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People actually prefer corn syrup over sugar in their cola

McDonalds fries are famously also double fried at exactly the 'correct' temperatures.
Serious Eats reverse engineering of McDonalds fries

McDonald's DID have a burger meant to mimic the Whopper. It was called the McDLT.
https://www.seriouseats.com/20...

Like Edge, that copycat went basically nowhere.

Blind taste tests show no preference for one or the other.

I always preferred the Mexican imported Coca Cola in glass bottles. I suspect the taste improvement was not from cane sugar vs fructose syrup but rather due to glass bottle vs plastic. Beer also tastes better in glass bottles, cans often have an inner plastic coating on the metal. I wonder if the some of the plastic particles are coming from such food packaging? The plastic taste I find annoying has to be coming from something.

Do you know there are those who actually prefer to cook their food in PLASTIC BAGS?

That method of cooking is known as Sous Vide, and it is supposed to be 'classy', to boot !!

https://aht.seriouseats.com/20...

Getting Inside the Fluffy Interior

Now that I'd perfected the crust, the final issue to deal with was that of the interior. One last question remained: how to maximize the flavor of the interior. In order to stay fluffy and not gummy, a lot of the interior moisture needs to be expelled in the cooking process, so my goal should be to make this evaporation as easy as possible. I figure that so far, by cooking it all the way to boiling point, I'm doing pretty much the right thing--the more cooked the potatoes are, the more the cell structure breaks down, and the easier it is for water to be expelled. To confirm this, I cooked three batches of potatoes, starting each in a pot of cold, vinegared water, and bringing them up to various final temperature (170 degree F, 185 degree F, and 212 degree F) before draining and double-frying them. Not surprisingly, the boiled potatoes had the best internal structure. Luckily, they were the easiest to make as well.

But was there anything more I could do? I thought back to those McDonald's fries and realized a vital step that I had neglected to test: freezing. Every batch of McDonald's fries is frozen before being shipped out to the stores. I always figured this step was for purely economic reasons, but perhaps there was more to it?

I tried freezing half a batch of fries before frying them and tasted them side-by-side against the other half.

The improvement was undeniable. The frozen fries had a distinctly fluffier interior, while the unfrozen ones were still ever-so-slightly gummy. It makes perfect sense. Freezing the potatoes causes their moisture to convert to ice, forming sharp, jagged crystals. These crystals damage the cell structure of the potato, making it easier for them to be released once they are heated and convert to steam. The best part? Because freezing actually improves them, I can do the initial blanching and frying steps in large batches, freeze them, and have a constant supply of ready-to-fry potatoes right in my freezer just like Ronald himself!

its a place of employment and it should be politically and culturally sterile. find another forum do express yourself outside of work.

The problem is that when you work for a company like Google, there is no place "outside of work". Employees are encouraged to spend their spare time at work. They don't go out to lunch. And they're even encouraged to pursue their hobbies while at work.

when the US and the rest of the world loses collective interest in the middle east? Saudi Arabia is just now trying to figure out how to modernize their country when the price of oil collapses.

I wouldn't worry about that in our lifetimes. The Iran Shah was right when he said "oil was too valuable to burn". If we collectively decided to not drive our cars tomorrow we'd still be refining ludicrous amounts of crude oil.

While our petrol and diesel consumption is levelling off, our consumption of aviation fuel and bunker fuel shows no signs of slowing down. Even if they stopped our consumption of oil based products is still skyrocketing at an alarming rate. Where will we get the plastic to individually wrap our bananas if we don't refine oil. Or what do we drive our electric cars on? Surely not dirt. Heck I only recently found out Americans use oil based products to cover the roofs of their houses.

The real question is, which country will predict the trends correctly and invest for the future changing fuel mix. Personally I'm witnessing major oil companies dragging their feet forced only by investment to meet changing fuel requirements for shipping, while at the same time China is investing huge amounts to improve chemical extraction from oil rather than relying on it as a byproduct like we do in the west. Honestly I have no idea where the Saudis are in this, but they will remain important for our foreseeable future unless they really screw things up.

Let's take some concrete examples:

Mexican Coca Cola (sucrose) has 150 calories per can (355ml)
American Coca Cola (HFCS-55) has 140 calories per can (355ml)

HFCS-55 is slightly sweeter than sucrose, so you need less of it. In a typical can of sugar soda, you will consume 18.75 grams of fructose and 18.75 grams of glucose.

In a can of HCFS-55 soda, you will consumer 19.25 grams of fructose and 15.75 grams of glucose.

The change in total fructose is negligible (+0.5 grams) compared to the change in glucose (-3.0 grams).

As people generally consume soda in discrete amounts (12oz, 20oz, .5 liter), it seems unlikely that HFCS-55 in sugary drinks is making a huge change in the amount of fructose consumed. It does appear to be making a minor contribution in total calorie reduction (about 7% less calories).

Okay, its brooklyn, but close: http://newyork.seriouseats.com...

companies use all sorts of tricks to hide stuff like that. Soup companies use yeast to put MSG in Soup without reporting it (it's a by product of the yeast, which serves no other purpose).

And recently there has been the phenomenon where companies try to hide things by using confusing nomenclature. E.g., "evaporated cane juice" in products with "no added sugar." Yeah -- "cane juice" -- it must be good for you, since they call it "juice"! Well, it's just another form of sugar... processed slightly differently, but still basically sucrose.

Basically, it's just a game... try to make things sound "natural" and "wholesome" when they're basically the same old crap. Same thing goes for "brown rice syrup" used as a sweetener in many things... basically sugar. But it's "brown rice"!! (Of course, brown rice also often has elevated levels of arsenic and other things... but hey, it's "natural" and "brown," so it must be good!)

You know how we found out sodium nitrate causes cancer?

Funny that you bring nitrates up, because that's one of my favorite examples of nonsense labeling. First, we get most of our nitrates from vegetables, so worrying about the small amounts in bacon and cured meats is probably not as big a deal as people make of it. (Yes, yes... cooking does other things to the nitrates and can make them bad, but proper curing also deactivates most of them too... we could argue this all day.)

But regardless of that, my favorite misleading labeling is all the "uncured" meats you see these days: "uncured bacon," "uncured salami," etc. Yeah, except these almost always contain huge amounts of "concentrated celery juice" (or sometimes another agent) which contains more nitrates than the standard salts used traditionally to cure meat. (And no -- to those natural foods wackos -- there's no evidence to support the idea that somehow those nitrates are better for you in the concentrated celery juice... basically because "natural" celery juice has unpredictable amounts of nitrates, they need to add more of them than they would for tradition curing salts.)

People just want stuff called "natural" with "juice" and "brown X" and "natural flavors" in it. It's almost all bogus nonsense, and often you end up paying a huge premium for something that could very well be worse for you.

Moral of the story: Labels frequently don't work to tell people what's actually better. Not saying we shouldn't try to use them, but companies will weasel their way around anything to appeal to customers.

(By the way, I'm all in favor of cooking for yourself with whole ingredients, using less "processed" foods, etc. But bogus "natural foods" nonsense is bogus nonsense.)

Interesting read, thanks! So true, you comments reflect the adage "taxes are the price we pay for civilization..." And also, capitalism tends toward privatizing gains and socializing costs...

If you see my other posts above though, I am not concerned about the technology to feed the world even without the Haber process (and perhaps better without it). As at this link, we have the technology through organic farming:
"Can Organic Farming Feed Us All?"
http://www.worldwatch.org/node...

Whether we have the political will is a different issue, with so many vested interests in the current synthetic-chemical-based agricultural system.

Another aspect of this craziness:
http://www.seriouseats.com/200...
"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has posted an easy-to-understand visual on its site that shows which foods U.S. tax dollars go to support under the nation's farm bill. It's titled "Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?" and depicts two pyramids -- subsidized foods and the old recommended food pyramid. It's interesting to note that the two are almost inversely proportional to each other."

"Get rid of corn subsidies and watch your obesity/diabestes epidemic grind to a halt."

http://www.seriouseats.com/200...
"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has posted an easy-to-understand visual on its site that shows which foods U.S. tax dollars go to support under the nation's farm bill. It's titled "Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?" and depicts two pyramids -- subsidized foods and the old recommended food pyramid. It's interesting to note that the two are almost inversely proportional to each other."

Boca burgers are terrible hockey pucks from a factory with lots of added chemicals. Do not eat.
You can easily make good veggie burgers that are a lot cheaper, healthier and tastier than any store bought veggie burger.
Here's one good recipe:
http://www.seriouseats.com/rec...

This is a good "science fair" level of experiment with a few controls. Not "Big Mac"s but "regular" hamburgers and quarter bounders.

http://aht.seriouseats.com/arc...

"Your citations include a single internist who has no scientific research to back up his claims and is widely regarded as a quack and a website which stuck 'As seen on CNN' on it's home page, both of which are trying to sell weight loss solutions."

Considering how much of what many cardiologists do is essentially a scam, I guess the bar for medical practice is pretty low, whoever you call a "quack".
http://www.healthleadersmedia....
http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra...

And even some oncologists, too:
http://nation.time.com/2013/08...

That said, let us look as the site you dismiss based on it saying the related doctor (Dr. Esselsytn) has been on CNN:
http://www.heartattackproof.co...
"Former President Bill Clinton on CNN credits Dr. Esselstyn with helping him regain his health."

Another quack? Bill Clinton is an example of how improvement is possible by changing what we eat.

I think you've also missed my point that we try to regulate the wrong things. For example, if everyone has a basic income (social security from birth) people would have more time for home cooking. Or, if we subsidized fruits and vegetables instead of meat, dairy, and grains, again we might have a much healthier populace. See:
http://www.seriouseats.com/200...
"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has posted an easy-to-understand visual on its site that shows which foods U.S. tax dollars go to support under the nation's farm bill. It's titled "Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?" and depicts two pyramids -- subsidized foods and the old recommended food pyramid. It's interesting to note that the two are almost inversely proportional to each other."

Also, if US Americans got European-length vacations, they might get more outdoor activity in the sunshine, which might improve their health by exercise and vitamin D. As well as being less stressed and have more time for learning about cooking and health and doing gardening.

Anyway, good luck in your own continuing researches into improving health. You make a good point on how surveys on happiness across the decades might be biased by social expectations; I can hope you are right in this case!

Update: here's a picture of Myhrvold's "ultimate modernist burger".

In addition to the loads of suet, it also uses fish sauce.

I can just about guarantee that if you knew how genuine fish sauce was made, you wouldn't put it in your mouth.

If that's "modernist" cuisine, I probably don't want any.

Difficult conversations,yes. And here is an even more difficult aspect, because there is no profit in it for the mainstream cancer industry: http://www.lef.org/protocols/cancer/brain_tumor_01.htm
"Vitamin D3, the chemical form of vitamin D made in the skin and sold as a nutritional supplement, calcitriol (1,25-dihydroxy vitamin D), the active form of vitamin D, and various chemical analogs and metabolites of vitamin D, have all been shown to inhibit growth and trigger apoptosis in neuroblastoma and glioma cells (Naveilhan P et al 1994, Baudet C et al 1996, Elias J et al 2003, van Ginkel PR et al 2007)."

Iodine is another thing to consider for helping with cure and prevention, and again is very cheap and not patentable so has few advocates in the cancer industry:
http://brain-cancer-survivor.blogspot.com/2011/12/could-iodine-kill-cancer-cells.html

As Upton Sinclair said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

Upton Sinclair also wrote a book on using fasting to heal cancer, btw, but what profit is their in advising patients to fast compared to advising them to buy $10K bottles of pills every month?
http://www.healingcancernaturally.com/fasting-cure-for-health.html

But once you have cancer, getting rid of it is iffy no matter what you do. The best thing to do is to prevent it, which again is fairly inexpensive, without much profit for the mainstream medical industry:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article24.aspx

The USA even subsidizes creating cancer through its agricultural policies:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has posted an easy-to-understand visual on its site that shows which foods U.S. tax dollars go to support under the nation's farm bill. It's titled "Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?" and depicts two pyramidsâ"subsidized foods and the old recommended food pyramid. It's interesting to note that the two are almost inversely proportional to each other."

I doubt this level of alleged fraud is common, but it does show the risk of conflict of interest in oncology, where the same doctor prescribing the treatments profits from carrying them out:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/07/1229570/-Michigan-doctor-arrested-for-purposely-misdiagnosing-cancer
"In the course of the scheme, prosecutors say Dr. Fata falsified and directed others to falsify documents. MHO billed Medicare for approximately $35 million dollars over a two-year period, approximately $25 of which is attributable to Dr. Fata, federal officials said The complaint further alleges that Dr. Fata directed the administration of unnecessary chemotherapy to patients in remission; deliberate misdiagnosis of patients as having cancer to justify unnecessary cancer treatment; administration of chemotherapy to end-of-life patients who will not benefit from the treatment; deliberate misdiagnosis of patients without cancer to justify expensive testing; fabrication of other diagnoses such as anemia and fatigue to justify unnecessary hematology treatments, and distribution of controlled substances to patients without medical necessity or are administered at dangerous levels."

Conflicts of interest apply to research as well:
"Financial conflicts of interest in economic analyses in oncology."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21441858
"Some financial conf

"Meat is often a cheaper source of your necessary nutrients than vegetables."

Ignoring how meat does not have essential phytonutrients in it (as you mention), consider the political reason of why that is the case as far as "calories":
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has posted an easy-to-understand visual on its site that shows which foods U.S. tax dollars go to support under the nation's farm bill. It's titled "Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?" and depicts two pyramids -- subsidized foods and the old recommended food pyramid. It's interesting to note that the two are almost inversely proportional to each other."

Also, consider how externalities of meat production such as destroying marine ecosystems from overfishing, manure runoff polluting fresh water supplies, and the destruction of so many forests and other land ecosystems to produce cattle feed:
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm

On your other points, most vegetarians' diets probably aren't very good. They may have too many refined sugars and too few vegetables, too little variety, and too little of things like iodine. It takes a lot of learning and opportunity and time to eat well as a vegetarian. But what is important to acknowledge is that there are plant-based diet styles that will reverse heart disease. So that 32% figure might be some kind of average, but it does not reflect the best possible outcome for someone who is really trying to reverse or prevent heart disease. See my other post here for links, or see as one example, Dr. Esselstyn' work:
http://www.heartattackproof.com/

I'd agree though that some small amount of free-range organic grass-fed meat or other similar animal products can potentially be part of a reasonably healthy diet -- other ethical and financial and scalability and externality questions aside. Even Dr. Fuhrman agrees on that part as far as the research -- that if you get 10% or less of your calories from animal products, you are doing pretty well.
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
https://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article5.aspx
"Therefore I encourage consumption of a carefully planned vegetarian diet or one that includes a small amount of animal products, perhaps 10% of total calories or less, rather than 40 -60 % that children eat today. An animal-product-rich omnivorous diet cannot be considered nutritious food or called healthful."

High fat diets of animal products laced with growth hormones and such are probably bad for children in general. And also, there are few to no purely vegan diets in history. Even gorillas get some small percentage of their calories from termites and other insects they eat incidentally. B12 is another nutrient than can be an issue, usually provided by animal products, and some say can be supplied from dirty vegetables. Our food supply is in that sense too "clean" to be a pure vegan in (without special effort and selected supplements, if that). Vegans who are also neat freaks may be setting themselves up for disaster in that sense; yet on the other hand, since much "organic" food is grown using animal manure from livestock operations, not washing your vegetables well is a health risk too from E.coli contamination.

It does not take much animal products though to provide some essentials. Related example:
http://drbass.com/generations.html
"This text is still extremely important, since similar mistakes are still being made today, typically by aspiring vegans and vegan raw-foodists. Deficiencies th

Good points. To take it further, as Dr. Joel Fuhrman says, the many correlation studies on nutrients like beta carotene mostly show, when you think about them, a "marker" effect. That is, having a high level of beta carotene or vitamin C is a marker for eating a lot of fruits, vegetables, and/or legumes. These plant foods have lots of phytonutrients (thousands of different things, many yet unclassified), that our bodies (or gut bacteria) use in different ways. That is why when people through diet have high beta carotine levels, they may be very healthy. But when they take beta carotine supplements, it may cause things to get out of balance, including for reasons you mention, and then they might get cancer or other illnesses. They have raised their level of the marker substance, without having all the other nutrients that would normally go along with it.

As another analogy, high blood pressure often indicated clogging arteries, but lowering your blood pressure with pills doesn't stop the artery clogging process, it just makes the marker go away. That is why much of drug-based mainstream medicine that focuses on symptomatic relief is somewhat like if an auto mechanic disconnected out the "check oil" light in your car rather than fix an oil leak that the dashboard light might indicate. Somehow most doctors get away with that when most auto mechanics don't -- perhaps because cars with service manuals are way easier to understand than thousands of undocumented biochemical pathways in a human body. Most people in the USA seem to take better care of their cars than their bodies, too.

I'm not sure of any specific drawbacks of high vitamin C supplements, beyond diarrhea from excess and the fact most vitamin C in the US is manufactured in China and so may be contaminated with who knows what. But certainly Vitamin C may be a marker for a healthier diet. So, if you get daily "chemotherapy" from relatively cheap phytonutrients in fruits and vegetables and legumes all your life, you may avoid oncologists trying to give you expensive chemotherapy later in life. Thus Linus Pauling was right that we should be living in such a way as to have higher vitamin C levels -- but he was wrong in not seeing Vitamin C as a marker for a health diet of whole foods (and mostly plant-based) and then advocating you could fix this complex situation by adding just one isolated nutrient.

Another issue, as Dr. Joel Fuhrman talks about in his book "Eat to Live", is that the US RDA for Vitamin C is way too low by several times. However, the US RDA for Vitamin C can't be greatly raised without flagging the fact that the average US resident is getting way too few fruits and vegetables and legumes (the normal source of most vitamin C). And that would be in contradiction to US farm policy and profits which are directed to subsidies for the meat, dairy, and grain industries:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has posted an easy-to-understand visual on its site that shows which foods U.S. tax dollars go to support under the nation's farm bill. It's titled "Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?" and depicts two pyramidsâ"subsidized foods and the old recommended food pyramid. It's interesting to note that the two are almost inversely proportional to each other."

I have suggested that we create better health sensemaking tools to try to figure this all out collectively in an open source way:
https://www.changemakers.com/morehealth/entries/health-sensemaking

By the way, periodic "fasting" is another part of the health equation. One advocate of many:
http://www.drbass.com/

The Flexner Report from a century ago is where modern medicine in the USA took a problematical turn, when MDs focusing on procedures and drugs legally crowded out

Currently, between about US$600 per capita average is spent in the USA on a combination of social security, welfare, unemployment, and public schooling. So, that is quite a bit of the way towards US$2000/month per person (which times about 313 million people times twelve months a year would about half of the current US GDP of about US$15 trillion per year). A basic income could replace all those other things. So, one just has to find the rest through taxes, royalties on public assets like the spectrum or minerals on public lands, social credit related to the creation of new money through the banking system as needed (the issue of who gets the money first), and so on. Or, we could start with a lower amount like US$1000 per person per month, which would be easy to get pretty close to by, say, cutting a bunch of defense spending or farm subsidies. Why typical farm subsidies hurt most US Americans:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html

You're throwing around conclusions about investments without giving any specific numbers, so I really can't evaluate the rest of what you are suggesting. The numbers for such a basic income add up as far as I look at them. As above, your numbers don't add up given I've outlined how this proposal is just for one half the US GDP. That leaves a GDP of around the US 1995 GDP for people to compete about, and that was enough to motivate many people back then. Also, people have still invested in the past even when there was a 90%+ top-tier tax on income and capital gains.

Also, please be clear when talking about wealth whether you are talking about paper money (of which there can be an arbitrary amount) or real physical wealth (which is related to how you use the productive capacity of a nation for either consumer goods like cosmetics or producer goods like robots or military items like weapons).

Here is the bottom line. In a couple decades, unless you are in a very small number of occupations, your job will be replaced by a robot or an AI. Even most investors will find it impossible to compete with huge automated trading systems. So, if you oppose fixing the inequality now, think about how much harder it will be to fix in a couple decades when you and your family and everyone you know is destitute because you can't "compete" with a robot or AI that never takes sick time, never makes a careless mistake, never goes on strike, and so on.

Even the mainstream is starting to wake up to this:
http://news.yahoo.com/ap-impact-recession-tech-kill-middle-class-jobs-051306434--finance.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/practically-human-smart-machines-job-052642993--finance.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/smart-machines-create-world-without-051025381--finance.html

Here is a list of possibilities I put together for dealing with this (of which a basic income is only one of many options, not all of which are as pleasant):
http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

"Although Obama's Affordable Care Act gives better access to treatment options for mentally ill persons: ..."

Things like nutrition, positive psychology, physical infrastructure, life opportunities, community and so on can make a huge difference in mental health. But they are not generally covered as treatments by insurance. Similarly, health insurance may pay $100K for a heart operation, but it won't pay a penny towards the healthy food needed to stay physically and mentally well.
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/natural_depression.aspx
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx

Worse -- junk food is heavily subsidized:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html

And for decades bad nutritional advice like "the four food groups" has been enshrined in public education by regulatory capture and clever marketing by agribusiness.

Contrast with a model like "Blue Zones":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone

Or what Dr. Andrew Weil writes about in his book "Why Our Health Matters".

There is some truth to what you say, unquestionably. Still, what I am saying reflects actual US policy and the behavior of most US Americans, whatever adages remain around from older generations... Most people in the USA may have heard "you are what you eat", yet most people still eat a lot of empty calories from refined starches and sugars and cruelly-raised nutrient-poor meat. That disconnect seems symptomatic of a bubble to me. And it is reflected in US corporate-shaped policy:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has posted an easy-to-understand visual on its site that shows which foods U.S. tax dollars go to support under the nation's farm bill. It's titled "Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?" and depicts two pyramidsâ"subsidized foods and the old recommended food pyramid. It's interesting to note that the two are almost inversely proportional to each other."

There is a history there of decades of efforts by the meat and dairy industry to push the "four food groups" to the detriment of most US Americans, a legacy that still continues even with the USDA food pyramid and later efforts. Better pyramids:
http://www.cellinteractive.com/ucla/center_overview/pyramid.html
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://www.honestfoodguide.org/

Why doesn't every US American know about "the pleasure trap" as an aspect of "you are what you eat"?
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm

If a lot of people in the country accept such behaviors (similar to accepting pictures of the "Great Leader" everywhere in North Korea and various paranoid and repressive NK policies), then what difference is there? No doubt a lot of North Koreans talk about how free and well-off they are... A lot of TFA is about how North Koreans probably don't know what is really going on... And those who do feel they have little power to act. How is that very different from, say, how people working at Walmart, the USA's biggest private employer, do not unionize because people there fear for their jobs if they do and have been taught that collective social action is bad etc. etc. (or at least not taught that it is good and had most independent initiative schooled out of them)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Walmart#Labor_union_opposition

Working inside a corporation is how many adults in the US spend most of their waking hours.
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"Work makes a mockery of freedom. The official line is that we all have rights and live in a democracy. Other unfortunates who aren't free like we are have to live in police states. These victims obey orders or else, no matter how arbitrary. The authorities keep them under regular surveillance. State bureaucrats control even the smaller details of everyday life. The officials who push them around are answerable only to higher-ups, public or private. Either way, dissent and disobedience are punished. Informers report regularly to the authorities. All this is supposed to be a very bad thing.
And so it is, although it is nothing but a description of the modern workplace. The liberals and conservatives and Libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phonies and hypocrites. There is more freedom in any moderately de-Stalinized dictatorship than there is in the ordinary American workplace. You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or a monastery. In fact, as F

It's true that people take up space and use up resources. But they also create spaces worth being in and produce resources. Also, the more people we have, the more innovation we have. Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource

Most of the USA's land and about half its water goes to livestock agriculture. The livestock runoff then pollutes most of the other half. See:
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
http://www.ravediet.com/

While a small amount of clean organic naturally-fed unprocessed meat (especially fish before mercury and dioxin polluted them) may be healthy in a diet, the quantities and types of animal product most US Americans are eating are part of why US health is so poor.
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx

On Earth, we could reduce water consumption by growing vegetables indoors. But in any case, we can always condense fresh water out of the air or distill it from the oceans if we have cheap energy, which we will get soon from cheap solar panels (and maybe cheap hot or cold fusion soon). The more people, the sooner we will get those innovation breakthroughs.

Since the Solar System could support quadrillions of people living in style in space habitats, even if one was to argue the Earth was overpopulated, even limited agricultural land is no reason to limit human population growth any time soon, even if one might suggest an aesthetic limit on the Earth perhaps, like putting an occupancy limit on a restaurant in a city.

The repentant anti-GMO activist is wrong on the need for GMOs, because GMOs (even if safe) are solving the wrong problem. To begin with, people starve or are malnourished for economic reasons that could be solved with a global "basic income". The market does not hear the needs of people without money, so the simplest solution to malnutrition is to give people money so the market will listen to their needs. Yes, this requires some level of social consensus leading to enforced redistribution of resources. Frances Moore Lappe and others explains why less people does not mean less starvation.
http://overpopulationisamyth.com/food-theres-lots-it
http://windward.hawaii.edu/facstaff/dagrossa-p/articles/WhyCantPeopleFeedThemselves.pdf
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html

Although a semi-rebuttal to Lappe that ignores distribution issues:
http://www.hoodrivernews.com/news/2002/sep/18/lappe-response-think-locally-starve-globally/

Agricultural robotics (including for the home gardener) and solar panels are going to change the face of agriculture over the next twenty years to produce lots of food for all, if we want that future:
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

We do not need GMO crops to feed the planet. What we need is to do things like grind up rocks to make cheap organic fertilizer:
http://remineralize.org/

And then we need a space program. And we need to be better stewards of the oceans (rather than overfish because our economic systems are broken in that sense).

The current focus on plant breeding, whether GMO or conventional, has produced monocultures of crops that are dependent on s

http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/11/the-burger-lab-revisiting-the-myth-of-the-12-year-old-burger-testing-results.html

So there we have it! Pretty strong evidence in favor of Theory 3: the burger doesn't rot because it's small size and relatively large surface area help it to lose moisture very fast. Without moisture, there's no mold or bacterial growth. Of course, that the meat is pretty much sterile to begin with due to the high cooking temperature helps things along as well. It's not really surprising. Humans have known about this phenomenon for thousands of years. After all, how do you think beef jerky is made?

Spatchcock it, obv.

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2009/11/how-to-spatchcock-a-turkey-thanksgiving-butterflying-roasting-recipe.html

If your sense of "geeky" is like mine, and you take it to mean really investing in rigorous curiosity about the process combined with a sciency hypothesis-trial approach to technique, then you can't get any better than Kenji Lopez-Alt's Food Lab over at Serious Eats. Here's his comprehensive Thanksgiving Q & A from a few days ago. (Sorry if this post shows up twice; I think the first try was eaten by mbeta.slashdot.org)

If your sense of "geeky" is like mine, and you take it to mean really investing in rigorous curiosity about the process combined with a sciency hypothesis-trial approach to technique, then you can't get any better than Kenji Lopez-Alt's Food Lab over at Serious Eats. Here's his comprehensive Thanksgiving Q & A from a few days ago. (Sorry if this post shows up twice; I think the first try was eaten by mbeta.slashdot.org)

If your sense of "geeky" is like mine, and you take it to mean really investing in rigorous curiosity about the process combined with a sciency hypothesis-trial approach to technique, then you can't get any better than Kenji Lopez-Alt's Food Lab over at Serious Eats.

Here's his comprehensive Thanksgiving Q & A from a few days ago.

If your sense of "geeky" is like mine, and you take it to mean really investing in rigorous curiosity about the process combined with a sciency hypothesis-trial approach to technique, then you can't get any better than Kenji Lopez-Alt's Food Lab over at Serious Eats.

Here's his comprehensive Thanksgiving Q & A from a few days ago.

http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has posted an easy-to-understand visual on its site that shows which foods U.S. tax dollars go to support under the nation's farm bill. It's titled "Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?" and depicts two pyramids -- subsidized foods and the old recommended food pyramid. It's interesting to note that the two are almost inversely proportional to each other."

Our tax dollars at work. :-( And then a lot of the rest of our tax dollars go pay to deal with the medical consequences... And then even more tax dollars go to pay for the cultural and psychological consequences (including aggressiveness and poor thinking) that also flow from poor nutrition:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/17/prisonsandprobation.ukcrime
"Omega-3, junk food and the link between violence and what we eat; Research with British and US offenders suggests nutritional deficiencies may play a key role in aggressive behaviour"

Then when they open the box in 25 years, at least they'll have something to eat.

Here is where it all went down.. Nice.

Personally, I think most of these gadgets are worthless. Yes, a thermometer is useful (but I prefer the instant-read kind like the Thermapen for quick checks in multiple locations). Otherwise, you really only need a good pair of extra-long tongs (that 3-in-1 thing in TFA looks clunky as heck) and a spatula.

If you really want to grill like a geek, check out Kenji Alt's Food Lab posts over on Serious Eats. He's got a nice guide up right now on how to grill a steak the right way (complete with explanations based on food science and his own experiments), and he's been doing a series on the best inexpensive steaks (at least, inexpensive compared to porterhouse and tenderloin).

Personally, I think most of these gadgets are worthless. Yes, a thermometer is useful (but I prefer the instant-read kind like the Thermapen for quick checks in multiple locations). Otherwise, you really only need a good pair of extra-long tongs (that 3-in-1 thing in TFA looks clunky as heck) and a spatula.

If you really want to grill like a geek, check out Kenji Alt's Food Lab posts over on Serious Eats. He's got a nice guide up right now on how to grill a steak the right way (complete with explanations based on food science and his own experiments), and he's been doing a series on the best inexpensive steaks (at least, inexpensive compared to porterhouse and tenderloin).

"No medical system is perfect, but from my vantage point the American system is pretty messed up."

Even worse, the real solutions (prevention and cures) are not very profitable (compared to palliation and treatments). For example, expensive international heart surgery as $50K+ a pop is basically a "scam" according to Dr. Joel Fuhrman:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx

On top of that, diverting money to what really is "sick insurance" prevents it from being invested in wellness, like building parks, creating walking trails and bicycle paths, subsidizing cheap vegetables, fruits, and beans (healthier to eat), and so on. Worse, we subsidize and propagandize about unhealthy foods, like (for many people) dairy, factory farmed meats, and products with refined starch and sugar:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has posted an easy-to-understand visual on its site that shows which foods U.S. tax dollars go to support under the nation's farm bill. It's titled "Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?" and depicts two pyramids -- subsidized foods and the old recommended food pyramid. It's interesting to note that the two are almost inversely proportional to each other."

Here are some real solutions to obesity and other chronic issues I've collected:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

They are relatively basic things like getting enough vitamin D, eating lots of vegetables, fruits, and beans, and so on.

That said, 20% of modern medicine in miraculous. The problem is, doctors and the medical system don't seem to be able to so the right thing the other 80% of the time (especially for chronic disease) and do problematical interventions instead.

So, in general, I agree with Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel's point. Still, advanced technology can play two important roles.

One is advanced diagnostics. Imagine a test kit (or device) you could buy at the supermarket that would tell you if you had any nutritional deficiencies. Then you could look up what foods or recipes would help in fixing that.

The other is in living well beyond 80-120. Good nutrition may be able to get most people into 80 still doing fairly well, but getting past 120 is going to take advanced technology (which entails confronting a complex ethical, moral, and spiritual issue about the meaning of life, made even worse if life extension is available only to some).

But why put so much money into making "magic bullets" to shoot the apples from the top of the tree when the low hanging fruit is being ignored?

Good question. You would think that greatly reduced costs would produce increased profits in the short term, yes.

But there is a conflict, because insurance company profits are essentially a percentage of premiums, which will be raised every year to track rising costs (justified to clients and regulators).

With a single payer government-funded system, there is little incentive to keep costs high (but not none, because probably some aspect of bureaucratic salaries is tied to perceived importance and budget, but nothing like insurance CEO pay).

Still, I think insurance companies would go for the short term profits if they could, and I expect as more understand this, they will integrate it into wellness programs. For example:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx
"The sad thing is surgical interventions and medications are the foundation of modern cardiology and both are relatively ineffective compared to nutritional excellence. My patients routinely reverse their heart disease, and no longer have vulnerable plaque or high blood pressure, so they do not need medical care, hospitals or cardiologists anymore. The problem is that in the real world cardiac patients are not even informed that heart disease is predictably reversed with nutritional excellence. They are not given the opportunity to choose and just corralled into these surgical interventions. Trying to figure out how to pay for ineffective and expensive medicine by politicians will never be a real solution. People need to know they do not have to have heart disease to begin with, and if they get it, aggressive nutrition is the most life-saving intervention. And it is free."

One other aspect of this is that "health care" has been defined as paying for treatments and drugs when you are sick. That is not health care. That is sick care. Thus, insurance will pay for a $100K heart operation, but not $50K over ten years for organic vegetables to keep you healthy. So, the insurance system is very broken *inherently* in that sense.

Again, a government program can get around this by integrating things like agricultural subsidies in theory. Unfortunately, US subsidies for agriculture have been captures by unhealthy food makers:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html

What a mess.

A superior Coca Cola made with sugar instead of corn syrup [...]

(Just as a sidenote) It depends how you mean "superior", but this sheds some interesting light on the matter:

Those folks who prefer Mexican Coke (like myself), really just like the idea of Mexican Coke—whether it's because they think real sugar is tastier/healthier than corn syrup, whether it's because Mexican Coke is more expensive and harder to find, thus more valuable, whether it's because of its exoticism, whatever the reason—strip away the Mexicanness of it, and suddenly it's a lot less appealing.

Pizza on the moon! That sounds great! After a long day of doing sciency moon stuff, you can relax with a delicious, hot slice of--wait, the Japanese arm of Domino's Pizza? Ah, yes, imagine staring up with poignant homesickness at the beautiful blue Earth over your steaming slice of Mayo Jaga (potato with sizzling hot mayo) pizza... or perhaps you'll fondly remember the Earthly restaurants you've loved while nibbling at your delicious slice of Camembert Mille-Feuille Seafood pizza.

But don't worry. I'm sure the rest of the Asian pizza places will quickly step up to compete and offer a much wider mouthwatering selection.

"The problem is that government spends more than it takes it."

Due to borrow and spend conservatives launching war rackets of choice?
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

Instead of tax and spend liberals who at least pay more as they go?

"Smaller government is not a bad thing."

Unless government is too small to account for externalities through taxes, subsidies, and regulation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

And so we pay in our health bills and tax bills (and even inability to eat wild-caught mercurly laden fish) on the back-end the costs we should be paying up-front at the gas pumps and electrical outlets and supermarkets, in which case renewables would have been cheaper than fossil fuels since the 1970s and we would not be having such a health care crisis?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx

Or getting scammed by heart surgeons?
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx

And scammed by dermatologists who are causing by some estimates 30 cancers for every melanoma they prevent?
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/cancer/

Due in part to lack of adequate investment in public health research?

Do US Republican generally wanting to privatize gains and socialize costs make them the worst sort of socialists?

"Also, Obama has no plan, he just criticizes other."

I agree that Obama has been a terrible president so far. He blew his chance to make big changes in the first few days by trying to negotiate with idealogues who would rather destroy the USA than lose an election. He could have just declared medicare covers anyone of any age his first day in office (as in, not enforcing age limits), and then moved on from there to ensuring everyone had a basic income (social security for all, withotu age limits) even if there are no more jobs, and moved on from there to bringing our troops home and shifting the US defense budget to the space program. :-)

Related:
http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/
"This is no surprise, as [propertarian] libertarianism is basically the Marxism of the Right. If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then [propertarian] libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism. ... The most fundamental problem with [propertarian] libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but one cannot live without it. Prosperity is connected to freedom, in that it makes us free to consume, but it is not the same thing, in that one can be rich but as unfree as a Victorian tycoon's wife. A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it derive from relations that we are either born into without choice or, once they are chosen, entail obligations that we cannot walk away from with ease or justice. But security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern governments. [Along with health and community.]"

And:
"The Market as God: Living in the new dispensation"

Yeah, I don't eat at McDonald's here (the US) either, but I've eaten there when I go to France and, though some of the menu has similarities, there are a lot of differences in the overseas McDonalds and McCafes.

Take a look: macarons at mcdonalds and other tastiness.

OK, I lied. I still eat their fries every now and then. Usually if I'm on the way home from a bar.

And get probably 75% of medical issues diagnosed and cured, as they are mostly nutritional deficiencies... :-)
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
    http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
    http://www.grassrootshealth.net/

Sure, Omega-3s and Iodine are important too:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/17/prisonsandprobation.ukcrime
    http://www.iodine4health.com/
    http://www.bluezones.com/

As is a good night's sleep, friends, family, a connection to that which is beyond us, meaningful work, daily exercise walking and such, and that kind of stuff. And obviously avoid smoking, excessive alcohol, and obvious environmental toxins at work and play.

The focus on magic bullets is unfortunate. As is a focus on diagnosing things like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes that are mainly signs of vegetable deficiency disease and lack of vitamin D (and to a lesser extent those other issues). Most health rests on the basics. It's true that there are exotic genetic diseases and so on, but what causes the most chronic misery and early death in the industrialized words is these basic nutritional (and sunlight) problems.

Still, for cheap testing, this may be the future through using a paper-with-chemicals test and a cell phone, and such tests could help detect nutritional deficiencies:
    http://www.ted.com/talks/george_whitesides_a_lab_the_size_of_a_postage_stamp.html

Of course, there is not much profit in actually preventing or curing disease, so most of the money pours into diagnosing and treating what are really symptoms of nutritional and lifestyle disorders... It's been that way in part since the misguided Flexner Report:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexner_Report

But yes, this is still a great initiative -- even if it misses the obvious. But there is so little that is obvious (as is said in the Skills of Xanadu): :-)
    http://books.google.com/books?id=wpuJQrxHZXAC&pg=PA51

And of course, in our widely dysfunctional and dying culture, where people mostly eat either long dead carrion (aged factory farmed meat) or ground up long-dead plants (flour and sugar), and much of our entire cultural socio-economic infrastructure is geared around getting everyone to embrace this death-eater cult, it is no metaphorical surprise that the result of being a death eater is that you die early... Related:
    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

Do you really need a "tricorder" to diagnose death-eater disease?

The "back to sleep" campaign for infants aims to prevent a terrible tragedy of two in a thousand infants dying suddenly in their sleep for reasons as not yet full understood (and this practice supposedly cuts that rate of sudden infant death syndrome - SIDS -- in about half).
http://www.nichd.nih.gov/sids/

Basically, the entire process involves making infants uncomfortable -- put them on their backs instead of their stomachs, don't cover them, keep the room cold, don't co-sleep with them, and other things. But it is accepted that this distorts the backs of children's heads to be flatter, and also delays crawling development by a month or two in many children. If this was side-effects from a drug prescribed, we might question it more.

To be clear, I think it is worth to think about preventing SIDS, but one needs to ask about the costs in flattened heads and delayed developmental milestones to the other 998 out of 1000 babies. As someone else told us, the road to genius starts on the belly. We followed this back to sleep advice for our child and I regret it, especially as our child had trouble sleeping a lot in the first place, and following this well-meant advice probably just made that all worse.

Other bad advice from the medical establishment has been to avoid the sun, which has led to widespread vitamin D deficiency probably leading to increased autism rates and other health issues.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201104/autism-and-vitamin-d/

Again, we made the mistake of following well-meant advice by medical practicioners to avoid the sun and had serious health consequences from that.

Ironically, the lack of sunlight seems also to have increased melanoma rates, since vitamin D helps in the immune system destroying cancer. Ways to avoid that:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

The four food groups was another scam that has lead to a lot of bad health. Better advice:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

But these sorts of bad advice by the medical establishment have been great boons to mattress manufactures, the processed foods and animal products industries, and the medical industry.

Iodine may be another similar issue:
http://www.lmreview.com/articles/view/iodine-the-next-vitamin-d-part-I/

Remember, doctors used to recommend smoking and push infant formula, too. Example:
http://www.old-time.com/commercials/1940's/More%20Doctors%20Smoke%20Camels.html

And they helped cretae institutions that persecuted those who suggested otherwise:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexner_Report
http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/shelton.bio.bidwell.htm

Vaccinations are another problematical area where it is not always clear the risk is worth the rewards for specific vaccines, or that with all the conflicts of interest involved one can know who to really believe on all that. The story on the influenza vaccine's value keeps changing, for example. As I quote here:

You apparently don't understand how science works. There is a reason we use controls. Kept in the same conditions a "regular" burger would have done the same. All that happened was that the stuff dried out and then there isn't much more that can happen. Why would it decompose in that environment? It didn't grow mold because it was inside in an environment where mold doesn't thrive. Heres a citation http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/11/the-burger-lab-revisiting-the-myth-of-the-12-year-old-burger-testing-results.html

Well said!

See also:

Plans:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/books/pb3/pb3_table_of_contents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

Cars:
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/oil-gas-crude/461
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en

Agriculture:
http://www.remineralize.org/
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

But, with all that said, the same sorts of reasons solar energy is getting better (better materials, better designs, better discussions, better insights into physics) is the same reason small scale nuclear is getting better (even as I would agree solar is safer and more decentralized than conventional nuclear). And example of small nuclear:
http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/

Related case for nuclear power:
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/

Let's say, in a moderate worse case in Japan that 100,000 people die from some nuclear radiation accident and the clean up cost a couple trillion dollars. Nuclear power still might have been cheaper in Japan, all things considered, than coal which causes a lot of pollution and related illness.

Would it have been cheaper in that sense than solar and wind? Probably not...

Still, given this is the worst quake to have hit Japan in a century, and the nuclear plants are not being talked about as having total meltdowns, this event itself might prove how safe they can be in some situations.

Of course, dealing with direct terrorism intended to cause them to malfunction may be a different issue, but many major industrial facilities, like at Bhopal, have that risk. And ideas like Hyperion help reduce that risk. Ultimately, if we try harder to make our global economy work for everyone, we might have less fears that people will commit terrorism because the hate us because we support their oppressors for various reasons...

On economic transformation, see:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation

BTW, an example of perhaps cold fusion (still needs more confirmation):
http://pesn.com/2011/03/07/9501782_Cold_Fusion_Steams_Ahead_at_Worlds_Oldest_University/

Personally, I want to be able to print solar panels in a solar-powered 3D printer. :-)

http://remineralize.org/

And such fertilizer produces healthier plants that need less pesticides.

"Biodegradable plastic made from plants, not oil, is emerging"
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/manufacturing/2008-12-25-biodegradable-plastic_N.htm

"Why luxury safer electric cars should be free-to-the-user"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en

"More energy goes into making gasoline from electricity and natural gas than it would take to make electric cars go the same distance"
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm

See also:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
"Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security is a 1982 book by Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, prepared originally as a Pentagon study, and re-released in 2001 following the September 11 attacks. The book argues that U.S. domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, by accident or malice, often even more so than imported oil. According to the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works better, is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy.[1] In the preface to the 2001 edition, Lovins explains that these themes are still very current. [2]"

Other approaches to all renewables:
http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/books/pb3/pb3_table_of_contents
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan

Given the exponetial growth of renewable energy, and how PV solar panels are about to reach grid parity and the prices will continue to drop, I think we will be all renewables by about 2030 from market forces alone at this point. (Unless cold fusion pans out, or if small scale nuclear like Hyperion gets popular.)

Three quarters of US agricultural production also just goes to produce livestock, and the health consequences of too much animal products are harming people's health, too, so we really don't need most of the fertilizer we produce.
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
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
http://www.ravediet.com/preview.html

How to deal with the economic consequences of all this increased efficiency:
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=360&cpage=6#comment-20270
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/more-on-the-future-implications-ibm-watson-technology/#comment-534

"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.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

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

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