21 min
I Cook to Reclaim My Health Cooking Subversive
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- Food
#WhyCookseries/MyHealth/1 #CSM1
This post is part of the Why Cook? Series: 6 Reasons to be a Lifestyle Cook, a discourse on the pillars of The Cooking Subversive Manifesto (CSM). Providing great reasons to cook are powerful motivators to make cooking a lifestyle choice especially when we understand how forces have conspired to make us choose otherwise.
America’s obesity rate is 42.4%.
The United States may lay dubious claim to being democracy’s chief champion of late, but when it comes to obesity, it is without a doubt the leader, and has been so for nearly 2 decades among countries tracked by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). That’s not exactly something to be proud of.
We’re inured to this data point because we’ve sat with this fact for far too long and it’s only becoming worse. We’ve vilified the subjects—overweight people, because in the back of our minds, we’ve been taught to associate being fat with gluttony, poor self-control, laziness and other reprehensible traits we like to think we’re absolved of. Because we’ve appropriated blame to the wrong culprits, we’ve missed the real offenders, and they’ve been able to hide in plain sight. Before we point fingers, let’s first understand the magnitude of the problem.
Why the US Covid-19 death toll is so high
We’ve just reached the grim milestone of 800 thousand deaths in the United States, with no real end in sight. From the onset, the huge American death toll, disproportionately higher than in other developed countries, begged the question: why so high?
In a John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center tally of global deaths attributed to coronavirus, the US has 239.43 deaths/100,000 people. It is the 6th highest in the world, preceded by Brazil, Romania, Czechia, Hungary and Bulgaria; and the highest among wealthy nations. While we can debate on the ramifications of polarized attitudes towards masks and vaccines (we don’t have the monopoly on anti vaxxers and conspiracy theories), the data is clear on the primary causes of American deaths. According to a study published by The Lancet.
Consistent with reported COVID-19 outcome data from Europe, the United States, and China, higher caseloads and overall mortality were associated with comorbidities such as obesity, and advanced population age.
Let’s unpack the comorbities part. Comorbidy, the simultaneous presence of two or more diseases, entered our lexicon when covid-19 exploded. Comorbidity is a bulls-eye target for coronavirus; the chances of getting very sick or death is much higher. But what diseases are strongly associated with covid deaths?
In this screenshot of Covid-19 deaths with contributing conditions released by the CDC for 2020 and 2021, I circled 9 diseases linked to obesity. That’s half of the top 18 (see note) diseases associated with covid-19 deaths that can be linked to obesity, which is directly associated with poor diet and unhealthy lifestyles.
Even without Covid-19, 3 of the top 7 leading causes of death in the US, heart disease, stroke and diabetes, are linked to obesity. A recent report by the New York Times suggests that covid 19 lives in fat cells. If proven conclusively, that will be the most direct link yet of Covid-19 to a poor diet.
Covid-19 exacerbated what we’ve known all along: Americans are unhealthy and unless we make lifestyle changes, we are literally going to pay for it with our lives.
When I was a child, my mom told me her father had diabetes. She said that they would find ants gathered near the toilet, because his urine was so sweet. To an 8-year old, that was the sort of outrageous, fun and slightly gross family factoid to brag about to friends. As an adult, the implications were serious. Though my mom didn’t have diabetes, both her parents did; my father had it too, and two of my siblings are on medication for it. The CDC says I am highly predisposed to diabetes if it
#WhyCookseries/MyHealth/1 #CSM1
This post is part of the Why Cook? Series: 6 Reasons to be a Lifestyle Cook, a discourse on the pillars of The Cooking Subversive Manifesto (CSM). Providing great reasons to cook are powerful motivators to make cooking a lifestyle choice especially when we understand how forces have conspired to make us choose otherwise.
America’s obesity rate is 42.4%.
The United States may lay dubious claim to being democracy’s chief champion of late, but when it comes to obesity, it is without a doubt the leader, and has been so for nearly 2 decades among countries tracked by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). That’s not exactly something to be proud of.
We’re inured to this data point because we’ve sat with this fact for far too long and it’s only becoming worse. We’ve vilified the subjects—overweight people, because in the back of our minds, we’ve been taught to associate being fat with gluttony, poor self-control, laziness and other reprehensible traits we like to think we’re absolved of. Because we’ve appropriated blame to the wrong culprits, we’ve missed the real offenders, and they’ve been able to hide in plain sight. Before we point fingers, let’s first understand the magnitude of the problem.
Why the US Covid-19 death toll is so high
We’ve just reached the grim milestone of 800 thousand deaths in the United States, with no real end in sight. From the onset, the huge American death toll, disproportionately higher than in other developed countries, begged the question: why so high?
In a John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center tally of global deaths attributed to coronavirus, the US has 239.43 deaths/100,000 people. It is the 6th highest in the world, preceded by Brazil, Romania, Czechia, Hungary and Bulgaria; and the highest among wealthy nations. While we can debate on the ramifications of polarized attitudes towards masks and vaccines (we don’t have the monopoly on anti vaxxers and conspiracy theories), the data is clear on the primary causes of American deaths. According to a study published by The Lancet.
Consistent with reported COVID-19 outcome data from Europe, the United States, and China, higher caseloads and overall mortality were associated with comorbidities such as obesity, and advanced population age.
Let’s unpack the comorbities part. Comorbidy, the simultaneous presence of two or more diseases, entered our lexicon when covid-19 exploded. Comorbidity is a bulls-eye target for coronavirus; the chances of getting very sick or death is much higher. But what diseases are strongly associated with covid deaths?
In this screenshot of Covid-19 deaths with contributing conditions released by the CDC for 2020 and 2021, I circled 9 diseases linked to obesity. That’s half of the top 18 (see note) diseases associated with covid-19 deaths that can be linked to obesity, which is directly associated with poor diet and unhealthy lifestyles.
Even without Covid-19, 3 of the top 7 leading causes of death in the US, heart disease, stroke and diabetes, are linked to obesity. A recent report by the New York Times suggests that covid 19 lives in fat cells. If proven conclusively, that will be the most direct link yet of Covid-19 to a poor diet.
Covid-19 exacerbated what we’ve known all along: Americans are unhealthy and unless we make lifestyle changes, we are literally going to pay for it with our lives.
When I was a child, my mom told me her father had diabetes. She said that they would find ants gathered near the toilet, because his urine was so sweet. To an 8-year old, that was the sort of outrageous, fun and slightly gross family factoid to brag about to friends. As an adult, the implications were serious. Though my mom didn’t have diabetes, both her parents did; my father had it too, and two of my siblings are on medication for it. The CDC says I am highly predisposed to diabetes if it
21 min