Health Nonsense

I realize that smoking is, at best, extraneous, and at worst "unhealthy". I'm not going to argue that inhaling tobacco is on a level with, say, ingesting vitamin C, but obsession with health has got to be one of the worst facets of American culture. Don't do anything unhealthy; it's imperative to live a sterile life until the ripe old age of eighty. Of course, if you refrain from doing unhealthy things, which pretty much leaves walking--indoors so as to avoid sunlight-- drinking water and eating, well, you can't eat too much of anything, so I guess you're boned, by the time you reach sixty you won't care for living any more.

There was an honest to goodness story last week about how eating too many steamed vegetables is bad for your teeth. Too much acid. We've officially lost it. Why study that in the first place? If someone is eating too many vegetables--whatever that means--first, they're nuts anyway. Most people have a healthy--yes, I said healthy--suspicion when it comes to vegetables. It's prudent to stomach your greens, and there are certainly ways to make getting those precious vitamins and minerals less painful, like dumping several ounces of Ranch on a leaf of lettuce, or tossing some mushrooms on a pizza, or, well, you get the idea. But vegetarians have a couple screws loose, attempting to subsist largely on vegetables.

The study proves two things, and no, it doesn't prove that vegetables are bad for you. This will be recanted in six months, guaranteed. For every study there is an equal an opposite study. That's the first thing we learned. I'm not saying there isn't truth involved when it comes to nutrutional matters. I just don't trust the "scientists" doing the studies. I'd say about 1 in 4 studies have validity, 1 in 4 are false, and half of them could be right and could be wrong, but no one has a clue either way. Yes, I just made that up, but so did they. At least no one had to grease my palm for that scientific survey.

The other point is that there is no way to be healthy enough. Near as I can figure, we are all organic, and as such, we will die and decay. I don't see the problem. Let's all make sure we get our vitamins and minerals in so to ensure we live forever--except we won't. Forget about health. Life is too short to fret over calories and other trivialities. You're going to die with or without that Oreo, and while the pipe tobacco is probably ticking precious seconds off of my life with each beautiful drag, I remain a convicted agnostic. No one has done a study on people who smoke a pipe twice a week for a year in their twenties. Of course, I wouldn't believe the results if they did, but in either case, I see no reason to sit about in a state of panic.

Tolkien and Chesterton smoked; that's good enough for me.