OPINION:
Big soda — and any big food company that depends heavily on ’big carb’ — is starting to feel the heat (“How to stop soda taxes,” Web, Nov. 14). When type-2 diabetics are curing themselves by abstaining from the food pyramid, cancer research is turning to the ketogenic diet as an adjunct treatment, and the U.S. Navy SEALS are funding research into using exogenous ketones to forestall oxygen poisoning, you might say the writing is on the wall. Fat is healthy and always has been and sugar and a heavy dependence on grains is not.
The medical profession’s treatment of chronic disease is an unqualified disaster, and the so-called health-care crisis is just a symptom. Get rid of the chronic disease and no matter how bad the health-care system is, most people will not even have to use it. You don’t need soda taxes to do this. All you need is the Internet, that bottom-up enabler.
The cat is out of the box, you might say. More and more sick people are comparing notes, and the food supply is in the process of being turned upside down. The federal government can keep vilifying fat, subsidizing grain rather than vegetables, and even coming up with new taxes, but to no end.
The current health fiasco is entirely due to federal policies going all the way back to the 1930s. When Big Brother picks winners and losers, eventually you lose, and food is no exception. “Eat less, move more,” the current federal health placebo, has a success rate of less than one percent. This is medical quackery by any standard. Your grandmother told you not to eat sugars and starches because they would make you fat, and basically nothing has changed.
SAMUEL BURKEEN
Reston
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