I remember when I was a fledging practitioner and I became disheartened when the kids who I worked with subsisted on flaming hot cheetos and Mountain Dew.  Now, 15-years later, I realized that it’s Takis and Monster, but I’m sure that you get the drift.  My ex-husband taught for awhile in rural west central Alaska, and the urban culture of bad eating and sedentary lifestyle was ubiquitous as well there.  Kids eat terribly when they’re living in food deserts.  It’s what they do.  I think that after my ex, and watching my son grow, I gave more credence to nutrition being less of a sole indicator of health.  That is a gravely over simplified supposition.

It’s social class that determines most of what we look like and what kind of health that we have. I’m not saying that my son will start eating red dye and soy, but I am saying that how your health is impacted has a lot to do with your treatment in society.  And, the research is sad.  And perfectly unsettling.

We’re watching, “Unnatural Causes” at work as a series.  We’ll offer some showings of it in our communities so that we can use central themes as discussion points.  (Film) Over the course of these next 4-years, we will try to implement programming which will change the way in which we deliver behavioral health services.  I have a chance to impact peoples lives large scale and make changes that are necessary for health promotion in my new position.

Anyway, I live in an area of the country wherein a refinery has decimated the ground water and the land around an entire community.  If these people wanted to learn about gardening and how to grow their own food, they couldn’t.  Their soil is too damaged.  Some of the community there live under a viaduct under the highway and there is no grocery store that they can get to on foot–some of them don’t have cars.  They can go to 7 Eleven and buy Takis and Monster, and if they are lucky, bananas and GMO Red Delicious Apples.  Kids in my community don’t eat fruit though.

wtf is fatty acids from tri and monoglycerides?!?

But, it’s not just diet, as I said.  It’s your place in society, your level of control at work, and where you are in the hierarchy of this world that equals your health.  Eventually, these factors can also dictate the number of years that you’ll live.  As I change what I’m doing for work, I am thinking more and more about systems that those who I used to work directly with encounter.  They are not equal systems.