think about at all).

Do you own research, since most doctors are clueless about chronic conditions.

Even look into info for spiders:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachnophobia
"The alternative view is that the dangers, such as from spiders, ar

Please see this post by another parent about how nutritional issues (dairy in that case) were the cause of autistic-seeming behavior:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1947552&cid=34849468

Also, while I'd agree that a lot of stuff that happens in the womb or the early years can't really be improved (short of Star Trek 24th century medicine we don't have), nutrition and vitamin D clearly can improve a lot of things, and not just for your son, but even in your own life, so you can take better care of your son for a long time. It is not natural for humans to get little sunlight exposure. It is not natural to eat processed and refined foods, or so much factory-farmed animal products (especially weird dairy). Neither is it normal to have so many heavy metals and other toxins in our vitamins, which *increase* the need for a better diet, when instead we have a worse one. Whether fixing all these issues can improve ASD, they certainly can help prevent (or in many cases reverse) heart disease, diabetes, cancer (prevention only mostly), arthritis, and other chronic diseases.

Other links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://www.drfuhrman.com/children/default.aspx

Genetics do affect part of health and part of behavior. But the vast majority of health and behavior reflects the interaction of genes and environment, and you can effect the environment.

Vaccines are a distraction in that sense, where even if they work to some extent, and even if they are safe to some extent, the focus on a "magic bullet" is like a permission slip for ignoring the big picture about wellness. Dr. Fuhrman's work is heavily based on science, so you can find thousands of studies he references in his works (more than anyone else probably).

And here is other scientifically based advice on wellness:
http://www.bluezones.com/

Anyway, call it "garbage" if you want. But science more and more is telling us the same thing that old wisdom told us about health -- eat a diversity of mostly whole plant foods for health.

Ask yourself, where have you gotten your nutritional and other health information? What conflict-of-interests or profit-making influences have been involved in shaping your opinions about what is "normal"?
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html

In general, if you read something like Dr. Fuhrman's advice on nutrition in its entirety, and use a basic supplement, plus others as he recommends like vitamin D, it is highly unlikey you would do "more harm than good".

Doctor Hyman, a different doctor I linked to who suggests in addition to many other things, chelation. I'd agree chelation is risky. I'd pass on the chelation until trying everything else (and even then, adequate iodine might help a kid excrete heavy metals rather than using chelation). But making sure a kid is not eating processed foods and is eating more whole foods is almost certainly not going to hurt them (one could probably invent behavioral scenarios or monodiets where there could be issues, so I'm not saying there are not things to think about at all).

Do you own research, since most doctors are clueless about chronic conditions.

Even look into info for spiders:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachnophobia
"The alternative view is that the dangers, such as from spiders, ar

Thanks. No need to go out of your way. I see a bunch of links here:
http://www.google.com/#q=play+therapy
http://www.a4pt.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_therapy

And more specific stuff here:
http://www.google.com/#q=play+therapy+autism
http://www.a4pt.org/ps.playtherapy.cfm?ID=1161
http://www.playproject.org/
http://www.autismlink.com/pages/autism_therapy_play
"Play therapy, or floortime, as some refer to it, is the t ype of therapy coined by Dr. Stanley Greenspan. The theory behind the concept is to enter the child 's world, play with the child on his or her terms, and slowly expand the base of play to include new ideas. Although there have been few studies on the efficacy of play therapy/ floortime, many parents have seen excellent results. For example, if a child is perseverating or obsessing with cars and perhaps watching the wheels spin, the play therapy approach would be to get down on the floor with the child and begin by watching the wheels spin with him or her, then eventually d o other things with the car, such as drive it on the floor as a typical child would do. Slowly, over time, the child will learn to expand his or her repetoire o f play, and will learn to interact with others. An excellent book on this subject, called "The Child with Special Needs," by Dr. Stanely I. Greenspan, explains the concept in depth, or you can click on some of the links below.
AutismLink does not recommend one type of therapy over another. We can, however, tell you that what counts is the amount of time that the child spends ENGAGED with other people. No matter which modality of treatment you choose, you will see your child make progress. There is considerable debate among parents and pro fessionals as to which type of therapy is the "best" or the most effective. Choose what you feel is right for your child. Only you can make that decision. You can also choose more than one type of therapy and use a combination approach."

I like this book, btw, just about play and education in general, from someone who helped run a "free school" that was play-based for thirty years:
http://www.chrismercogliano.com/childhood.htm

By the way, make sure you check vitamin D levels:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/autism-information.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/another-autism-case-report.shtml

After discussing it with our (new) pediatrician, we give our kid about 2000 IU D3 daily (as one 5000 IU D3 gel cap every other day or so). Dental issues should have been an early clue to vitamin D deficiency, but the medical and dental community have been clueless in the past about nutrition. A source for better general advice we like is Dr. Fuhrman (even as I think he is a tad low about vitamin D):
http://www.drfuhrman.com/children/default.aspx
"As parents, we want what is best for our children. We would never intentionally harm them. In fact, we make sure to get them the best care we know, read to them at bedtime and insist they wear their seatbelts, but when it comes to children and food, somehow we don't know what is the best thing to do. Our children seem finicky and only eat cheese, pasta, chicken fingers or milk and cook

By the way, two counter links:
http://open.salon.com/blog/rahul_k_parikh/2009/09/06/huffington_post_health_watch_mark_hymans_faux_autism_cure
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/09/dr_mark_hyman_mangles_autism_science_on-.php

But, while I agree with the dangers of chelation (I think appropriate iodine supplementation might be safer and as effective), in general, I feel Mark Hyman is right about the big picture.

The problem is that in the USA, dermatologists and cosmetics companies have scared everyone about being in the sun, which along with and indoors lifestyle have led to vitamin D deficiency (which is involved in dealing with heavy metals). And with the way the meat, dairy, and processed/refined food industries have captured the US FDA, we have a crazy food pyramid that contributes to most people in the USA getting about half their calories from animal products and about the other half from refined and processed foods, with less than 10% percent of calories from fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, and seeds. We need to turn that around so less than 10% of calories comes from animal product and refined/processed foods, and 90% of calories comes from whole plant foods.
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-the-food-pyramid-of-the-insane.html
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx

Unfortunately, because of the "Pleasure Trap", people have a hard time breaking out of that bondage to deadly foods and thus come up with endless rationalizations for why they are not harming us:
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm

And we've been told for so long by so many people to avoid the sun (whether for health or energy), it's hard to think it is important. A little story about that is at the end of this:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/2008-october.shtml
"Then, new priests of science and medicine, told the people the Sun God was only a star, one of trillions, nothing special. Great temples called hospitals and research institutes arose, which admitted only filtered sunlight and where the people offered sacrifices to the gods of science and medicine, sacrifices that enriched the new priests. Then, thirty years ago, the new priests of dermatology told the people to shun the Sun God. "Banish her from your lives", they said, "She is evil." The people listened to the new priests and kept their pregnant women out of the Sun God's warmth, and told their children she was wicked. The people stayed inside, their children with them and traveled behind glass in their cars and wore sunblock and sunhats to keep the Sun God away. The Sun God grew vengeful...."

Look, we've been told for decades that type 2 diabetes in incurable, when it is in most cases cured within a week of a better diet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46_GInjBeQU
http://www.rawfor30days.com/
Above is a link on how to get past the "pleasure trap" keeping people from changing their diet for the better and readjusting their tastes to healthy food.

We've been told heart disease and cancer are just inheritable and "genetic", when most of that is

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html
Not to raise false hopes, but from there: "The causes of mitochondrial dysfunction are well known, specifically as it relates to metabolism and the brain, and I have documented them in my books "UtraMetabolism" and "The UltraMind Solution." They include environmental toxins (iv) -- mercury, lead and persistent organic pollutants(v) -- latent infections, gluten and allergens (which trigger inflammation) sugar and processed foods,(vi) a nutrient-depleted diet(vii) and nutritional deficiencies.(viii) These are all potentially treatable and reversible causes of mitochondrial dysfunction that have been clearly documented. I found all these problems in Jackson, and over a period of two years we slowly unraveled and treated the underlying causes of his energy loss which included gut inflammation, mercury, and nutrient deficiencies. Over time, the tests for his mitochondrial function and oxidative stress (as well as levels of inflammation and nutrient status) all normalized. When they became normal, so did Jackson. He went from full-blown regressive autism to a normal, bright beautiful six-year-old boy."

If you do only one thing, check vitamin D:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/vit-D-theory-autism.shtml
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/another-autism-case-report.shtml

Vaccines may still be involved in a couple of different ways, for kids who are having problems dealing with various heavy metals, where they may be struggling before, but the hevay metals or other issues with the vaccines pushed them over the edge (especially in a vitamin D deficient child, since vitamin D is used in creating glutathione, the brain's master antioxidant). One doctor being discredited doesn't prove that some vaccines can't have side effects in some especially sensitive individuals.

A new way of eating that in six weeks your family would like as much as how you eat now:
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
    http://www.amazon.com/Disease-Proof-Your-Child-Feeding-Right/dp/0312338058
At the very least, you'll probably live longer on that plan to help your kid longer.

We try to eat more that way, and take our vitamin D, and so on...

Killer fats with toxins too: http://www.ravediet.com/preview.html

Alternative: http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx

Eat less calories by eating more fibers/nutrients with more vegetables and fruits: http://www.drfuhrman.com/
He suggests: Health = Nutrients / Calories

Eat to Live: http://www.drfuhrman.com/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw

But only completely for type 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46_GInjBeQU
See also: http://www.drfuhrman.com/disease/diabetes.aspx

Type 1 diabetics still need to take insulin, but can take less and have less complications. So, this idea from the article might eventually help them.

From that link: "John ... was a 22 year old college graduate with Type 1 diabetes since the age of 6. He was five foot, eight inches tall and weighed 190 pounds. He was taking a total of 70 units of insulin daily. He was referred to my office by his family physician as he was having swings in his glucose levels, too high at times and at other times dangerously low. He also wanted to learn more about nutrition to improve his health and reduce his future risks from having diabetes. I was impressed by his intelligence and desire to change his eating habits to better his health. We spent lots of time discussing the typical problems that befall most diabetics, and I explained to him that using 70 units of insulin a day was part of the problem. I explained that if he follows my recommended diet-style he will stabilize his weight at about 145 pounds and he will only require about 30 units of insulin a day. With this lower level of insulin, to mimic the amount of insulin a non-diabetic makes in the pancreas, he can have a life without the typical health issues that befall diabetics. We cut his nighttime insulin dose down by ten units and his mealtime insulin from 10 to 6 as he began the diet. Over the next two weeks we gradually tapered his insulin and found that he only needed 20 units of Lantus insulin at bedtime and 4 units before each meal for a total of 32 units a day. Almost immediately, with my dietary recommendations, his sugars were running in the favorable range, and he no longer experienced dangerous drops in his blood sugar. He had lost 13 pounds over the first month and by month three weighed 167, a loss of 23 pounds. He was excited about what he had learned and was more hopeful about his life while living with his diabetes. I am convinced, that with the Eat To Live or Eat For Health diet-style, those with Type 1 diabetes can have a long and disease-free life. I feel it is imperative that all Type 1 diabetics learn about this life, saving approach."

Key there for type 1 diabetics is reducing complications, even if they still take diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes may also be related to vitamin D deficiency in utero and early life.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18846317
http://www.google.com/custom?q=diabetes&sitesearch=vitamindcouncil.org

If you have type 2 diabetes, you can most likely, within weeks under Dr. Fuhrman's plan, be throwing your insulin away forever (at least, based on what he writes). I know you may find this hard to believe. The key idea there is to lose weight to reduce insulin resistance, and to eliminate refined carbs to reduce insulin needs, and to improve your body's general health with more phytonutrients, and so bring the need for insulin within the remaining capacity of your body. In most cases of type 2 diabetes this should be enough to eliminate the need for any medications. Even if you remained on medications, the risk of complications would go way down and the quality of your life would go way up.

See also Raw For Thirty (though Dr. Fuhrman's approach is more comprehensive and not all raw for some good reasons):
http://www.rawfor30days.com/

Some people think they have type 1 diabetes because they have been misdiagnosed and are really type 2 and presumably 100% curable. I guess the opposite may be true, too, sadly. In any case, you never know for sure till you try.

I am following the Eat to Live plan for other reasons (though not

Thanks for the reply. You make a lot of good points. Still, the availability of such tools might help more people in the general public develop better analytical skills and learn more about context for various issues, so, the fact that most of the public could not make great use of such tools now does not mean they might not change that by their availability, or that the few who could use such tools might not use them to good advantage in all sorts of areas, building on tax-funded research.

Consider, what would it be like to apply this to, say, medical information research information, first?

Here is derived from something I just posted to a (private) forum on Dr. Fuhrman's site ( http://drfuhrman.com/ ), in reply to something he wrote including a mention of limited time (in a reply to some posts I made about vitamin D issues). You can think of what I suggest here as an example of how the same sorts of tools created for intelligence analysts might be very useful in other contexts. I just joined that forum a couple of days ago (there was an offer for a free six weeks, since expired), but I feel a bit frustrated to be writing stuff that gets stuck behind paywalls (same as when I post to private mailing lists), so it is probably not a place I will keep up with that much. (I'm not necessarily opposed to private-seeming spaces for people to discuss medical issues, but it is sad to think of all the information lost from them to general knowledge. There is also potentially the issue of financial obesity being as serious a problem as physical obesity. :-)

=== Better open tools for nutritional research communities

Dr. Fuhrman, thanks for the reply, and thanks for creating so many great resources and helping so many people, including me and my family.

[Comments snipped on vitamin D issues, linking to: http://www.grassrootshealth.net/recommendation ]

On having time for combing through the conflicting medical literature and conflicting models, I might suggest that addressing that issue with better tools may be even more important than doing more nutritional studies with the Nutritional Research Project [that Dr. Fuhrman is involved in http://www.nutritionalresearch.org/ ]. Sometimes we don't know what we know. :-)

Basically, in your mind you were able to integrate all these studies leading up to your books. How can you make it possible for everyone to look at the literature and come to similar conclusions for themselves, in an open way?

One possibility is with structured arguments about health topics, and also including a way people could look at the information from multiple perspectives, and so on. This vitamin D issue is an obvious starter issue, but there are many others where, without necessarily taking sides, one could encourage free form discussions like in these member forums, as well as more structured ones, and somehow have the result be like a Wikipedia of progressive medicine. Wikipedia is not the right model, but I mention it as it is well known, and it is a success to some degree, even with a lot of controversy.

Here are some other examples from SRI (my wife helped a bit with them).

From:
http://www.ai.sri.com/~seas/
"EAS is a software tool developed for intelligence analysts that records analytic reasoning and methods, that supports collaborative analysis across contemporary and historical situations and analysts and has broad applicability beyond intelligence analysis."

From:
http://www.ai.sri.com/~angler/
"Angler is a tool that helps intelligence/policy professionals Explore, understand, and overcome cognitive biases, and Collaboratively expand their joint cognitive vision Through use of divergent & convergent thinking techniques (such as brainstorming and clusterin

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzXBn5koFbY
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html
http://www.drfuhrman.com/
http://www.diseaseproof.com/

Check your vitamin D levels too:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

What you describe sound like a very respectable life. :-) Still, no one (including me) can live in this world and not get involved in some bad aspects of it (like, in the case of helping broadcasting stations, the mainstream media was often not doing its job of investigative journalism). Related:
    "What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream"
    http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm

Anyway, I hope those first links might help with reversing Type-II diabetes.

BTW, two other boxes of democracy are moving box (to somewhere with better laws) and mail box (writing representatives). :-) So, there are at least six. :-)

Why the ammo box is problematical:
    "Social Movements and Strategic Nonviolence"
    http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_nonviolence.html

Anyway, the things they don't teach in school...
    "Educating for a Peaceful World"
    http://www.forums.alliance21.org/d_read/pax/articles/Deutsch.htm

Maybe you were better off to get out sooner?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZGgeGHU1Bs
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw
http://books.google.com/books?id=CX8huSU0n8AC
http://www.drfuhrman.com/
http://www.diseaseproof.com/
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-the-food-pyramid-of-the-insane.html

And this site has some great videos to improve your knife skills for using wicked sharp knives to cut up your veggies:
http://www.kitchenonfire.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RhfAE6McrM

And don't forget your vitamin D, which you almost certainly won't get enough of from food:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

"There are plenty of diseases and injuries that could eat that half million in just a fraction of the time it took you to collect it."
Not to disagree with that, but most of those diseases are probably preventable by good nutrition and good lifestyle choices. See:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.drfuhrman.com/

What if you have to choose between eating organic food and having a low stress job you care about with no health insurance vs. working at a stressful job you hate and eating junk because you have no time or energy left over just so you can have health insurance? Because the latter is the treadmill a lot of people are on...

Vitamin D deficiency can lead to depression and mental illness (as well as all sorts of other medical issues including joint pain), and I would expect most game developers working such long hours indoors are suffering from it. Here is how to get treatment for pennies a day using supplements:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

A better diet than chips and diet soda would help too, like Dr. Fuhrman recommends:
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw
    http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

Related funny video:
    "Code Monkey"
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Wy7gRGgeA

Your repeatinbg outdated informaton (even if it is also all over the web, sadly). The US RDA for vitamin D is probably somewhere between ten times too low and one hundred times too low, which is where that misinformed calculation came from. For better information, see:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/vitaminDPhysiology.shtml
"""
Studies show that if you go out in the summer sun in your bathing suit until your skin just begins to turn pink, you make between 10,000 and 50,000 units of cholecalciferol in your skin. Professor Michael Holick of Boston University School of Medicine has studied this extensively and believes a reasonable average of all the studies is 20,000 units. That means a few minutes in the summer sun produces 100 times more vitamin D than the government says you need! As discussed in other pages, this is the single most important fact about vitamin D.
    The skin does another amazing thing with cholecalciferol. It prevents vitamin D toxicity. Once you make about 20,000 units, the same ultraviolet light that created cholecalciferol begins to degrade it. The more you make, the more destroyed. So a steady state is reached that prevents the skin from making too much cholecalciferol. This is why no one has ever been reported to develop vitamin D toxicity from the sun, though it is possible when taking vitamin D orally.
"""

Darker skins may taked up to ten times longer to reach that level, BTW. Unintentionally, the advice you are repeating may even have caused the autism epidemic (since pregnant women not getting enough vitanmin D has been linked to autism)

So, you are just repeating outdated misinformation, sorry -- and it is misinformation that is literally sickening and killing millions of indoor tech professionals (especially ones who are odler, have darker skins, and live in northern areas) as well as their children. And it is not something I understood myself until faily recently, so don't feel too bad about it. But now you know...

A blood test is ideal to know for sure:
    http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-rda-for-vitamin-d.html

The only reason vitamin D is a wonder drug is that we are all so unnaturally deficient of it given our recent (last 50 years) lifestyle shift to mostly indoors activities and travel in enclosed vehicles. Even people who live in the south may be vitamin D deficient if they cover up most of the time and stay indoors in air conditioning while surfing the web instead of the ocean.

This is a major public health issue and occupational hazard for any indoor worker that is juct becoming better understood (even though 100 years ago people like Herbert Shelton used sunlight as a cure for some diseases). Dermatologists advising people to stay out of the sun (without alos recommending adequate supplements on the order of 5000 IU D3 daily for most people and regular blood testing) have caused vast amounts of health problems even as they do save us from a few skin cancers.

Also useful for good health related to eating patterns: http://www.drfuhrman.com/

With that said, there are some rare health conditions where vitamin D supplementaton may be problematical -- see that first site for more details.

First, check out: http://www.disciplined-minds.com/ "Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-battering System That Shapes Their Lives"
"""
Who are you going to be? That is the question.
    In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
    The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.
    Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job.
"""

Some very interesting psychologists; maybe look up some of their students?
    http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_prescribes_a_healthy_take_on_time.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Seligman#Positive_psychology

By a practicing psychiatrists on how vitamin D is related to much mental illness:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

By others on the psychological aspect of our society, personal troubles in it, and its infrastructure:
    "Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy" by Bruce E. Levine
        http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
    "Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals" by Thomas Moore
        http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
    "About the AARP/Bluezones Vitality Project"
    http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about

On how improved nutrition will make people healthier and happier:
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/
And holistic aspects of health and diet too:
    http://www.drweil.com/

Here are some related ideas. Herbert Shelton advocated whole foods, fasting, and sunbathing, and was attacked by the medical community for it almost a century ago. His bio:
    http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020127shelton.III/020127.toc.htm
And writings:
    http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020127shelton.III/020127.toc.htm

More recent advocates of similar things:

Whole foods (and some fasting):
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/

Whole foods (but maybe too whole grain heavy):
    http://www.drweil.com/

Sunlight (as in curing vitamin D3 deficiency):
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

An approach towards promoting moderate exercise and good eating by promoting physical infrastructure in our communities:
  http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about

Psychological health, to combat depression and promote healthy transformation:
    http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
    http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC

Economic health:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery#Four_long-term_heterodox_alternatives

The big problem is simply that real cures (or preventatives) are inexpensive (sunlight, fasting, whole foods) for most expensive diseases of industrialized countries like cancer, hearth disease, and diabetes. The big profits are just in life long treatments, so no one pushes everyone to eat right, exercise, build community infrastructure, etc. And the medical insurance system is not set up to pay for people to live in healthy places, eat well (perhaps with a personal chef buying organic foods), have a better economic system with less stress for most people, etc.

Related recent discussion I was involved in on Slashdot:
    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1691318&cid=32642764

There are solutions. The biggest problem is, as you imply, social, not technical.

With that said, modern medicine and better sanitation and infrastructure as we now enjoy can treat or prevent a lot of things that were big issues in the past (accidents, infectious diseases). So, there have been improvements. But going forward, we really need to go back to the basics again.

Another study:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study
"The book examines the relationship between the consumption of animal products and illnesses such as cancers of the breast, prostate, and large bowel, diabetes, coronary heart disease, obesity, autoimmune disease, osteoporosis, degenerative brain disease, and macular degeneration. "The China Study," referred to in the title is the China Project, a "survey of death rates for twelve different kinds of cancer for more than 2,400 counties and 880 million (96%) of their citizens" combined to study the relationship between various mortality rates and several dietary, lifestyle, and environmental characteristics in 65 mostly rural counties in China conducted jointly by Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine over the course of twenty years. ... The authors recommend that people eat a whole food, plant-based diet and avoid consuming beef, poultry, eggs, fish, and milk as a means to minimize and/or reverse the development of chronic diseases. The authors also recommend that people take in adequate amounts of sunshine in order to maintain sufficient levels of Vitamin D and consider taking dietary supplements of vitamin B12 in case of complete avoidance of animal products. The authors criticize "low carb" diets (such as the Atkins diet), which include restrictions on the percentage of calories derived from complex carbohydrates."

This book by Dr. Joel Fuhrman has lots of references to studies in it (it's much more than a weight loss book):
"Eat to Live: The Revolutionary Formula for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss"
http://books.google.com/books?id=CX8huSU0n8AC
http://books.google.com/books?id=CX8huSU0n8AC&q=study

There are a bunch of studies listed on this page by Dr. Fuhrman, that should be starting points for you:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/disease/Other.aspx
"""
I have been utilizing a high antioxidant, acrlyamide-free diet for many years with marked success. Acrylamides are toxic substances produced by baking and frying carbohydrates. The diet-style I recommend for fibromylagia patients is rich in natural plant foods especially organic berries and green vegetables and restricted in animal products and baked grains. Vegetable soups and steamed vegetables are encouraged. Fibromyalgia patients routinely get well, and they get well quickly. Studies in the medical literature support this method of treatment.[ii] Though the researchers do not seem to have the experience and understanding of why what they are doing works, the effects are dramatic. ....
A significant number of medical investigations have uncovered that, just like other diseases, people develop asthma and allergies for reasons. Asthma and allergies have been linked to nutritional factors:
* Low levels of fresh fruits and flavonoids[iii]
* Fried foods, protein-rich and fat-rich foods of animal origin[iv]
* Low blood levels of fruit and vegetable derived antioxidants[v]
* Dietary fatty acid imbalance--an excess of omega-6 over omega-3 fats[vi]
* Increased intake of high saturated fat foods (meat, cheese and butter)[vii]
* Bread and butter consumption, lower vegetable intake [viii]
My experience in working with hundreds of patients attempting to resolve asthma and allergies has been rewarding. The asthmatics graduall

It's a great debate here, but whether stem cells should be used aside, the person may have had an autoimmune issue just from vitamin D deficiency (common in industrialized countries now that we all spend so much time indoors) or from poor nutrition from eating a standard western diet without enough whole foods like vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, seeds, and whole grains. Related links:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/
Sometimes we get so focused on fancy cutting edge things that we miss the basics...

To feel better during the day, try Joel Fuhrman's "Eat to Live" plan, as well as adequate vitamin D.
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

If you do someday read the previously linked information about the "Pleasure Trap" my Douglas Lisle or "Eat to Live" etc. by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, you would see you that what is recommended is very different from being a "neo-puritanical (pleasure is bad!) health food nut".

As Dr. Fuhrman says, healthy eating can be as pleasurable over the long-term as unhealthy eating (or more, because you know what you are eating is good for you and it tastes great). I would rather have a home-made sorbet from my blender than even the best ice cream from the store -- it tastes better now that I am used to it, and I know it is good for me. A fast can sometimes help with that transition to reset the tastebuds back to normal.

Essentially, most people probably will get less enjoyment from a lifetime of drinking coffee (given various ill effects and periodic withdrawal symptoms, and the "return to baseline") than someone with a lifetime of drinking green smoothies (or other healthful things with some variety, fruity sorbets, fruity ice creams, and so on). The whole point of the article is that there is a return to baseline whatever you do, which is also the point of the "Pleasure Trap".

While you are obviously very knowledgeable about coffee, there is a lot of nuance and subtly in vegetables, fruits, edible beans, nuts, seeds, and whole grains than can no longer be appreciated by someone (say, in the USA eating the S.A.D. Diet) who has been trained to prefer an unhealthy amount of salt, refined sugar, and animal fat in their diet. See for example, in the industries own words:
"The Hard Sell on Salt"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/health/30salt.html
"Salt also works in tandem with fat and sugar to achieve flavors that grip the consumer and do not let go -- an allure the industry has recognized for decades. "Once a preference is acquired," a top scientist at Frito-Lay wrote in a 1979 internal memorandum, "most people do not change it, but simply obey it." "

Anyway it is your life. Opportunity can only knock. You need to open the door and look into this issue of "the pleasure trap" for yourself if you want. Still, as Dr. Fuhrman said in the stuff I quoted, "One cup of coffee per day is not likely to cause significant risks, but the more you drink over this one cup maximum, the more likely it will interfere with your health." So, enjoy your (organic, fair trade, shade grown, etc.) coffee in moderation. :-)

But learning about "The Pleasure Trap" and related issues may help you increase your health and happiness in other areas of your life,
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx (same as above at the authors site, but adds a chart)
as might "Eat to Live":
http://books.google.com/books?id=CX8huSU0n8AC&printsec=frontcover
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/debunking-diet-myths-the-food-pyramid-of-the-insane.html

Other good references on (mostly) healthier eating and cooking:
http://www.andreabeaman.com/
"Raw Food Made Easy DVD Preview"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo6AdFYIidc

And a great place for learning culinary knife skills (though with a more eclectic cooking style):
http://www.kitchenonfire.com/video.html

Two books on this theme of diminishing returns for addictions to extremes:
    "The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force That Undermines Health & Happiness"
        http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508
    "Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose"
        http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X
We can resensitize our taste buds in a few weeks by eating differently, as Joel Fuhrman suggests:
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/
And adequate vitamin D can also help end depression that leads us to craving escape and stimulants:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
And we can change our physical infrastructure to be more life-affirming:
    http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about
Or our social infrastructure:
    http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Americas-Depression-Epidemic-Community/dp/1933392711
Or our mental infrastructure:
    http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Nights-Soul-Finding-Through/dp/1592400671
Put that knowledge all together, and put in in practice, and it is help for breaking out of some harmful feedback cycles.
   

From Dr. Joel Fuhrman, MD:
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/faq/question.aspx?sid=16&qindex=0
"""
What about Coffee?
    One cup of coffee per day is not likely to cause significant risks, but the more you drink over this one cup maximum, the more likely it will interfere with your health. Research has clearly shown that excessive consumption of caffeinated beverages is dangerous. Heavy caffeine users are at higher risk of cardiac arrhythmias, which can precipitate sudden death.(1) Coffee raises blood pressure(2) and it raises both cholesterol and homocystene,(3) two risk factors for heart disease.
    Besides the slightly increased risk of heart disease, there are other problems. Caffeine is a stimulant. The consumption of caffeine enables you to more comfortably get by on less sleep. Inadequate sleep promotes disease and premature aging.(4) There is no substitute for adequate sleep. Drinking coffee also boosts estrogen levels. Higher levels of estrogen worsen problems like endometriosis, breast pain and menstrual disorders. Increased estrogen levels are also linked to higher risk of breast cancer.(5)
    If you are overweight, there is another compelling reason to abstain from coffee. Eliminating your caffeine intake can help you lose weight. Coffee drinkers (tea and cola users too) are drawn to eat more frequently then necessary. They eat extra meals and snacks because they mistake unpleasant caffeine withdrawal symptoms with hunger. They can't tell the difference between true hunger and the discomfort that accompanies caffeine withdrawal.
    Decaffeinated coffee also has potentially harmful side effects. It has been found that drinking even moderate amounts of decaffeinated coffee can quadruple a person's risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis.(6) Researchers speculate that organic solvents in the decaf coffee might be the culprit.
    In summary, coffee is most like a drug, not a food. Like most drugs it may have some minor benefits, but its toxic effects and resultant risks overwhelm those minor advantages. Caffeine is a stimulant and a healthy later life and long life is most consistently achieved when stimulants and drugs are avoided, meeting our nutritional needs, with as little exposure to toxicity as possible. [The numbers in () refer to references in the original.]
"""

He mentions elsewhere that coffee does have some health promoting antioxidants etc., but those are better obtained through a diet heavy in vegetables, fruits, beans, along with some nuts, seeds, and whole grains.

"The Food Pyramid of the Insane"
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/debunking-diet-myths-the-food-pyramid-of-the-insane.html

Not that these doctors all agree, but there is a lot of overlap and they cover the essentials (typically lots of organic veggies, fruits, beans, nuts, seeds, maybe fish, vitamin D, and very little processed foods or factory farmed meats):
http://www.drfuhrman.com/
http://www.drmcdougall.com/
http://www.drweil.com/
http://www.mercola.com/
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

Occasional fasting may help some conditions, too:
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm

This is a good video about the future of medicine based on nutrition, including teaching people how to shop at the grocery store, how to cook at home, and how to order in restaurants to stay healthy:
    http://www.drmcdougall.com/health_10_day_program_video.html

Another video on curing disease by better nutrition:
    "Eat For Health - Joel Fuhrman, M.D."
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw

Someone (not a doctor) who puts a lot of these ideas together into cooking advice:
    http://www.andreabeaman.com/
"Read Andrea's inspiring story, The Whole Truth - How I Naturally Reclaimed My Health, and You Can Too! A story you can relate to as you make diet and lifestyle changes in your own life. Learn how to make health-promoting food taste absolutely scrumptious with the Eating and Recipe Guide. Infused with humor, in depth knowledge about food, and over 120 easy recipes, this is a wise tool to have in your kitchen."

A group helping communities be healthier by changing their public infrastructure:
    http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about

Anyway, most disease in the USA could be prevented by better nutrition, moderate exercise, less stress (like through meditation), good sleep, adequate vitamin D from sunlight, more and better community interactions, more positive thinking, and a few other similar basic things.

"Phage Therapy: Where Communism Succeeded and Capitalism Failed"
  http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL9910/S00096.htm
"""
While there are some genuine reasons why phage treatments of bacterial diseases were overlooked in the 1930s and 1940s, the failure to develop a western research program into bacteriophage treatment in the 1980s and 1990s represents an inexcusable failure of western capitalism. By the 1980s, there could be no denial that antibiotic resistance was going to be a major problem in (if not before) the twenty-first century. Yet, we just didn't want to know about what will probably turn out to be the most important medical breakthrough in the twentieth century; a breakthrough made in communist Georgia, in Stalin's Soviet Union.
    It is embarrassing when western science is out-trumped, especially by the "communists". Usually, when out-trumped, we don't tell anyone. That's what happened here. Not only did we not have the nous to start a western programme in bacteriophage research; we looked the other way when the files of phials threatened to be destroyed following the breakup of the Soviet Union, and during the little reported civil war that engulfed Georgia a few years ago. So much for the knowledge economies of the west. How can such valuable knowledge be so cheap?
    It's not too late for western medicine to enter the post-antibiotic bacteriophage era. Our grandchildren will hardly thank us if we persevere with our corporate-profit-motivated conservatism.
    The Soviets were able, eventually, to admit that they were wrong to follow Lysenko. Will we in the west be equally able to admit that we were wrong to put all our medical eggs into the one antibiotic basket, in the process ignoring the most basic tenets of the theory of evolution?
"""

So, with this as an example, what else has capitalism ignored as it relates to cancer?
Nutrition?
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/
Vitamin D?
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
Fasting?
    http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/shelton.bio.bidwell.htm
    http://www.healingcancernaturally.com/fasting-cure-for-health.html
   

Just for reference, it seems most cancer can be prevented (and sometimes cured) by a healthy diet (heavy on the vegetables, and perhaps including occasional fasting), enough vitamin D3 from sunlight, moderate exercise (helps keep the lymph system working among other things), avoiding pollution (like in water), some positive thinking and positive relationships, and the ususal lifestyle choices (like avoiding smoking).

Joel Fuhrman is an MD who talks a lot about this sort of stuff:
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/
"""
Contrary to popular belief, you don't have to live the rest of your life in pain or on medication.
    You can reverse disease, reduce high blood pressure, lose unwanted weight, lower your cholesterol levels, prevent heart disease and cancer, and improve your health - all without relying on drugs and fad diets. The importance of good nutrition is emphasized in Dr. Fuhrman's dietary program, Eat To Live.
    Reduce high blood pressure, reverse diabetes and dramatically lower cholesterol without drugs. Dr. Fuhrman offers advanced nutritional advice based on scientific research.
"""

On the right amount of vitamin D:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
"""
We predict that treatment with physiological doses of vitamin D3 (between 4,000-10,000 IU/day from all sources, including sun, food and supplements) along with periodic monitoring of blood calcidiol and calcium levels will become routine. [Zittermann A. Vitamin D in preventive medicine: are we ignoring the evidence? Br J of Nutr. 2003;89:552-572. Holick M. Vitamin D: A Millennium Perspective. J Cell Biochem. 2003;88:296-307.] Research indicates it will help several vitamin D deficiency-associated diseases such as: autism, autoimmune illness, cancer, chronic pain, depression, diabetes, heart disease, hyperparathyroidism, hypertension, influenza, myopathy (neuromuscular disorders), and osteoporosis.
"""

Bluezones is a community-wide effort that does similar things but at the community (not individual) level, as many things like having healthier menus in restaurants, building sidewalks, creating walking trails, making parks, and fostering a sense of community are more than any one individual can do alone.
    http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about
"""
The AARP/Blue Zones Vitality Project will focus on four areas that are crucial to health and longevity: Community Environment, Social Networks, Habitat and Individual Sense of Purpose.
"""

Anyway, these cheap things -- sunlight, clean water, fresh air, more vegetables (and fruits, pulses like beans, and nuts and seeds), avoiding processed foods, walking and swimming, healthy relationshiips and attitudes, and not smoking etc. -- are not going to be promoted by most of our profit-oriented industrial system (even if many individuals have written books on these or sell some related products like good blenders for making green smoothies).

Best wishes for staying well.

Two good books (that you've probably already read) are Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman, M.D. and The China Study. The evidence is pretty damning that a diet high in animal protein and modified plant foods is largely responsible for the soaring levels of clinical obesity, diabetes and other ailments in the U.S. today. Dr. Fuhrman calls a typical American's eating habits the "Mainstream American Diet" (M.A.D.) What's interesting about Fuhrman's book is that he says flatly that his recommended diet isn't for everyone because most of us are thoroughly addicted to our lifelong killer foods. He also points out that if you want big results, you have to make big changes: just adding a little more fish or chicken to your diet won't help. He also cites all the studies he used in writing his book (some 3,000 of them.) That's in stark contrast to most diet books that want to make getting healthy sound painless and simple so they can sell more books, and are remarkably unconcerned about the validity of their claims.

High fructose corn syrup has been readily available since the sixties, when a company called UOP, known for petroleum refining technology among other things, pioneered the process that converts corn into corn syrup. It wasn't much used in soft drinks and as a sweetener until Congress finished dicking around with Latin American cane-sugar farmers and pretty much screwed us out of our supply of the stuff. Coca Cola, I believe, was the last soft drink manufacturer to switch to corn syrup back in the early eighties, with a noticeable loss of taste. As Cecil Adams put it, "The sad fact is that Coke hasn't been 'it' for a long time." He's right about that: I'm old enough to remember the wonderful, crisp taste of an ice-cold Coca Cola some four decades ago.

They feed chickens to cows, cows to chickens, fish to both, and GM corn with antibiotics to the chickens in the first place. The food chain looks like a fractal, not a line with humans at the top.

I totally agree, which is why I'm a Vegan. I switched about a year and a half ago and have since lost 70 pounds (I started out at 240) and my cholesterol and heart rate are down the line perfect. I'm not a PETA supporter, I still wear leather, I can not stand most animals and for the most part am just an average Joe. I'm not a Vegan for the sake of the animals, I'm a Vegan for my own well being.

The book at this link: http://www.drfuhrman.com/weightloss/about.aspx/ convinced me to become Vegan. If you are having any health problems (like sleep apnea or type 2 diabetes) you should run, not walk, to amazon.com to buy that book (I think you can get it used for under $5), it will change your life.

There is a lot of confusing information about diet out there, this book cuts through all that and basically tells you what's up. I want to walk up to overweight people and shake them and say "There's a better way! Read this!"

To end my commercial (for which I get paid nothing) I'd say: It has a very "Hack your body" feel to it, which is perfect for the Slashdot crowd. He goes into the details of the numbers of calories, nutrients, protein, fat, sugar, etc. It's an amazingly fast read, especially for a technical person.

Take a look at drfuhrman.com. He has had many patients have their hypertension reversed and lose weight into the bargain through his diet plan, all while eating as much (of the right food) as they want. Nearly all patients stop previous medications as well. It's worked wonders for me, so check it out. One thing I would say is to take his advice about multivitamins seriously, otherwise you can end up deficient in vitamin B12 as well as a couple of others if you're not careful.

I just had to chime in and add this... I've recently been consulting a nutritionalist and a dietician to lose weight before some surgery i'll be having later this year. Out of the three or four actual specialists in the field I have spoken to, not a single one has advocated the Atkins diet after i've mentioned it. In fact, here in Australia it is treated with the scepticism it (and other "fad" diets) deserve by the medical community. It just scares me that people will try it, simply because it doesn't seem too much a change from their already unhealthy diet, or deviation from their tastes and eating habits. Unfortunately, all the health professionals i've dealt with say it is too good to be true. As one of my doctors said, "you would also lose weight eating a strict diet of chocolate, but it doesn't mean it is a safe and effective way of shedding the kilos". Personally, I feel the safety and health risks of the Atkins diet outweigh any potential gains. (colon cancer, anyone?)

If you've read any of the low carb diet books (eg, Protein Power, Dr Atkins Diet) they can tell you all kinds of tales of hyperinsulinemia and many related ills coming from a high carb diet.

Of course, what they don't tell you is how dangerous these faddish high-protein diets are.

Avoid simple carbs with high glycemic index, sure. But the protein mania is simply unhealthy. Your caloric intake should still be mostly clean-burning carbohydrates. Best way to lose weight is still to get up off your ass and exercise.

(Exception: the protein focused diet can be useful as a temporary measure in adult onset diabetes, to sort of "reset" the insulin regulation mechanism. Otherwise, forget it - it's a very unhealthful practice.)