I want to better understand the "Crunchy MAGA" right wing wellness phenomenon

post reply Forum Index » Political Discussion

◄ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ► Go

Go to page...

05/03/2025 15:06

Subject: I want to better understand the "Crunchy MAGA" right wing wellness phenomenon

quote

Anonymous

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Hey OP, eating healthier has nothing to do with lack of money or education.

It is LITERALLY aout passing the vegetable aisle and going for the Twinkies. It's a lack of will power by the individual.

No amount of money or government indoctrination will fix that.[/quote]

I used to think like you. I've never struggled with weight and I'm fit and trim. I don't eat twinkies, etc. But as I've looked into the issue, I have become aware that we have many cancer causing additives in our food- even healthy food that normal people eat, like yogurt, bread, salad dressing, etc. These are items that are part of a typical healthy diet, yet can cause cancer because of the way they are made in the US. Even our vegetables are less nutrient dense than in previous generations- so simply avoiding processed foods only gets you part of the way there. Our food system has been so disrupted that you can't go to a regular grocery store *at all* and be assured that the food is healthy. [/quote]

I used to think this too. But I think what this train of thought misses is the huge effect that our microbiome has on psychology and food choices. A Chinese research company last summer found through the use of AI that they could distinguish between the excrement of people with autism and neurotypicals based on metabolites and other waste byproduct. (I might be a tad imprecise in my language, but I believe that is the upshot.). Anyone with experience with autism knows that, among those who suffer from the condition and have restricted diets, there is a clear preference for certain types of foods, often highly processed carbohydrates. You can debate how much of that is chicken and egg, but there is likely a feedback loop between microbiome and the psychology of food.

On that understanding, it seems very reasonable to expect the government to protect people from their own choices to some extent. [/quote]

After cigarettes were outlawed, the cigarettes companies bought food companies (Philip Morris bought General Foods and Kraft, RJ Reynolds bought Nabisco, etc). Then they transitioned all their chemists and scientists that had worked to make cigarettes more appealing and addictive, and put them to work on food. And obesity has skyrocketed, and people claim this is a discipline issue.

I'm not affected by this-- I'm called anorexic and disordered over on the diet and exercise forum because I'm quite open that I maintain my healthy but low weight through restriction. But that is what is required these days because our food supply is basically full of addictive chemicals that stimulate appetite.

For decades, the government has done nothing about this. Everyone patted their backs for outlawing cigarettes, when in reality, the problem is now worse than it ever was when they were just slinging tobacco, because it's in everything a normal person eats. You have to go through independent farms to get even close to a natural, undrugged food source at this point. [/quote]

I am your mirror image. It's embarrassing, but I have next to no willpower over food. If there are sweets in my house, they're in the back of my mind. It's like a mental tax at best and a shame-filled indulgence at worst. I'm not overweight, but I think all the time about how I'm surely building insulin resistance, and I have some sense of all the things that smart people will tell you totally aren't caused by diabetes but that they'll concede are correlated with it. It feels like gaslighting to me when people pretend that the junk in our food isn't addictive. They didn't slip added sugar in all our food for just no reason. [/quote]

This is why people voted Trump (and Kennedy). The elite establishment types allowed this to happen and were fine with it. It’s become increasingly obvious that establishment politicians will gladly sacrifice the health of the voters if it helps their corporate donors make more profits. People are so desperate to escape from this sick system of predatory government that they are willing to try anything.

(And as a side note, anti-Trump Democrats who oppose everything got pushed into a corner of DEFENDING the corrupt establishment. Which is a very unattractive corner to be stuck in when the electorate is increasingly aware of and horrified by the way the establishment deliberately hurts them to help donors.)