Dear Girl Scouts: It’s time to cut out the cookies

It happened while I was leaving a grocery store in the southeastern United States. The young girl who asked me if I wanted to buy Girl Scout cookies was strikingly perfect. She was thin, happy, and well spoken. So were her colleagues. The moms, too, were of healthy weight and cheer. It was as if they were English-speaking transplants from the Netherlands. They did not appear to be regular consumers of their own product. And this is a problem, isn’t it? Here is the Twitter bio of the Girl Scouts of America: Ultimately the Girl Scouts aim to make the world a better place. Good. We need more groups like this. The problem is that selling high-fat sugar-laden cookies to an increasing calorie-addicted populace is no longer congruent with that goal. Things change. American society, especially, and most tragically, the children, suffer from an epidemic of calorie excess and movement deficiency. It’s not hyperbole to say this is a public health disaster. I’m a heart doctor. More than two-thirds of my patients have problems acquired from eating too much and moving too little. High-calorie inflammation-inducing foods only exacerbate these problems. Though vaccines and infectious disease get much attention, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, bone and joint disorders and other diseases of excess pose far greater threats to public health. And for those who have traveled to other parts of the world, our nation’s obesity epidemic is sort of an embarrassment. The question ...
Source: Dr John M - Category: Cardiology Authors: Source Type: blogs