malnutrition on a national scale

My elderly mother was in a hospital recently; i worried about her.  Oh, i had faith that the surgeon's skill would do the job fine, it wasn't that.  Surgery and trauma care are where modern medicine are actually effective.  Two other things about hospitals disturb me:  food and mistakes.

Take the latter first, because it's more easily addressed and put aside.  The health care system is widely considered the third leading cause of death in America.  Love these statistics:

• 12,000 deaths per year due to unnecessary surgery;
• 7,000 due to medication errors in hospitals;
• 20,000 to other errors in hospitals;
• 80,000 to infections in hospitals;
• 106,000 to negative effects of drugs.

Nuff said....

Of more concern to me (because i know something about it) is the food.  The things a hospital dietician thinks are appropriate to bolster the health of a sick person are a crime and a sin.  But hospital food is only one mosquito in a swarm.  When she went back to her "community" it was going to be just as bad, or worse.

The widely-educated health-conscious person, in general, has gotten over the low-fat paradigm, and knows that a high-carbohydrate diet as eaten in the "modern" world has various repercussions.  Many MDs treating real live humans in private practice agree.  Medical "authorities" and organizations don't dare, openly -- they'd be sued out of their socks by the relatives of those whom they've done to death with bad advice.  The current generation of leaders in "health care" CANNOT back away from what the brightest of them know are worthless (or horrific) standards.

Unfortunately, these organizations have a stranglehold on professional medical care.  AND dietary "information."  A nurse gets in trouble if she mentions a paleo diet, however casually, in front of patients.

So multiply hospital food times school food times nursing-home food times retirement-village food, and you have quite a few people IN A SENSITIVE CONDITION being fed the kind of garbage that has given us the recent epidemic of ill-health and obesity:  you know, growing children ... the sick ... the aged.  IT'S A $%@^#& CRIME.  (You'll notice, in my choice of symbols, i put the dollar-sign first....)

We've been brainwashed into thinking that we need to be in constant obeisance to someone in a white coat, who gets his/her educational updates from drug company representatives.  Taking your health into your own hands is treasonous from their point of view, but it's the only way you'll have an counsellor who actually has a stake in the outcome! ... who really gives a damn.

All this is why i make such a tedious pest of myself, when i think that "a word to the wise" might actually help.  Hell, it might actually change a life for the better, unlike the ADA....