Adult Bibs

I admit I have a bad relationship with food -- I know how to eat too much of it, just like the rest of America. but I'm also type I diabetic and this has a strong influence on my excessive eating. I really wonder what I'd be consuming if I weren't diseased.

I see this wrapped around my newspaper this morning

and I actually take comfort in my own diabetic condition -- over time I've taken efforts to eat correctly that I might not have otherwise. I don't know what it's like to take Peptol Bismol. I certainly don't know what it's like to take it every day, as many of you do.

Indeed, a friend of ours who attended Thanksgiving at my in-laws last night was hospitalized this morning after having puked all night long...after having taken in a massive, massive quantity of food at the annual turkey day affair. Now, she was diagnosed with a small kidney stone -- really, not necessarily related to her day of binge eating...but I can't say it wasn't.

I've a brother-in-law who suffers from diverticulitis. His wife recently had her gallbladder removed following what looked to be a rather uncomfortable bout of distress. Should this be normal? Should every newspaper delivered on Black Friday be housed in a makeshift pink bib? I am blessed to have never suffered from gastrointestinal distress. I wonder, though, if it's just luck or if it has to do with eating less than the world's average production of meat, if it has to do with proper food combining, if it has to do with eating a diet of mostly plants. These things I do fairly regularly.

Obviously we don't have ultimate control over disease. I admit my likelihood of dying from lung disease riding my bicycle to work most days. But I look over our America and I know that Prilosec and Tagamet are among the most prescribed medicines, and I look out over our America and I see how many surgical procedures are performed to correct for our rich Western diet, and I have to wonder -- how much of my future productive effort will be used to provide universal health care for American diets known to cause disease? How much of my future productive effort will be used to pay taxes to subsidize meat and dairy industries that are known to cause disease?

In 2008 here on my blog I asked: Does a non-smoking vegetarian female state-university educated triathlete deserve to pay taxes to support the universal health care for a viable yet SS-disabled Tamiroff-swilling pack-a-day smoking Kraft-mac-and-cheese-eating type-II-diabetic beefeater who hasn't raised his heartrate above 100 since gradeschool? At what point does/should behavior influence these decisions? Should it not? Should we all just hope that there will be enough contributors to assist those who eat like shit? I mean, we do this everyday with our marginal tax system -- those who earn more pay more. This isn't any different, is it?

And I ask, should my health insurance rate rise more than 20% over the past two years for bicycling to work, for eating well, for managing my diabetes correctly? Perhaps it should. In any event, it most certain has.