You've probably seen this video or one like it that shows the obesity trend in the US since the 1980s. 

 

 

If you aren't overweight or obese today you are an anomaly.

 

As frightening as this video is, things got even worse in 2020, as a new CDC study shows that "the portion of 5-11 year-olds who are classified as overweight or obese is now 45.7 percent, up from 36.2 percent before the pandemic." (r) Nearly a 10% increase in 1 year. What really upsets me is that the research is so clear about how important metabolic health is to the prevention of adverse outcomes of not only viral exposure but long term chronic health conditions. While most people aren't even talking about this (problem #1), those who are often disagree about what to do about it.

 

But let's take a look at what we know:

 

Yet most people fear meat and animal fat 🤔 

 

While correlation isn't causation, a meta analysis published a couple months ago stated: red meat is not associated with overweight or obesity.

 

If we want to help the kids (adults too) then we need to eat more meat, we need to drop the sugar (and highly refined / processed carbs) and we need to drop the industrial processed vegetable fats.

 

 

The US makes up 4% of the world's population but 45% of the global pharmaceutical market.

 

Most American adults (~66%) take at least 1 prescription medicine (on average 4-5). That's over $1200/adult/year and thus it's not in pharma's interest to get people healthy through proper nutrition. Rather, it's in their interest to continue to pay nutrition "scientists" to tell us seed oils are "healthy fats" and that we should fill up on highly processed grains. Even better mix these two ingredients in everything!

 

 

Every year around his birthday, Ryan Holiday writes a blog post of his learnings over the year (and beyond). I particularly enjoyed learning from his 34 mistakes on the way to 34.

 

 

 

At the University of Central Florida they captured the same student watching a Math video one day and a Star Wars movie another.

 

 

It's hard to believe this is the same person. The education system needs almost as much reform as the dietary recommendations.

 

While education is more than just getting a return on your investment, that is one of the reasons students take on huge sums of debt — in the hope that the investment will pay off in the future. However, the evidence is piling up that most students aren't getting a return on that investment.

 

 

"There is nothing that gets in the way of success more than avoidance. We avoid hard conversations. We avoid certain people. We avoid hard decisions. We avoid evidence that contradicts what we think. We avoid starting a project until we're certain of the outcome.

To justify our avoidance, we lie to ourselves. We tell ourselves that we’re noble — we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. We tell ourselves we don’t want to offend others. We tell ourselves that things will get better. We tell ourselves that things will get easier. We tell ourselves that we can avoid the real issue without any impact. We tell ourselves we'll start when the time is right.

Not only does avoiding today make the future harder, but it also almost always makes the present harder. Avoiding puts you on a hair-trigger, anything will set you off. We all do this. Who hasn’t entirely avoided a hard conversation with their partner about something only to find themselves in an insignificant argument over something trivial? Of course, the petty fight isn’t about the trivial thing, it’s about avoidance of the hard thing.

Everything becomes harder until we stop avoiding what's getting in the way. The longer you wait the higher the cost."

 

– Shane Parish

 

 

 

Tesla broke the $1 Trillion market cap this week. That's bigger than the next 10 biggest automakers...combined.

While I tend to root for anyone taking moonshots and trying to better the world, I'm worried this might pop...

 🌎 Who's calling the world's bluff:

A Saturday morning roundup on health and wealth, art and science, creativity and innovation, laughs and life by Kevin Stock.