OUR PHYSICAL HEALTH
The battle against heart disease, stroke and diabetes — three of the world’s leading causes of death — may be won or lost on your grocery list.
Unhealthy eating habits stand out as a lifestyle factor that increases the risk of death associated with these chronic diseases, researchers say. Numerous studies draw a clear line between what’s on your plate and mortality.
For instance: More than two-thirds of heart disease-related deaths worldwide can be linked to food choices, according to a study published last year. The authors estimated that 6 million deaths could have been avoided through better diets.
Healthy lifestyle choices reduce the risk of stroke by 80%, according to a study published in 2019. Diet was identified as the leading factor, earning a designation as the “worst of the health issues in the United States.”
Poor dietary habits contributed to almost half of the more than 700,000 deaths reviewed as part of a study published in 2017. The deaths were caused by heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes.
Each study illustrates the profound impact that food choices can have on your physical health.
OUR EMOTIONAL AND SPIRITUAL HEALTH
What worries me even more is the profound impact that most of us now "take in" on a daily basis has on our mental and spiritual health. Our intake of "junk food" may be killing us physically, but I believe that our intake of visual, audible and electronic "junk food" may be killing us emotionally, relationally and spiritually even more so!
I recently started a list of violent movies that are being advertised. I was shocked at how many are available just in the last two or three years: Killer Nannies, Faces of Death, Ready Or Not, Here I Come, Daredevil, They Will Kill You, Psycho Killer, Scream 7, Euphoria, The Mummy, Blink Twice, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Abigail, Deadpool and Wolverine, The Substances, Monkey Man, In a Violent Nature, Kill and Terrifier 3 to name just a few!
To movies, I would add the popularity of vicious cage fighting, online gambling, road rage, running redlights, defacing public buildings, vandalism in general, internet gossiping, presidential revenge through the DOJ and the general meanness and reputation ruining even from congressional members toward their counterparts that we hear about every hour, all day, every day on the news!
Taking in this much violence, revenge and law-breaking has a terrible corrosive effect even on good people. We call this corrosive effect on people, "normalization." The normalization of violence easily leads to more violence. The normalization of infidelity easily leads to more infidelity. The normalization of petty-theft easily leads to scamming, embezzlement and even robbery. The normalization of revenge easily leads to more revenge. The normalization of verbal abuse easily leads to physical abuse. The normalization of lawlessness easily leads to more lawlessness.
Unchecked, these behaviors lead to the collapse of culture and a pathetic "dog-eat-dog" world. The expression "dog eat dog" does not refer to canine cannibalism, but to an intensely competitive situation: one in which people are willing to hurt each other in order to gain an advantage or win an argument. In such a world, what took hundreds of years to build can unwind in a very short time. What was unwound (one person at a time deciding to give into what everyone else is doing) can only be rewound by one person at a time deciding to resist this popular trend.
When our country is in a moral free-fall collapse, there is no "quick fix." The only way out is back - one person at a time saying "Hell no! Not me! I will deliberately choose not be part of this trend! I will speak out against it every chance I get! I will resist it with all my might! I will vote against it in every election! I will act differently, even if I am the last person on earth to do so!" We got in this mess "one person at a time" and we can only get out of this mess "one person at a time!"
CHOOSE NOT TO FOLLOW THE CROWD
CHOOSE TO LIVE DIFFERENTLY
CHOOSE TO TAKE THE HIGH ROAD
NO MATTER WHAT EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING
EVEN IF YOU ARE THE LAST ONE STANDING
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