OPINION
This article in the New York Times is a excellent summary of the current political climate. Not a pretty picture at all.
My quick take: something has got to give. To Republicans: if you are going to make it politically difficult to raise taxes then at least be honest and start telling your constituents that you want to reduce Medicare benefits and other popular government programs. We can't have it both ways.
Link: Party Gridlock in Washington Feeds New Fear of a Debt Crisis
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Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Pale Blue Dot
This picture was taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft on February 14, 1990 at a distance of 4 billion miles away from Earth. The idea for the picture was advocated by the famous astronomer Carl Sagan. In his book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, he wrote the following in regards to this famous picture:
"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
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How To Lose Weight and Be Healthy
SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS and PERSONAL ACCOUNT
(Note: I received no money to write this article from the books and nutritionists I recommend. Google's advertisement auction system will probably yield weight loss advertisements because of this article, but neither these ads nor the revenue I will receive for these ads will have any direct relationship with the content of this article.)
Introduction:
I consider myself a weight loss success story. Starting in January 2009, I lost about 30 pounds and as of February 2010 when I'm writing this I have continued to keep the weight off. I'm still working on losing the last 5 pounds, but the last 5 to 10 pounds are always the most difficult to lose. I haven't had heartburn in months, I'm sleeping better, have more energy, I'm not as irritable, and just overall feel better.
If you are hoping that I will tell you about some magic pill and give you one easy tip to drop a dress size in a weekend: sorry, this article isn't for you. I lost weight the old fashioned way: I ate better and exercised more. While the exercise part is fairly straightforward, the food part has unfortunately become extremely complicated because there is a lot of misleading information out there. The goal of this article is to sort through the sea of information out there and give you the right information that you need. This is a lengthy article that is mostly in long-note form, but hopefully you will find it more digestible (no pun intended) than the countless numbers of weight loss books out there. I must emphasize that this article isn't a complete source of information, so I will list additional sources of information if you wish to learn more. Weight loss is a complicated subject, but it's worthwhile to learn the basics. Losing weight will make you healthier, but I have come to believe that losing weight is a patriotic thing to do. Health care costs are crippling our economy and a healthier nation would certainly make the ongoing health care reform debate far easier.
Background:
When I started college in 2000, I was a well-fed and healthy high school cross country runner. When I graduated in 2004, I was 20 pounds heavier thanks to a steady diet of pizza and beer. During the next four years, I continued to eat poorly and gained another 20 pounds. For some foolish reason, I didn't worry much about my weight until December 2007 when I saw a picture of myself at a holiday party and realized just how overweight I had become. Like countless others, I decided to make weight loss my New Year's Resolution for 2008. I was very aware that my diet was poor, so I decided to follow the conventional wisdom that is repeated over and over again by the media and the medical community: I stopped eating candy, lowered my fat intake (especially saturated fat), and exercised more. While I lost 10 pounds within a couple months, I quickly plateaued. I maintained my discipline about junk food and fatty foods for the rest of the year, but my motivation to exercise went in cycles because of knee pain, being tired from work, or just plain laziness. Throughout this entire year, I failed to realize that my diet plan contained a number of critical flaws that hindered my weight loss goals. Thankfully, a good friend of mine decided to lose weight as her New Year's Resolution of 2009. Being more intelligent than myself, she actually did her homework and one day in January 2009 we got talking about nutrition. I vividly remember her drawing me a graph that explained how the Glycemic Index (GI) of carbohydrates affect blood sugar and the figurative light bulb above my head was lit. I have been healthier every since.
Scientific Analysis and Discussion:
The overall theme of this article is that we should return to eating natural unprocessed food. There is a lot of concrete evidence that some processed foods like high fructose corn syrup and trans fats are bad for human health, but even artificial ingredients like Nutrasweet which are "generally recognized as safe" or GRAS, a term used by the FDA (United States Food and Drug Administration) might have small enough negative side effects to escape scientific detection. Or maybe the studies were faulty. Or its impossible to understand the effects on the entire human body over a lifetime of consumption. Or there might be a risk that you or your children might be more genetically vulnerable to the byproducts of processed foods and artificial ingredients. Or perhaps a unique combination of the thousands of GRAS chemicals, processed food ingredients, genetics, and environmental pollution might combine to cause cancer, mental problems, etc….a crude of way of describing this potential and impossible-to-study combination would be a "death by a thousand cuts".
Another way of looking at this is realizing the human body is an amazing machine that has been supremely engineered by evolution, so why take the risk of consuming beverages and foods that we haven't been designed to eat? I'm certainly not advocating that we abandon all technology and live in perfect harmony with the land (ex. l love hiking, but I hate camping overnight and you can pry my Blackberry from my cold dead hands!), but we should limit our attempts to "mess with Mother Nature" with processed foods, supplements, and medications.
For me, this concept of not messing with Mother Nature was strongly reinforced by a book written by Dr. Weston A. Price called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Dr. Price was a dentist who traveled the world in the 1930's examining the health of other populations. At this time in history, many areas of the world were just starting to industrialize so within populations there were some members who still ate their traditional, unprocessed diets developed over thousands of years and there were some members of the same populations who had started to eat the processed foods of modern industrialized civilization. Through countless photographs and statistical analysis, Dr. Price observed some stunning trends. Even within families, Dr. Price noticed that those who ate unprocessed diets tended to have perfectly formed teeth without the help of braces and very few cavities compared with those who ate processed foods. He also noticed that those with natural diets had tended to better physiques, better facial structure, and were overall more healthy and vibrant. Of course, many will be quick to point out that non-industrialized peoples have a shorter life expediency but that is only because they don't have the wonderful advances in medical technology that significantly improve pregnant mother and infant mortality. In addition, they didn't have refrigeration which allows for a more stable supply supply of natural food without having to use industrial processing to prevent food spoilage.
Finally, I have my own concrete evidence which trumps any scientific study or even the most persuasive public health official: I lost weight by ignoring some of the conventional wisdom and I have noticed a slow, but continuous, improvement in my overall well-being.
I will list a number of books and other resources to consult for further information at the end of this article, but here's an introduction to the principles that I'm confident will help you to lose weight like I did.
We Are Programmed To Gain Weight
Losing weight isn't easy. It wasn't that long ago that famine was a constant threat for most of humanity, so we have evolved survival mechanisms that allow to us gain fat when food is plentiful and our metabolism has been programmed to slow down during times of famine. Thankfully, most people in this world no longer have to worry about food scarcity but this blessing also makes it easy for modern humans to gain weight.
This means you should never go hungry because if your metabolism slows you will never burn off excess fat and you are asking for a host of other health problems. Plus, the desire for food is extremely hard to suppress so at some point your willpower will crumble and you may end up bingeing on unhealthy food. You will then gain back all the weight you lost, plus you will likely end up weighing more than you started as your metabolism will have slowed down during the famine of your own creation. Finally, being extremely hungry is a miserable feeling and will definitely impair your quality of life.
Throw Away Your Bathroom Scale
Be wary of weighing yourself especially if you aren't that overweight. Overall weight isn't the best measure of fat loss because you have no idea if you losing fat or lean body mass. Either spend the money for body fat percentage tests, take pictures for comparison, or just relax about the whole issue because if you eat natural unprocessed foods and moderately exercise I'm extremely confident that you will get to a healthy weight.
Skinny Isn't Always Healthy
There can a difference between being skinny and having a healthy weight, so be careful about how much weight you want to lose. This is especially important advice for women as letting your body fat percentage drop too low is unhealthy as it can disrupt your menstrual cycle and creates a long list of potential health problems. The evolutionary famine response is likely more potent in women because it's evolution's way of making sure women could maintain a pregnancy if a famine develops. So if your menstrual cycle stops, it's nature's way of saying that it is not safe for you to become pregnant. While there are positive signs that the fashion industry is starting to change its ways, there are just way too many models who are stick thin. This sends the wrong message to women and especially teenage girls who are more prone to anorexia. For whatever my opinion is worth, I will state for the record, as a currently single young heterosexual male, those stick thin models aren't very attractive at all.
All Good Things In Moderation (Especially Ice Cream)
It's more than okay to have an occasional treat and certainly don't guilty when you do. Despite knowing that it's not healthy I'm never entirely give up an occasional bowl of ice cream….real ice cream that is high in fat and has real sugar. Eating good food is one of the best pleasures in life, so don't deny yourself. Yes, when you indulge yourself will probably gain some weight but if you eat healthy it won't take long to burn off that dessert and you probably won't even notice the very minor weight gain when you look in the mirror. Remember that a pound of fat equals approximately 3500 calories. Plus, if you don't indulge yourself how will ever enjoy the holidays or vacations? Obviously the trick is to find out what definition of "occasional" is suitable for you.
Spend the Money to Buy Pasture-Fed Animal Products and Organic Fruits & Vegetables
I know this can be hard advice to follow given our current economy, but organic and pasture-fed food has more nutrients. Plants that don't have the help of massive doses of pesticides generate more antioxidants to protection (and our eventual benefits). Plus, buying higher quality food means less pesticides and less runoff waste.
Carbohydrates and Blood Sugar
The key to feeling full, but not eating excess calories is to have stable blood sugar levels. If you eat foods with high GI levels like refined sugar and white bread flour (which quickly turns into pure glucose during digestion), blood sugar levels will spike. This causes the pancreas to pump out a correspondingly high level of insulin. As the large amount of insulin induces liver and muscle cells to absorb glucose from the bloodstream, the blood sugar levels drop so rapidly that the body begins to have cravings despite the recent food intake. In addition, maintaining a stable blood sugar is essential to avoid insulin resistance and eventually diabetes. Carbohydrates from fruit, vegetables, and 100% whole grain products won't spike your blood sugar. Also, I highly recommended spending a little extra money to get sprouted or soaked grain products because the grains are more digestible. The most common brand of sprouted bread (at least in my part of the world) is called Ezekiel. Because it has no preservatives, it is found in the frozen food section of the grocery story for longer storage and you should keep it in the fridge at all times.
Protein
Always get enough protein. In general, the average male should eat about 100 grams every day and the average females should eat about 60 grams per day. I don't doubt that you can get by with less protein, but optimal is different from sufficient. In order to achieve this level of protein consumption, I strongly recommend eating animal products. Vegan and vegetarians will argue that its possible to get enough protein from grains and legumes like soybeans, but too many carbohydrates will result in higher blood sugar levels. Plus, I don't believe humans are designed to eat large amount of soy products, especially the heavily processed and non-fermented soy protein found in soymilk, meal replacement bars, and meat substitutes.
Eat Fat to Lose Fat
The most important way to stabilize blood sugar levels to eat fat with every meal. At first glance, this seems counterintuitive because you are trying to lose fat, but if you don't stabilize your blood sugar you run the risk of overeating. This was my problem throughout 2008 and I ending up eating excessive amount of carbohydrates due to dips in my blood sugar. Even if you eat healthy carbohydrates, you will gain weight if you eat excessive calories. When I first started incorporating more fat into my diet, I was stunned how quickly I felt full and it became far easier to not overeat. The key is to eat the right kind of fats.
Processed Fats
Always avoid processed fats like trans fats which are created by the process of hydrogenation. These fats are extremely unhealthy for you and the only reason why food companies use processed fats is to extend shelf life of their products and maximize profit. Thankfully, as of 2006, food companies are now required to list the amount of trans fat on the nutrition label, but for some insane reason they are allowed to advertise "Trans Fat Free" if the product has less than 0.5 grams per serving so carefully examine the entire nutrition label for words like trans fat, partially hydrogenated, and fully hydrogenated. If you see these words, put the product back on the shelf and walk away.
Polyunsaturated Fats
Other kinds of fats to avoid are polyunsaturated vegetable oils (canola, corn, soybean, sunflower, etc.). For decades they have been touted as a healthy alternative to saturated animal fats but there are some major problems with these polyunsaturated fats. For starters, they are processed so that should raise alarm bells. Because of their chemical structure (unpaired electrons at the double bonds), they are vulnerable to oxidation and free radical formation when exposed to heat and oxygen. Free radicals and other oxidative byproducts have been shown to cause damage to the human body in countless ways. You know how the American people were told to use the polyunsaturated fats of margarine instead of butter to lower their risk of heart disease? Well, there is a growing body of evidence that the processed fats in margarine are far more responsible for heart disease than butter is! More on this soon.
Monounsaturated Fats
These fats are found in olives, avocados, and various nuts. The nice thing about nuts like cashews is that they are a delicious and portable source of healthy fat that also have some protein content as well. A word of caution: even though it appears like you are just buying nuts with salt on them, check the ingredients because many manufacturers also use polyunsaturated vegetable oils to help the salt stay on. Monounsaturated fats like olive oil and nut butters are definitely better than polyunsaturated fats because they are more stable, but I still would be extremely cautious about your sources and cooking with them. For example, make sure you always consume fresh, extra virgin olive oil that was stored in a dark bottle. I will admit that I don't know that much about the quality of monounsaturated oil but it hasn't been an issue for me because I'm not a huge fan of how olive oil tastes and natural peanut butter just isn't as good as the hydrogenated stuff with added sugar.
Saturated Fats
The other reason why I haven't spent much time researching monounsaturated oils is that saturated fats like meat, eggs, butter, and coconut oil are best kinds of fat to eat. Not only are saturated fats more stable for cooking, they are essential to health when you consider that the brain is 60% saturated fat and the membrane of every cell in your body is 50% saturated fat. Yes, you read that correctly: saturated fat is actually good for you because even if saturated fat raised cholesterol (which it doesn't), high cholesterol doesn't cause heart disease. I had a hard time believing this at first given the steady drumbeat of information coming from the media and medical community, but I have been throughly convinced. While I could rattle off a long list of studies that explain why the saturated fat-cholesterol-heart disease theory (known in the scientific literature as the Lipid Hypothesis) is flawed, the basic theme of these flawed studies is that they just focused on indicators like cholesterol and not overall mortality. Another way to look at this issue is realize that despite an aggressive campaign to lower the saturated fat intake of Americans (most notably the successful campaign to replace butter with the hydrogenated vegetable oils of margarine), the rates of heart disease have continued to climb. Also, consider that heart disease wasn't even on the radar before the 1920s when Americans didn't hesitate to eat plenty of butter, eggs, and red meat. The only thing that truly changed in the 1920's when heart disease first emerged was the widespread introduction of refined carbohydrates and processed fats.
Definitely check out the books at the end of this article for a more detailed explanation of the Lipid Hypothesis, but here's a quick introduction: the Lipid Hypothesis first gained strong momentum after a 1954 study by David Kritchevsky that showed cholesterol causes atherosclerosis (plaque in the blood vessels) in vegetarian rabbits. Scientists, concerned with the escalating rates of heart disease, took special note of this study despite two major flaws: the kind of plaque the rabbits developed was different from the plaque humans developed and the rabbits were fed oxidized cholesterol, which is not contained in unprocessed animal products. I will let Dr. Mary Enig and Sally Fallon explain what happened next:
Coconut Oil Is the Best Kind of Saturated Fat
While high-quality animal products like butter, meat, eggs, and dairy contain vital nutrients along with the fat necessary to stabilize your blood sugar, the best kind of fat is coconut oil (when in its natural, unprocessed state, of course) because of its unique properties.
A. Of all the fats in existence, it has the highest percentage of saturated fats (approx. 92%) so it's the most stable for cooking and is a great source of the saturated fats your body needs.
B. Contains high amounts of medium-chain fatty acids (MCFAs). These fatty acids don't need bile salts to be digested like the more common long-chain fatty acids, so the body is less likely to store them as body fat and is able to quickly convert these fat molecules to energy.
C. The main MCFA in coconut oil is lauric acid and interestingly enough, the other main source of lauric acid is mother's milk. Studies shown lauric acid gets converted to monolaurin or glycerol monolaurate, a compound that has well known antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal properties. In fact, there was a study about a year ago in the prominent journal Nature which showed glycerol monolaurate helped prevent primate HIV transmission.
D. Coconut oil doesn't require refrigeration and has a melting point of 76 degrees so its easy to work with at room temperature.
E. Coconut oil tastes good. One of my favorite foods to eat is now a simple snack of coconut oil on whole-grain, sprouted grain toast.
Some quick notes for good measure:
Eggs
I highly recommended eating two eggs a day. As I mentioned above, don't worry about the cholesterol content. Eggs have vital fatty acids and two eggs supply the recommend amount choline vital for the nervous system.
Avoid Fish Oil Capsules
Eating fish and the accompanying fats are good for you, but the process of making fish oil capsules removes the natural antioxidants found in the flesh of the fish. So, during the time it takes from the processing of the fish into fish oil capsules to the time you actually ingest the fish oil, these healthy fats have likely been oxidized and are therefore unhealthy. Alternative: Look for wild-caught, non-predatory fish to avoid excessive exposure containments like mercury and PCBs.
Exercise
I don't have a lot to say about exercise because I simply don't know that much about exercise. I think you can get down to a healthy weight by eating right and just going for a walk every day or doing any kind of recreational activity where your heart-rate increases. However, I will give one recommendation if are looking to speed up weight loss. Instead of just slaving away on an exercise machine for 30 minutes at a steady pace, use high intensity interval training (HIIT) a few times a week. For example, I have an exercise bike in my apartment and I do 1 minute of sprint cycling with heavier resistance, followed by 30 seconds of slow cycling. Compared to the traditional 30 minute of steady-state aerobic exercise, HIIT has been shown to be more effective at raising your metabolism and burning fat. If you are curious, I also do push-ups and have dumbbells I do biceps curls with. These last 5 pounds have been extremely stubborn, so I will soon start doing some research to see how I can improve my exercise program and/or if I can make further improvements in my diet. I have a huge stack of papers and books on my desk about the Lipid Hypothesis I want to analyze first, so once I learn more I will let you know what I find.
Nutrition is a complex subject, so I will definitely write more on the subject but for now: good luck!
More information:
Hopefully I have to time to write about meal plans in the future, but for now here are some resources that will help.
For those living in the Madison, Wisconsin area:
If you want meal plans plus a whole more from somebody more intelligent than me: I highly recommended a great nutritionist named Tracie Hittman. My friend and I did a lot of research on our own for most of 2009 and while we both were successful, we both got far better result in terms of overall health when we started following Tracie's advice in November 2009. For those of you don't live in the Madison area, I'm sure you can find other excellent nutritionists but it should be noted that Tracie's advice might be dramatically different.
Books:
Eat Fat, Lose Fat: The Healthy Alternative to Trans Fats by Dr. Mary Enig and Sally Fallon
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price, DDS
---
Questions? Comments? Criticism? Post a comment or email me at TimHamiltonJournalism {at} gmail {com}
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Copyright © Tim Hamilton Journalism
(Note: I received no money to write this article from the books and nutritionists I recommend. Google's advertisement auction system will probably yield weight loss advertisements because of this article, but neither these ads nor the revenue I will receive for these ads will have any direct relationship with the content of this article.)
Introduction:
I consider myself a weight loss success story. Starting in January 2009, I lost about 30 pounds and as of February 2010 when I'm writing this I have continued to keep the weight off. I'm still working on losing the last 5 pounds, but the last 5 to 10 pounds are always the most difficult to lose. I haven't had heartburn in months, I'm sleeping better, have more energy, I'm not as irritable, and just overall feel better.
If you are hoping that I will tell you about some magic pill and give you one easy tip to drop a dress size in a weekend: sorry, this article isn't for you. I lost weight the old fashioned way: I ate better and exercised more. While the exercise part is fairly straightforward, the food part has unfortunately become extremely complicated because there is a lot of misleading information out there. The goal of this article is to sort through the sea of information out there and give you the right information that you need. This is a lengthy article that is mostly in long-note form, but hopefully you will find it more digestible (no pun intended) than the countless numbers of weight loss books out there. I must emphasize that this article isn't a complete source of information, so I will list additional sources of information if you wish to learn more. Weight loss is a complicated subject, but it's worthwhile to learn the basics. Losing weight will make you healthier, but I have come to believe that losing weight is a patriotic thing to do. Health care costs are crippling our economy and a healthier nation would certainly make the ongoing health care reform debate far easier.
Background:
When I started college in 2000, I was a well-fed and healthy high school cross country runner. When I graduated in 2004, I was 20 pounds heavier thanks to a steady diet of pizza and beer. During the next four years, I continued to eat poorly and gained another 20 pounds. For some foolish reason, I didn't worry much about my weight until December 2007 when I saw a picture of myself at a holiday party and realized just how overweight I had become. Like countless others, I decided to make weight loss my New Year's Resolution for 2008. I was very aware that my diet was poor, so I decided to follow the conventional wisdom that is repeated over and over again by the media and the medical community: I stopped eating candy, lowered my fat intake (especially saturated fat), and exercised more. While I lost 10 pounds within a couple months, I quickly plateaued. I maintained my discipline about junk food and fatty foods for the rest of the year, but my motivation to exercise went in cycles because of knee pain, being tired from work, or just plain laziness. Throughout this entire year, I failed to realize that my diet plan contained a number of critical flaws that hindered my weight loss goals. Thankfully, a good friend of mine decided to lose weight as her New Year's Resolution of 2009. Being more intelligent than myself, she actually did her homework and one day in January 2009 we got talking about nutrition. I vividly remember her drawing me a graph that explained how the Glycemic Index (GI) of carbohydrates affect blood sugar and the figurative light bulb above my head was lit. I have been healthier every since.
Scientific Analysis and Discussion:
The overall theme of this article is that we should return to eating natural unprocessed food. There is a lot of concrete evidence that some processed foods like high fructose corn syrup and trans fats are bad for human health, but even artificial ingredients like Nutrasweet which are "generally recognized as safe" or GRAS, a term used by the FDA (United States Food and Drug Administration) might have small enough negative side effects to escape scientific detection. Or maybe the studies were faulty. Or its impossible to understand the effects on the entire human body over a lifetime of consumption. Or there might be a risk that you or your children might be more genetically vulnerable to the byproducts of processed foods and artificial ingredients. Or perhaps a unique combination of the thousands of GRAS chemicals, processed food ingredients, genetics, and environmental pollution might combine to cause cancer, mental problems, etc….a crude of way of describing this potential and impossible-to-study combination would be a "death by a thousand cuts".
Another way of looking at this is realizing the human body is an amazing machine that has been supremely engineered by evolution, so why take the risk of consuming beverages and foods that we haven't been designed to eat? I'm certainly not advocating that we abandon all technology and live in perfect harmony with the land (ex. l love hiking, but I hate camping overnight and you can pry my Blackberry from my cold dead hands!), but we should limit our attempts to "mess with Mother Nature" with processed foods, supplements, and medications.
For me, this concept of not messing with Mother Nature was strongly reinforced by a book written by Dr. Weston A. Price called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Dr. Price was a dentist who traveled the world in the 1930's examining the health of other populations. At this time in history, many areas of the world were just starting to industrialize so within populations there were some members who still ate their traditional, unprocessed diets developed over thousands of years and there were some members of the same populations who had started to eat the processed foods of modern industrialized civilization. Through countless photographs and statistical analysis, Dr. Price observed some stunning trends. Even within families, Dr. Price noticed that those who ate unprocessed diets tended to have perfectly formed teeth without the help of braces and very few cavities compared with those who ate processed foods. He also noticed that those with natural diets had tended to better physiques, better facial structure, and were overall more healthy and vibrant. Of course, many will be quick to point out that non-industrialized peoples have a shorter life expediency but that is only because they don't have the wonderful advances in medical technology that significantly improve pregnant mother and infant mortality. In addition, they didn't have refrigeration which allows for a more stable supply supply of natural food without having to use industrial processing to prevent food spoilage.
Finally, I have my own concrete evidence which trumps any scientific study or even the most persuasive public health official: I lost weight by ignoring some of the conventional wisdom and I have noticed a slow, but continuous, improvement in my overall well-being.
I will list a number of books and other resources to consult for further information at the end of this article, but here's an introduction to the principles that I'm confident will help you to lose weight like I did.
We Are Programmed To Gain Weight
Losing weight isn't easy. It wasn't that long ago that famine was a constant threat for most of humanity, so we have evolved survival mechanisms that allow to us gain fat when food is plentiful and our metabolism has been programmed to slow down during times of famine. Thankfully, most people in this world no longer have to worry about food scarcity but this blessing also makes it easy for modern humans to gain weight.
This means you should never go hungry because if your metabolism slows you will never burn off excess fat and you are asking for a host of other health problems. Plus, the desire for food is extremely hard to suppress so at some point your willpower will crumble and you may end up bingeing on unhealthy food. You will then gain back all the weight you lost, plus you will likely end up weighing more than you started as your metabolism will have slowed down during the famine of your own creation. Finally, being extremely hungry is a miserable feeling and will definitely impair your quality of life.
Throw Away Your Bathroom Scale
Be wary of weighing yourself especially if you aren't that overweight. Overall weight isn't the best measure of fat loss because you have no idea if you losing fat or lean body mass. Either spend the money for body fat percentage tests, take pictures for comparison, or just relax about the whole issue because if you eat natural unprocessed foods and moderately exercise I'm extremely confident that you will get to a healthy weight.
Skinny Isn't Always Healthy
There can a difference between being skinny and having a healthy weight, so be careful about how much weight you want to lose. This is especially important advice for women as letting your body fat percentage drop too low is unhealthy as it can disrupt your menstrual cycle and creates a long list of potential health problems. The evolutionary famine response is likely more potent in women because it's evolution's way of making sure women could maintain a pregnancy if a famine develops. So if your menstrual cycle stops, it's nature's way of saying that it is not safe for you to become pregnant. While there are positive signs that the fashion industry is starting to change its ways, there are just way too many models who are stick thin. This sends the wrong message to women and especially teenage girls who are more prone to anorexia. For whatever my opinion is worth, I will state for the record, as a currently single young heterosexual male, those stick thin models aren't very attractive at all.
All Good Things In Moderation (Especially Ice Cream)
It's more than okay to have an occasional treat and certainly don't guilty when you do. Despite knowing that it's not healthy I'm never entirely give up an occasional bowl of ice cream….real ice cream that is high in fat and has real sugar. Eating good food is one of the best pleasures in life, so don't deny yourself. Yes, when you indulge yourself will probably gain some weight but if you eat healthy it won't take long to burn off that dessert and you probably won't even notice the very minor weight gain when you look in the mirror. Remember that a pound of fat equals approximately 3500 calories. Plus, if you don't indulge yourself how will ever enjoy the holidays or vacations? Obviously the trick is to find out what definition of "occasional" is suitable for you.
Spend the Money to Buy Pasture-Fed Animal Products and Organic Fruits & Vegetables
I know this can be hard advice to follow given our current economy, but organic and pasture-fed food has more nutrients. Plants that don't have the help of massive doses of pesticides generate more antioxidants to protection (and our eventual benefits). Plus, buying higher quality food means less pesticides and less runoff waste.
Carbohydrates and Blood Sugar
The key to feeling full, but not eating excess calories is to have stable blood sugar levels. If you eat foods with high GI levels like refined sugar and white bread flour (which quickly turns into pure glucose during digestion), blood sugar levels will spike. This causes the pancreas to pump out a correspondingly high level of insulin. As the large amount of insulin induces liver and muscle cells to absorb glucose from the bloodstream, the blood sugar levels drop so rapidly that the body begins to have cravings despite the recent food intake. In addition, maintaining a stable blood sugar is essential to avoid insulin resistance and eventually diabetes. Carbohydrates from fruit, vegetables, and 100% whole grain products won't spike your blood sugar. Also, I highly recommended spending a little extra money to get sprouted or soaked grain products because the grains are more digestible. The most common brand of sprouted bread (at least in my part of the world) is called Ezekiel. Because it has no preservatives, it is found in the frozen food section of the grocery story for longer storage and you should keep it in the fridge at all times.
Protein
Always get enough protein. In general, the average male should eat about 100 grams every day and the average females should eat about 60 grams per day. I don't doubt that you can get by with less protein, but optimal is different from sufficient. In order to achieve this level of protein consumption, I strongly recommend eating animal products. Vegan and vegetarians will argue that its possible to get enough protein from grains and legumes like soybeans, but too many carbohydrates will result in higher blood sugar levels. Plus, I don't believe humans are designed to eat large amount of soy products, especially the heavily processed and non-fermented soy protein found in soymilk, meal replacement bars, and meat substitutes.
Eat Fat to Lose Fat
The most important way to stabilize blood sugar levels to eat fat with every meal. At first glance, this seems counterintuitive because you are trying to lose fat, but if you don't stabilize your blood sugar you run the risk of overeating. This was my problem throughout 2008 and I ending up eating excessive amount of carbohydrates due to dips in my blood sugar. Even if you eat healthy carbohydrates, you will gain weight if you eat excessive calories. When I first started incorporating more fat into my diet, I was stunned how quickly I felt full and it became far easier to not overeat. The key is to eat the right kind of fats.
Processed Fats
Always avoid processed fats like trans fats which are created by the process of hydrogenation. These fats are extremely unhealthy for you and the only reason why food companies use processed fats is to extend shelf life of their products and maximize profit. Thankfully, as of 2006, food companies are now required to list the amount of trans fat on the nutrition label, but for some insane reason they are allowed to advertise "Trans Fat Free" if the product has less than 0.5 grams per serving so carefully examine the entire nutrition label for words like trans fat, partially hydrogenated, and fully hydrogenated. If you see these words, put the product back on the shelf and walk away.
Polyunsaturated Fats
Other kinds of fats to avoid are polyunsaturated vegetable oils (canola, corn, soybean, sunflower, etc.). For decades they have been touted as a healthy alternative to saturated animal fats but there are some major problems with these polyunsaturated fats. For starters, they are processed so that should raise alarm bells. Because of their chemical structure (unpaired electrons at the double bonds), they are vulnerable to oxidation and free radical formation when exposed to heat and oxygen. Free radicals and other oxidative byproducts have been shown to cause damage to the human body in countless ways. You know how the American people were told to use the polyunsaturated fats of margarine instead of butter to lower their risk of heart disease? Well, there is a growing body of evidence that the processed fats in margarine are far more responsible for heart disease than butter is! More on this soon.
Monounsaturated Fats
These fats are found in olives, avocados, and various nuts. The nice thing about nuts like cashews is that they are a delicious and portable source of healthy fat that also have some protein content as well. A word of caution: even though it appears like you are just buying nuts with salt on them, check the ingredients because many manufacturers also use polyunsaturated vegetable oils to help the salt stay on. Monounsaturated fats like olive oil and nut butters are definitely better than polyunsaturated fats because they are more stable, but I still would be extremely cautious about your sources and cooking with them. For example, make sure you always consume fresh, extra virgin olive oil that was stored in a dark bottle. I will admit that I don't know that much about the quality of monounsaturated oil but it hasn't been an issue for me because I'm not a huge fan of how olive oil tastes and natural peanut butter just isn't as good as the hydrogenated stuff with added sugar.
Saturated Fats
The other reason why I haven't spent much time researching monounsaturated oils is that saturated fats like meat, eggs, butter, and coconut oil are best kinds of fat to eat. Not only are saturated fats more stable for cooking, they are essential to health when you consider that the brain is 60% saturated fat and the membrane of every cell in your body is 50% saturated fat. Yes, you read that correctly: saturated fat is actually good for you because even if saturated fat raised cholesterol (which it doesn't), high cholesterol doesn't cause heart disease. I had a hard time believing this at first given the steady drumbeat of information coming from the media and medical community, but I have been throughly convinced. While I could rattle off a long list of studies that explain why the saturated fat-cholesterol-heart disease theory (known in the scientific literature as the Lipid Hypothesis) is flawed, the basic theme of these flawed studies is that they just focused on indicators like cholesterol and not overall mortality. Another way to look at this issue is realize that despite an aggressive campaign to lower the saturated fat intake of Americans (most notably the successful campaign to replace butter with the hydrogenated vegetable oils of margarine), the rates of heart disease have continued to climb. Also, consider that heart disease wasn't even on the radar before the 1920s when Americans didn't hesitate to eat plenty of butter, eggs, and red meat. The only thing that truly changed in the 1920's when heart disease first emerged was the widespread introduction of refined carbohydrates and processed fats.
Definitely check out the books at the end of this article for a more detailed explanation of the Lipid Hypothesis, but here's a quick introduction: the Lipid Hypothesis first gained strong momentum after a 1954 study by David Kritchevsky that showed cholesterol causes atherosclerosis (plaque in the blood vessels) in vegetarian rabbits. Scientists, concerned with the escalating rates of heart disease, took special note of this study despite two major flaws: the kind of plaque the rabbits developed was different from the plaque humans developed and the rabbits were fed oxidized cholesterol, which is not contained in unprocessed animal products. I will let Dr. Mary Enig and Sally Fallon explain what happened next:
The lipid hypothesis was introduced to the American people in 1956, when the American Heart Association (AHA) aired a fund-raiser on all three major television networks. The panelists presented the hypothesis as the cause of heart disease and recommended the Prudent Diet, in which corn oil, margarine, chicken, and cold cereal replaced butter, lard, beef, and eggs. It was on this television show that cardiologist Dr. Dudley White, who served as one of the panelists, made his comments objecting to the lipid hypothesis and the Prudent Diet.
"See here," he remarked, "I began my practice as a cardiologist in 1921 and I never saw an MI (myocardial infarction, or heart attack) patient until 1928. Back in the MI-free days before 1920, the fats were butter and lard and I think that we would all benefit from the kind of diet that we had a time when no one had every heard the words 'corn oil.'"
Despite these nationally televised comments, and in spite of the numerous contradictory studies already published in the scientific literature, the lipid hypothesis had already gained enough momentum to keep it rolling. Both the food processing industry and the pharmaceutical industry could see the benefits of making patients out of healthy people, simply by making them afraid of cholesterol."That last sentence is particularly noteworthy because processed vegetable oil corporations could afford large marketing campaigns while the independent farmer producing animal products could hardly afford to advertise in major magazines. In addition, the lipid hypothesis continues to be promoted by manufacturers of cholesterol lowering drugs, now a multi-billion dollar business. To be fair, this isn't just a conspiracy by the greedy drug companies because the American people eagerly accepted the concept that they can just swallow a convenient pill that allows them to be less concerned about their diet. Also, this idea of using medication to treat a problem is favorable to the metric-based philosophical tendencies of Western medicine. While lab tests are enormously valuable, its pretty clear that the emphasis on lab tests has been a disastrous distraction from addressing the nutritional causes of heart disease.
Coconut Oil Is the Best Kind of Saturated Fat
While high-quality animal products like butter, meat, eggs, and dairy contain vital nutrients along with the fat necessary to stabilize your blood sugar, the best kind of fat is coconut oil (when in its natural, unprocessed state, of course) because of its unique properties.
A. Of all the fats in existence, it has the highest percentage of saturated fats (approx. 92%) so it's the most stable for cooking and is a great source of the saturated fats your body needs.
B. Contains high amounts of medium-chain fatty acids (MCFAs). These fatty acids don't need bile salts to be digested like the more common long-chain fatty acids, so the body is less likely to store them as body fat and is able to quickly convert these fat molecules to energy.
C. The main MCFA in coconut oil is lauric acid and interestingly enough, the other main source of lauric acid is mother's milk. Studies shown lauric acid gets converted to monolaurin or glycerol monolaurate, a compound that has well known antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal properties. In fact, there was a study about a year ago in the prominent journal Nature which showed glycerol monolaurate helped prevent primate HIV transmission.
D. Coconut oil doesn't require refrigeration and has a melting point of 76 degrees so its easy to work with at room temperature.
E. Coconut oil tastes good. One of my favorite foods to eat is now a simple snack of coconut oil on whole-grain, sprouted grain toast.
Some quick notes for good measure:
Eggs
I highly recommended eating two eggs a day. As I mentioned above, don't worry about the cholesterol content. Eggs have vital fatty acids and two eggs supply the recommend amount choline vital for the nervous system.
Avoid Fish Oil Capsules
Eating fish and the accompanying fats are good for you, but the process of making fish oil capsules removes the natural antioxidants found in the flesh of the fish. So, during the time it takes from the processing of the fish into fish oil capsules to the time you actually ingest the fish oil, these healthy fats have likely been oxidized and are therefore unhealthy. Alternative: Look for wild-caught, non-predatory fish to avoid excessive exposure containments like mercury and PCBs.
Exercise
I don't have a lot to say about exercise because I simply don't know that much about exercise. I think you can get down to a healthy weight by eating right and just going for a walk every day or doing any kind of recreational activity where your heart-rate increases. However, I will give one recommendation if are looking to speed up weight loss. Instead of just slaving away on an exercise machine for 30 minutes at a steady pace, use high intensity interval training (HIIT) a few times a week. For example, I have an exercise bike in my apartment and I do 1 minute of sprint cycling with heavier resistance, followed by 30 seconds of slow cycling. Compared to the traditional 30 minute of steady-state aerobic exercise, HIIT has been shown to be more effective at raising your metabolism and burning fat. If you are curious, I also do push-ups and have dumbbells I do biceps curls with. These last 5 pounds have been extremely stubborn, so I will soon start doing some research to see how I can improve my exercise program and/or if I can make further improvements in my diet. I have a huge stack of papers and books on my desk about the Lipid Hypothesis I want to analyze first, so once I learn more I will let you know what I find.
Nutrition is a complex subject, so I will definitely write more on the subject but for now: good luck!
More information:
Hopefully I have to time to write about meal plans in the future, but for now here are some resources that will help.
For those living in the Madison, Wisconsin area:
If you want meal plans plus a whole more from somebody more intelligent than me: I highly recommended a great nutritionist named Tracie Hittman. My friend and I did a lot of research on our own for most of 2009 and while we both were successful, we both got far better result in terms of overall health when we started following Tracie's advice in November 2009. For those of you don't live in the Madison area, I'm sure you can find other excellent nutritionists but it should be noted that Tracie's advice might be dramatically different.
Books:
Eat Fat, Lose Fat: The Healthy Alternative to Trans Fats by Dr. Mary Enig and Sally Fallon
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price, DDS
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Non-Partisan Guide to Analyzing Issues
UNBIASED ANALYSIS
1. Read about the issue as much as possible instead of listening to talk radio or watching television news. In his book The Assault on Reason, Former Vice-President Al Gore explains this brilliantly:
3. Politicians have a tendency to think in the short-term in order to get re-elected. Vote for politicians who look past their next campaign when making policy decisions.
4. Finally, consider the root cause of problems and support policies that don't just treat the symptoms.
---
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1. Read about the issue as much as possible instead of listening to talk radio or watching television news. In his book The Assault on Reason, Former Vice-President Al Gore explains this brilliantly:
To understand the final reason why the news marketplace of ideas dominated by television is so different from the one that emerged in the world dominated by the printing press, it is important to distinguish the quality of vividness experienced by television viewers from the "vividness" experienced by readers. I believe that the vividness experienced in the reading of words is automatically modulated by the constant activation of the reasoning centers of the brain that are used in the process of co-creating the representation of reality the author has intended. By contrast, the visceral vividness portrayed on television has the capacity to trigger instinctual responses similar to those triggered by reality itself--and without being modulated by logic, reason, and reflective thought.
The simulation of reality accomplished in the television medium is so astoundingly vivid and compelling compared with the representations of reality conveyed by printed words that it signifies much more than an incremental change in the way people consume information. Books and newspapers also convey compelling and vivid representations of reality, of course. But the reader actively participates in the conjuring of the reality the author is attempting to depict. Morever, the parts of the human brain that are central to the reasoning process are continually activated by the very act of reading printed words. Words are composed of abstract symbols--letters--that have no intrinsic meaning themselves until they are strung together into recognizable sequences.2. We all have to decide the level of regulation we want on our capitalist economy. The decentralized market system of capitalism has raised the overall standard of living and motivates people to work harder, but unregulated capitalism has side effects which the electorate finds undesirable like wealth polarization, resistance to rules that protect the environment, and reckless financial practices that create huge problems like the Great Depression and the recent credit crisis. On the other hand, overregulation of the economy can mean slower economic growth, increased taxes for the middle class, and can severely stifle freedom especially when backlashes to capitalism usher communist governments into power that install centralized economies.
3. Politicians have a tendency to think in the short-term in order to get re-elected. Vote for politicians who look past their next campaign when making policy decisions.
4. Finally, consider the root cause of problems and support policies that don't just treat the symptoms.
---
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Instant Runoff Voting
NON-PARTISAN ANALYSIS
One of the key themes of this blog will be the promotion of instant-runoff voting (IRV). If you aren't familiar with this system of voting, here's a quick lesson.
What is instant-runoff voting?
Instead of having to place 100% of your democratic electoral power behind just one candidate, IRV allows you to rank order the candidates on the ballot.
Here's an example ballot:
Candidate A ---> 1st choice
Candidate B ---> 2nd choice
Candidate C ---> 3rd choice
Candidate D ---> 4th choice
Election computers go through the ballots and determine if any candidate got a majority of 1st choice votes. If so, they win the election. If not, the candidate with the least amount of 1st choice votes is eliminated. Using the example above, let's say Candidate A got the least amount of 1st choice votes. This means that the above voter's most desired candidate is now B and this voter's 1st choice selection is transferred accordingly. The results are then recalculated and if there is a candidate who receives a majority of the highest rank votes, they win. If not, the candidate with the fewest highest rank votes is eliminated and process continues until there is a winner.
The Benefits of Instant-Runoff Voting
The current political structure of the United States is a classic example of why this system is such a great idea (and why America desperately needs this system implemented nationwide for all races from President to city council). Between the power of the Democratic and Republican parties, it's basically impossible for a third or fourth party to even have a shot at winning an election. This means that the great ideas of the third-party candidate will never see the light of day and there is unhealthy lack of political diversity. While both parties certainly have spectrums of political beliefs within themselves, there is definitely an effort to maintain party discipline particularly when it comes to voting for legislation. This is clearly evidenced by the countless times you hear the phrase "the vote went down party lines."
Common sense tells you that it's absurd to think the views of 300 million Americans can be neatly divided into a strictly bi-partisan system of Democrats vs. Republicans, liberal vs. conservative, and blue state vs. red state. The inclusion of a third party would breathe life into a political system crippled by polarization. Compromise would be much more forthcoming because legislation would always require support from multiple parties.
Recent Examples Of Why We Need Instant-Runoff Voting:
2000 Election: This is non-partisan blog, so I won't get into the details of this controversial election. To keep it simple, I will just say this: no matter how you felt about the outcome of Bush v. Gore, I think you can agree that a Presidential election should never be decided in the Supreme Court.
2008 Election: On the liberal end of the American political spectrum, many liberals truly wanted to vote for Ralph Nader over Barack Obama but there was a rational fear that a vote for Nader would be a vote for the Republicans. On the conservative end, there are a substantial amount of conservatives that were very opposed to John McCain as a nominee. One controversial right-wing pundit named Ann Coulter even announced at that one point that she would campaign for Hillary Clinton if McCain got the nomination. With instant-runoff voting, she could have had her far-right wing candidate and McCain could have run truly as he is: a moderate Republican willing to work with liberal Senators such as Russ Feingold.
Current Political Climate as of February 2010:
While one can only speculate what impact the rise of the Tea Party will have on the 2010 midterm elections, it's clear that a vocal and sizable amount of people want the Republican Party to become much more conservative. Also, Barack Obama is having difficulty maintaining peace within the Democratic Party between moderate Democrats concerned about getting re-elected and liberals who feel disappointed that Barack Obama isn't living up to his liberal campaign promises.
Finally, instant-runoff elections will go a long way in lowering the political cynicism of voters in this country. There is an disheartening (and unacceptable) number of voters out there who going to the polling stations on election day and feel as those they are picking "the lesser of two evils". I also believe that voter turnout would greatly increase when there are more possible choices and a greater chance there will be a candidate that especially appeals to a voter. Barack Obama is a good example of a politician who motivated a lot of first time voters to get registered and show up to vote on Election Day.
---
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One of the key themes of this blog will be the promotion of instant-runoff voting (IRV). If you aren't familiar with this system of voting, here's a quick lesson.
What is instant-runoff voting?
Instead of having to place 100% of your democratic electoral power behind just one candidate, IRV allows you to rank order the candidates on the ballot.
Here's an example ballot:
Candidate A ---> 1st choice
Candidate B ---> 2nd choice
Candidate C ---> 3rd choice
Candidate D ---> 4th choice
Election computers go through the ballots and determine if any candidate got a majority of 1st choice votes. If so, they win the election. If not, the candidate with the least amount of 1st choice votes is eliminated. Using the example above, let's say Candidate A got the least amount of 1st choice votes. This means that the above voter's most desired candidate is now B and this voter's 1st choice selection is transferred accordingly. The results are then recalculated and if there is a candidate who receives a majority of the highest rank votes, they win. If not, the candidate with the fewest highest rank votes is eliminated and process continues until there is a winner.
The Benefits of Instant-Runoff Voting
The current political structure of the United States is a classic example of why this system is such a great idea (and why America desperately needs this system implemented nationwide for all races from President to city council). Between the power of the Democratic and Republican parties, it's basically impossible for a third or fourth party to even have a shot at winning an election. This means that the great ideas of the third-party candidate will never see the light of day and there is unhealthy lack of political diversity. While both parties certainly have spectrums of political beliefs within themselves, there is definitely an effort to maintain party discipline particularly when it comes to voting for legislation. This is clearly evidenced by the countless times you hear the phrase "the vote went down party lines."
Common sense tells you that it's absurd to think the views of 300 million Americans can be neatly divided into a strictly bi-partisan system of Democrats vs. Republicans, liberal vs. conservative, and blue state vs. red state. The inclusion of a third party would breathe life into a political system crippled by polarization. Compromise would be much more forthcoming because legislation would always require support from multiple parties.
Recent Examples Of Why We Need Instant-Runoff Voting:
2000 Election: This is non-partisan blog, so I won't get into the details of this controversial election. To keep it simple, I will just say this: no matter how you felt about the outcome of Bush v. Gore, I think you can agree that a Presidential election should never be decided in the Supreme Court.
2008 Election: On the liberal end of the American political spectrum, many liberals truly wanted to vote for Ralph Nader over Barack Obama but there was a rational fear that a vote for Nader would be a vote for the Republicans. On the conservative end, there are a substantial amount of conservatives that were very opposed to John McCain as a nominee. One controversial right-wing pundit named Ann Coulter even announced at that one point that she would campaign for Hillary Clinton if McCain got the nomination. With instant-runoff voting, she could have had her far-right wing candidate and McCain could have run truly as he is: a moderate Republican willing to work with liberal Senators such as Russ Feingold.
Current Political Climate as of February 2010:
While one can only speculate what impact the rise of the Tea Party will have on the 2010 midterm elections, it's clear that a vocal and sizable amount of people want the Republican Party to become much more conservative. Also, Barack Obama is having difficulty maintaining peace within the Democratic Party between moderate Democrats concerned about getting re-elected and liberals who feel disappointed that Barack Obama isn't living up to his liberal campaign promises.
Finally, instant-runoff elections will go a long way in lowering the political cynicism of voters in this country. There is an disheartening (and unacceptable) number of voters out there who going to the polling stations on election day and feel as those they are picking "the lesser of two evils". I also believe that voter turnout would greatly increase when there are more possible choices and a greater chance there will be a candidate that especially appeals to a voter. Barack Obama is a good example of a politician who motivated a lot of first time voters to get registered and show up to vote on Election Day.
---
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The Case for Progressive Taxation and Regulated Capitalism
OPINION
Note: I'm not arrogant enough to believe that this article will have the ability to convince conservatives to support progressive taxation (the tax rate increases as the taxable base increases) and regulated capitalism. I know lots of people who have worked extremely hard for their incomes and I can understand why they could never agree with this article. However, I hope to explain to conservatives why liberals like myself believe in these ideas. Perhaps a better understanding of each other's political beliefs will help make compromise easier.
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While it's hard to be grateful for taxes, there is an overlooked benefit: we sign President Barack Obama's paycheck. This gives us power to influence our democratic government and as James Madison said: "oblige it to control itself". While discussing the politics of oil, Thomas Friedman explains further explains the value of taxes in his book The World Is Flat:
Interestingly enough, it's not just people in the lower and middle classes that support progressive taxation. The most striking example of a supporter who is ultra-rich can be found in Warren Buffett who is somewhat outspoken in his belief that he should pay a higher tax rate despite his multi-million dollar annual tax bill. He often provides the example that due to 15% capital gains tax (a tax that mainly effects the wealthy who can afford to invest large sums of money), he pays a lower overall tax rate than the 30% rate his secretary pays. (Source)
A key thing to remember about progressive taxation is that this isn't a new radical idea and would be a return to the tax and financial philosophies that were first forged in the ruin of the Great Depression and were maintained (more or less) until the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Since then, these policies have been steadily reversed which created the breeding ground for the credit crisis that erupted in 2008 and the subsequent economic downturn that still persists in 2010. These policies were the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and helped to create a large middle class that enjoyed economic stability and a comfortable, but not extravagant lifestyle.
Yes, progressive taxation is redistribution of wealth. Yes, progressive taxation is similar to socialism, but, unlike socialism, a progressive tax policy would lessen the wealth polarization without removing the benefits of having a decentralized economy that provides incentives for hard work. Yes, I understand why people say progressive taxation is unfair (and like I said in my preface note: I understand why people who work hard for their higher incomes will never agree with this article) but a larger middle class yield benefits for the entire society. Combined with expanded earned-income credits to motivate workers at the bottom of the pay scale, a progressive tax policy will still grow the economy as a larger middle class will have a larger combined income to buy cars, home, electronics, and go on vacations. Middle class families are more likely to send their children to college and a more educated society would give the United States a strong advantage in new global economy. Finally, a larger middle class would mean less people needing welfare benefits something that is agreeable to both sides of the political spectrum.
To be sure, progressive taxation would definitely mean it would be harder to people to live out their dreams of owning luxury yachts and having a mansion vacation home in the mountains of Colorado, but I think this is a small concession for the overall economic property of the country. I don't know about you, but if I had to choose between being exceedingly wealthy or having economic stability for myself and others: I will stay at a cheap motel instead of my own mansion next time I go snowboarding in Colorado. Money doesn't buy happiness, but economic instability leads to crime, broken families, stress, and overall unhappiness.
---
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Note: I'm not arrogant enough to believe that this article will have the ability to convince conservatives to support progressive taxation (the tax rate increases as the taxable base increases) and regulated capitalism. I know lots of people who have worked extremely hard for their incomes and I can understand why they could never agree with this article. However, I hope to explain to conservatives why liberals like myself believe in these ideas. Perhaps a better understanding of each other's political beliefs will help make compromise easier.
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"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." - James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 51 written in 1788.Nobody really likes the idea of having money taken out of their paychecks, but it has to be done. Without taxes, there would be no government and chaos would ensue because as James Madison knew: we don't always behave as angels. Americans and the citizens of every nation on this planet are inherently good people when we aren't corrupted by poverty, poor education, and bad luck. However, even in the best social environments humans living in complex societies occasionally lose control of emotions like anger, jealously, greed, and the lust for power. Government, for better or worse, protects us from ourselves. Taxes are how we pay for this protection whether it be from bad business practices, criminals, or foreign invaders. In addition to government's role as a protector, government provides vital services like maintaing a water supply, garbage removal, sewers, building roads, affordable education, and research grants that have directly led to advancements in medicine, science, and technology.
While it's hard to be grateful for taxes, there is an overlooked benefit: we sign President Barack Obama's paycheck. This gives us power to influence our democratic government and as James Madison said: "oblige it to control itself". While discussing the politics of oil, Thomas Friedman explains further explains the value of taxes in his book The World Is Flat:
"Nothing has contributed more to retarding the emergence of a democratic context in places like Venezuela, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran than the curse of oil. As long as the monarchs and dictators who run these oil states can get rich by drilling their natural resources--as opposed to drilling the natural talents and energy of their people--they can stay in office forever. They can use oil money to monopolize all the instruments of power--army, police, and intelligence--and never have to introduce real transparency or power sharing. All they have to do is capture and hold the oil tap. They never have to tax their people, so the relationship between ruler and ruled is highly distorted. Without taxation, there is no representation."In this article I will make the case that we need a tax policy that provides money for the obvious forms of government, but also regulates capitalism to protect the welfare of workers, prevent excessive destruction of the environment, and ensure that we don't deplete natural resources like fossil fuels. For sure, the term "regulated capitalism" sets off flashing red lights in the minds of many Americans but let me emphasize that I'm not a socialist or communist. Capitalism has raised the standard of living worldwide and I would be foolish to conveniently forget that capitalism has it made possible for you to be reading this blog on the internet, my awesome MacBook laptop I'm writing this article on, my Kindle, and my beloved Blackberry. One would also be foolish to reject capitalism because capitalism shares a close relationship with democracy. In his book The Assault on Reason former Vice-President Al Gore offered an intelligent description of this relationship:
"Capitalism and democracy shared the same internal logic: Free markets and representative democracy were both assumed to operate best when individuals made rational decisions--whether they were buying and selling property or accepting and rejecting propositions. Both works took for granted the existence of a public sphere defined by the printed word to which all literate individuals had equal access. And both shared a common enemy: despotic rulers capable of using arbitrary power to confiscate property and restrict liberty."However, for all of capitalism's benefits there is one side effect: excessive polarization of wealth. To be sure, people should be rewarded for working harder and there should be differences in wealth, but there needs to a be balance between incentives and excessive greed. In the same chapter as the quote above Mr. Gore explains what many wise people thought of wealth polarization:
Our Founders worried about the dangers of concentrated wealth. Even Alexander Hamilton, the great conservative, wrote just before the Constitutional Convention about "the real disposition of human nature" that could lead to misfortune in the new nation: "As riches increase and accumulate in few hands; as luxury prevails in society; virtue will be in a greater degree considered as only a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard."
The Roman historian Plutarch, whose histories were well known to many of our Founders, had warned that an "imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all Republics."What Plutarch is driving at is that wealth polarization undermines the long-term stability of democratic nations because if too many people are trapped in the cycle of poverty there is a historical tendency for populist uprisings that give absolute power to dictators who install inefficient communist economic reforms.
The founder of capitalism, Adam Smith, wrote in The Wealth of Nations about the wealthy and powerful corrupt elites throughout the history of the world prior to the dawn of the new age: "All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind."
And of course, the apostle Paul wrote in his letter to Timothy: "The love of money is the root of all evil."Make no mistake, there will always be differences in wealth because that is how capitalism works but we have to be careful about the divide between rich and poor. I believe the best way to prevent this excessive wealth polarization is to make our tax policy much more progressive. Before I explain further explain the case for progressive taxation, full disclosure: I don't make a large amount of money and I currently would stand to benefit from a more progressive tax policy.
Interestingly enough, it's not just people in the lower and middle classes that support progressive taxation. The most striking example of a supporter who is ultra-rich can be found in Warren Buffett who is somewhat outspoken in his belief that he should pay a higher tax rate despite his multi-million dollar annual tax bill. He often provides the example that due to 15% capital gains tax (a tax that mainly effects the wealthy who can afford to invest large sums of money), he pays a lower overall tax rate than the 30% rate his secretary pays. (Source)
A key thing to remember about progressive taxation is that this isn't a new radical idea and would be a return to the tax and financial philosophies that were first forged in the ruin of the Great Depression and were maintained (more or less) until the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Since then, these policies have been steadily reversed which created the breeding ground for the credit crisis that erupted in 2008 and the subsequent economic downturn that still persists in 2010. These policies were the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and helped to create a large middle class that enjoyed economic stability and a comfortable, but not extravagant lifestyle.
Yes, progressive taxation is redistribution of wealth. Yes, progressive taxation is similar to socialism, but, unlike socialism, a progressive tax policy would lessen the wealth polarization without removing the benefits of having a decentralized economy that provides incentives for hard work. Yes, I understand why people say progressive taxation is unfair (and like I said in my preface note: I understand why people who work hard for their higher incomes will never agree with this article) but a larger middle class yield benefits for the entire society. Combined with expanded earned-income credits to motivate workers at the bottom of the pay scale, a progressive tax policy will still grow the economy as a larger middle class will have a larger combined income to buy cars, home, electronics, and go on vacations. Middle class families are more likely to send their children to college and a more educated society would give the United States a strong advantage in new global economy. Finally, a larger middle class would mean less people needing welfare benefits something that is agreeable to both sides of the political spectrum.
To be sure, progressive taxation would definitely mean it would be harder to people to live out their dreams of owning luxury yachts and having a mansion vacation home in the mountains of Colorado, but I think this is a small concession for the overall economic property of the country. I don't know about you, but if I had to choose between being exceedingly wealthy or having economic stability for myself and others: I will stay at a cheap motel instead of my own mansion next time I go snowboarding in Colorado. Money doesn't buy happiness, but economic instability leads to crime, broken families, stress, and overall unhappiness.
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Question Everything You Read On This Blog
"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because if there be one, He must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear." - Thomas Jefferson
While I promise to do my best to throughly research any topic, I will make mistakes and that is why I encourage you in the strongest possible terms to "question with boldness" everything you read on this website just as you should question every single piece of information you receive.
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While I promise to do my best to throughly research any topic, I will make mistakes and that is why I encourage you in the strongest possible terms to "question with boldness" everything you read on this website just as you should question every single piece of information you receive.
---
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Comment Policy
Rules about Comments:
1. I won't bother crafting some long legal statement, but I will just steal Google's motto: "Don't be evil."
2. Also, I reserve the right to and I will reject any comment that is offensive, uses curse words, is deliberately sensationalist, or is insulting.
3. I don't believe I have all the answers, so dissenting opinion is more than welcome as long as you are civilized about it.
4. The right to post comments and have them displayed on this website is not guaranteed in the Constitution. i'm not a government, so rejecting your comment isn't censorship. Unlike owning a television station or a newspapers, starting your own is free and is extremely easy. So, if I reject your comment, I strongly encourage you to start your own blog and you can say whatever you want about me and others. Please consider Rule 1 though: "Don't be evil."
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1. I won't bother crafting some long legal statement, but I will just steal Google's motto: "Don't be evil."
2. Also, I reserve the right to and I will reject any comment that is offensive, uses curse words, is deliberately sensationalist, or is insulting.
3. I don't believe I have all the answers, so dissenting opinion is more than welcome as long as you are civilized about it.
4. The right to post comments and have them displayed on this website is not guaranteed in the Constitution. i'm not a government, so rejecting your comment isn't censorship. Unlike owning a television station or a newspapers, starting your own is free and is extremely easy. So, if I reject your comment, I strongly encourage you to start your own blog and you can say whatever you want about me and others. Please consider Rule 1 though: "Don't be evil."
---
Questions? Comments? Criticism? Post a comment or email me at TimHamiltonJournalism {at} gmail {com}
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Copyright © Tim Hamilton Journalism
About the Author
The Basics:
My name is Tim Hamilton and I live in city of Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America. I was born in 1981 and have been living in Madison after receiving my Bachelor's Degree in Biology from the University of Wisconsin here in town. When I'm not writing and researching articles, I like to go hiking, play boardgames, watch movies, and have interesting conversations about any subject. I'm pretty open when it comes to music, but my iPod is mostly full of classical music and the symphony scores to movies (Lord of the Rings, etc) that I listen to when I'm reading or writing articles. Podcasts and audiobooks are my listening material for the car.
Political Beliefs:
I way too much to say to even begin to write a summary...that's what this blog is for!
Religious Beliefs:
I won't hesitate to dive into those heavy issues like abortion, so it's helpful to know my religious background. To give myself a neat label despite my complicated feelings: I'm a deist with a deep appreciation, but not full acceptance, of the teachings found in organized religions. I have a hard time understanding why an interventionist God wouldn't stop terrible events like the Holocaust, but I'm not an atheist because I don't think science will ever be able to explain where all the matter and energy came from at first. Furthermore, I often look at the amazing complexity of biological systems and wonder if maybe a higher power set up evolution? Perhaps Nature and God are identical?
The "deep appreciation, but not full acceptance" of religion is best explained by one of my favorite books: the Thomas Jefferson Bible. When he wasn't busy being a founding father he edited out the divine aspects of the Four Gospels of the New Testaments, leaving only the teachings. Like Jefferson, I think the teachings of Jesus are wonderful but I just don't believe Jesus was the Son of God. While a divine Jesus would enhance the motivation to follow his teachings, I'm uncomfortable with this dogmatic aspect of Christianity. Religious dogma inspired the Inquisition and dogma continues to motivate Islamic terrorists to blow themselves up in the name of Allah. While these are two of the most extreme examples, there are other examples of religious dogma that aren't horrific but are still generate societal problems.
Christianity is the main motivator in the campaign for abstinence-only sex education, but study after study shows that teaching children about safe sex leads to less teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. In addition, it's no secret that divorce rates are very high in the Bible Belt and one could argue (well, more likely speculate as it's hard to scientifically study this hypothesis) that many Christian couples rush into marriage just to be able to have sex without really thinking how about how compatible they would be as a married couple. I know that Christian parents have only the best of intentions and I definitely ace but its impossible to suppress the human desire to reproduce. We need to find the middle ground between promiscuous sexual behavior and the noble, but unrealistic rule of "no sex before marriage". Maybe we could teach the slogan like "no sex before maturity"?
Last, but certainly not least, religion is reason why school boards across the country keep trying with varying degrees of success to cast evolution as a theory. Forcing teachers to lecture on intelligent design as science and to believe that the Earth is only 10,000 years old represents a deep threat to science. Besides, I find the study of evolution and origins of universe far more inspiring and humbling than Bible's story of creation.
---
Questions? Comments? Criticism? Post a comment or email me at TimHamiltonJournalism {at} gmail {com}
Subscribe by RSS
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Copyright © Tim Hamilton Journalism
My name is Tim Hamilton and I live in city of Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America. I was born in 1981 and have been living in Madison after receiving my Bachelor's Degree in Biology from the University of Wisconsin here in town. When I'm not writing and researching articles, I like to go hiking, play boardgames, watch movies, and have interesting conversations about any subject. I'm pretty open when it comes to music, but my iPod is mostly full of classical music and the symphony scores to movies (Lord of the Rings, etc) that I listen to when I'm reading or writing articles. Podcasts and audiobooks are my listening material for the car.
Political Beliefs:
I way too much to say to even begin to write a summary...that's what this blog is for!
Religious Beliefs:
I won't hesitate to dive into those heavy issues like abortion, so it's helpful to know my religious background. To give myself a neat label despite my complicated feelings: I'm a deist with a deep appreciation, but not full acceptance, of the teachings found in organized religions. I have a hard time understanding why an interventionist God wouldn't stop terrible events like the Holocaust, but I'm not an atheist because I don't think science will ever be able to explain where all the matter and energy came from at first. Furthermore, I often look at the amazing complexity of biological systems and wonder if maybe a higher power set up evolution? Perhaps Nature and God are identical?
The "deep appreciation, but not full acceptance" of religion is best explained by one of my favorite books: the Thomas Jefferson Bible. When he wasn't busy being a founding father he edited out the divine aspects of the Four Gospels of the New Testaments, leaving only the teachings. Like Jefferson, I think the teachings of Jesus are wonderful but I just don't believe Jesus was the Son of God. While a divine Jesus would enhance the motivation to follow his teachings, I'm uncomfortable with this dogmatic aspect of Christianity. Religious dogma inspired the Inquisition and dogma continues to motivate Islamic terrorists to blow themselves up in the name of Allah. While these are two of the most extreme examples, there are other examples of religious dogma that aren't horrific but are still generate societal problems.
Christianity is the main motivator in the campaign for abstinence-only sex education, but study after study shows that teaching children about safe sex leads to less teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. In addition, it's no secret that divorce rates are very high in the Bible Belt and one could argue (well, more likely speculate as it's hard to scientifically study this hypothesis) that many Christian couples rush into marriage just to be able to have sex without really thinking how about how compatible they would be as a married couple. I know that Christian parents have only the best of intentions and I definitely ace but its impossible to suppress the human desire to reproduce. We need to find the middle ground between promiscuous sexual behavior and the noble, but unrealistic rule of "no sex before marriage". Maybe we could teach the slogan like "no sex before maturity"?
Last, but certainly not least, religion is reason why school boards across the country keep trying with varying degrees of success to cast evolution as a theory. Forcing teachers to lecture on intelligent design as science and to believe that the Earth is only 10,000 years old represents a deep threat to science. Besides, I find the study of evolution and origins of universe far more inspiring and humbling than Bible's story of creation.
---
Questions? Comments? Criticism? Post a comment or email me at TimHamiltonJournalism {at} gmail {com}
Subscribe by RSS
Subscribe by Email
Copyright © Tim Hamilton Journalism
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