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Discussing Herman Cain's business career in another topic, I said that the companies with which Cain found success - Burger King, Godfather's Pizza, and Nabisco - do not sell anything I would eat. MSK replied with a tout for Glenn Beck's double deep fried cherry pie. That brought me here to read about deep fried Twinkies. Does anyone else here actually care about what they eat? We could argue a lot, but there must be some basic understandings in order to provide valuable information. For instance, over on RoR in a healthfood thread, one of the regulars boasted of his nut butter sandwiches. But he makes them on wheat bread and wheat has serious downsides. My wife just gave it up and immediately shed ten pounds and the desire for a fourth meal each day. Wheat clearly agrees with some people, and also, not with everyone. My point is that if you care about your health, you probably follow a regimen of some kind that you find best for yourself. The question is really whether that comes from reading informed and informative materials or just eating whatever you want. If you eat whatever you want - whim worshipping at the dinner table - you probably are not engaged in optimal behavior. We are all living longer. Consider prostate problems. What problem? Historically, you would get eaten by a bear long before your prostate killed you. Now, lacking bears, you live long enough to have the problem... unless you eat this, avoid that ... Woman and breast cancer is another consequence of the agricultural revolution. Time was, women breast fed their kids for three years, doing that several times a day. Now, they have huge boobs that they never use. Consequence: things go wrong... When you lived to 30 it was not a problem... Live to 60 and it is. Myself, I am a big fan of Durk and Sandy. To me, food is just a way to faciitate the uptake of vitamins. I eat meat, but not pork, and I eat tofu. I eat mixed nuts, but minimal wheat bread - a loaf lasts a week to ten days. I eat eggs, milk, etc., but the milk could be goat's milk as easily as cow's. I avoid processed foods, hormones, and antibiotics. I prefer grass fed, small lot animals. I eat fruits alone, i.e, not with other foods within an hour. I follow the maxim that the world could live well on bananas and fish. I know I do. I eat wildcaught ocean fish only, nothing farm raised; nothing freshwater. I do eat canned tuna, light not white because white has more mercury. Also, have been big on other canned fish. At my age (62), I have gone through a lot of phases since I got hip on nutrition 40 years ago. It might not matter too much what you eat as much as what you avoid. Objectivists know that there is no dichotomy between the moral and practical, the logical and empirical, the political and the economic. I point to this: Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization by Richard Manning. It is no accident that agricultural societies are slaveholders.

Peikoff says he smoked 3 packs a day. Here is the podcast where he says he smoked 3 packs a day. 3 packs a day Being a nonsmoker all my life I was clueless about the price of smokes. I did a little search and came up with a price of approximately $20 a pack. 3 packs a day is $60 a day on smokes. In a 30 day month that is $1800 a month on smokes. For what? Symbol of controlled fire? He says at that time there was no evidence that smoking is bad for health. He did not count statistics as evidence. But the truth is doctors knew at least as far back as the 1800s that smoking is bad for health. I present the following book as evidence that doctors knew that smoking is bad for health as far back as 1889 and before. This is a very well written book and you can read it by clicking on it. Tobacco: Its Use and Abuse by Rev. John B. Wight Of the South Georgia Conference (Columbia, South Carolina: L. L. Pickett Pub Co, 1889) This book is well worth reading. Now I will do a bit of a rant. Ayn Rand defines 'value' as what one acts to gain and/or keep. To value something is to act to gain and/or keep it. The word 'value' can be used as a noun or as a verb. Health qualifies as a value, that is, as something one can act to gain and/or keep. Furthermore health is a rational value, something that is worth acting to gain and/or keep. Money is a value as a means to other things. We value money because we can buy goods and services with it. If you were on an island all by your lonesome with a billion $ and you couldn't get off the island and you couldn't buy anything with the money, you would find that money is of little or no value for itself but mainly or only of value as a means to other things. Health is a value both for itself and as a means to other things. Perhaps most people don't much value health until after they lose it. Dr. Burton said in a speech that most health minded people are either very sick or very intelligent. Perhaps one must be exceptionally intelligent to value health -before- losing it. What do you value? Whatever you value, you probably can gain and/or keep it better with health than without health. If you want to make money, you can make more money with health than without health; besides sickness tends to be expensive. If you want to excel at anything, physical or mental, you can do it better with health than without health. If you want to be a world chess champion like Fischer or Kasparov, you better maintain a high level of health. If you want to enjoy anything (sports, music, food, whatever), your capacity to enjoy it probably will be enhanced by health. Health is sort of the foundation of everything else. Furthermore health once lost in a serious way tends to be difficult to get back. If you lose money but have everything else going for you, you probably can make a comeback, like Donald Trump. But losing health in a serious way tends to be a bit like moving pawns in chess, you can't move them back. Sometimes you can regain health from a serious disease, but it would have been easier and better to not get the serious disease. For reasons stated above, I am puzzled that Peikoff, the foremost Objectivist, would value health (a rational value) so little as to smoke 3 packs a day and spend $1800 or so per month in today's money wrecking his health.

This is the Ayn Rand Lexicon. Very useful. Look up any topic about Objectivism. http://aynrandlexicon.com/ Some kook attempted to make a similar thing for the science of health. Look up any topic about hygiene, the science of health. Same thing, only different. http://jtstory.fortu...nh_lexicon.html Warning: The data takes a long time to load.

We need fats. But there are good fats and bad fats. And the good fats must be in a correct ratio. "Heart surgeon openly admits low-fat diets recommended for years by mainstream medicine actually cause heart disease" http://www.naturalne...ical_myths.html Some people think diet is irrelevant to health and as evidence they know someone who ate a good low fat diet and developed health problems. That is extremely sloppy reasoning. First, if it is low fat, it is probably not a good diet. Second, there is much more to a good diet than just the amount of fat and sodium and calories and the few things that most people focus on. USDA data has about 140 nutrients. And that does not include flavonoids and other phytochemicals. Third, diet is only one of many components of a healthy way of life. Fourth, there is such a thing as genetics. Fifth, one single example is only anecdotal.