Back in September, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey made some terrible statements about Americans and food. Buried deep within his nonsense, there were a handful of okay points, about Americans needing access to fresh, healthy food, and how the abundance of junk food is a massive problem. But he surrounded those arguments with a lot of bullsh-t. He barely broached the issue of food deserts and price in determining how specifically low-income people make food choices. He basically argued that people decide on their own to eat junk food, get fat and get sick, that it’s all down to personal choice. Imagine saying that in the middle of a f–king pandemic. Well, imagine saying that all healthcare should be down to people “not needing healthcare.” For real.
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey says the key to keeping people healthy in the United States is for people to eat better and live healthier lives.
“I mean, honestly, we talk about health care. The best solution is not to need health care,” Mackey told Freakonomics Radio host Stephen Dubner in an episode released on Nov. 4.
“The best solution is to change the way people eat, the way they live, the lifestyle, and diet,” Mackey says. “There’s no reason why people shouldn’t be healthy and have a longer health span. A bunch of drugs is not going to solve the problem.”
Americans are not taking as good care of their own bodies as they ought to be, Mackey says: “71% of Americans are overweight and 42.5% are obese. Clearly, we’re making bad choices in the way we eat,” he says. “It’s not a sustainable path. And so, I’m calling it out.”
It’s not the first time Mackey has called for better lifestyles as a solution to expensive health care. In 2009, he penned a piece for the Wall Street Journal along the same ilk, “The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare,” in which he advocated for less government control of health care in the United States. “This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health,” Mackey wrote. “We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health.”
I honestly don’t understand this offensively narrow thought process at all. When he meets someone with cancer, is John Mackey thinking “well, they brought that on themselves”? When someone has broken bones from a car accident, does he think “well, it never would have happened if they had a better diet?” I’m all for self-sufficiency and being responsible for your own life choices. But there’s more happening than that! Genetics play a huge part, environment plays a huge part, education plays a huge part and again, we’re in the middle of a damn pandemic!! Are you really going to say to Grandma that it’s too bad she has coronavirus, she should have exercised more and eaten fewer processed foods? Jesus. That’s not how healthcare should work.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
You can be a skinny organic exercising vegan and still die of cancer. Especially if you don’t have health insurance.
After hearing about a Florida nursing home company giving vaccines to high level donors yesterday , I really am ready to eat the rich.
Agreed. How does one “not need healthcare” when you get cancer or at born with diabetes or sickle cell or asthma?
This rich idiot.
Or break your leg?
I was a skinny, organic, exercising non-vegan when I was diagnosed with breast cancer (I’m in remission, it’s fine) and I do not have the brca marker.
This millionaire needs to STFU.
My mom has been an organic eater, exercising, no red meat, no cigs, occaisonal glass of red wine for her entire life. She still got breast cancer (also no brca) and now at 86 has dementia. Eating well does not protect you from everything.
Btw, his hair looks pretty sus there…I geuss eating well didn’t save him from a bad wig???
I was in good shape, healthy weight/diet, exercising, ALWAYS kept up with preventative appts/measures, and then WHAM! Lupus hit me 4.5 years ago and my thyroid went to pot. Now I’m overweight, achy, etc. Guess I didn’t shop at Whole Foods enough. And wouldn’t you know, it’s still cheaper for me to pay out of pocket for my healthcare even since my diagnoses bc insurance premiums are so ridiculously expensive. I don’t know how middle income families with children even survive anymore, yet alone those in worse off socioeconomic classes. It breaks my heart how individualistic and wealth-revering our culture has become. I am completley willing to pay more taxes (and I am not high SES, just comfortable bc we have no children) if it means better access to healthcare for more people along with working our way away from privatized insurance. Their markups are grotesque.
It’s the old Social Darwinism thing. I have good health and great wealth because I did the right things and therefore deserve them. You don’t have good health and great wealth because you obviously didn’t do the right things and therefore deserve to be sick and poor.
That sounds ridiculously egotistical and selfish because it is.
How about babies who have heart defects or cancer? This guy is an idiot.
Of course, in these cases the parents are to blame. I have a relative who is into healthy living and dabbles into that kind of information, funny heath tests, etc.
There is a theory, I think that says how emotions affect certain organs in particular. Guilt, anger, etc. We tried to argue the babies with her and, of course, parents are to blame, as they supposedly pass the disease to the children. I love her, and all, but I feel slightly judged everytime she sees us.
“Slightly”? That relative is basically arguing that all diseases, even those suffered by infants at birth, are the results of people’s choices!!!! I would feel very extremely judged by that person, since they seem to blame everyone for every bad thing (health-wise) that happens to them!
This guy proves that you don’t need to be smart to be a CEO.
The best way to not need healthcare is to actually have prevention culture. In Italy we get bombarded with tv ads as a reminder that is the month of prevention for this or that and that you should do a check up. I get letters from my region’s healthcare provider telling me that I should do a mammogram or a pap smear (some tests are actually free for age groups) because I’m in a certain age group. Then again we do have a public health care system.
Bingo! Such a complicated thought for American CEOs, apparently.
Exactly! That’s extremely sensible. Preventive care when possible.
Completely beyond this guy I guess.
What a complete f*ckwit.
I currently have three friends undergoing cancer treatment – people who exercise, eat well and have always made a healthy lifestyle a priority.
It is simply not true that you can avoid serious illness by your lifestyle choices. Offensive idiots like him, who clearly make these comments to boost their own businesses, need to shut up.
He can jump off a cliff. I exercise, maintain a healthy weight, and limit my junk food consumption. But I’m showing symptoms of MS, and I have a family history. Is my diet supposed to prevent what my genetics have given me? This is just so deeply insulting.
Good luck to you. One of my healthiest, most active friends was diagnosed with MS a few years ago.
An old friend from school, her son has Muscular Dystrophy.
Another’s was born very premature and was in the NICU for a long time.
My most expensive medical procedure was when I slipped on some stairs and broke bones and needed surgery.
Eating healthy is great, but it’s not going to save you from injuries from an accident or assault, genetic diseases, or, I don’t know, something like a pandemic with a highly contagious virus.
Plus even with all that preventative care, you still need check ups!
Hi SusieQ. I was diagnosed with MS about 15 years ago and am doing well. It was a scary diagnosis, but since then, I’ve had two children, no relapses, no mobility issues, etc. The only thing I feel is that I need more sleep than I did before I had MS.
I wish you the best of health. And please push for a diagnosis so you can be put on one of the disease-modifying drugs – the earlier in your disease you get on them, the better it is for your disease long-term. Of course, they are crazy expensive, even with insurance, but the manufacturers of most of them have copay assistance programs, too.
Exactly. This guy can just f*(% right off.
@Helonearth
“people who exercise, eat well and have always made a healthy lifestyle a priority.”
This was my husband, and was diagnosed at 46 with a type of blood cancer that has no cure. This ignorant CEO can f*ck right off.
Maybe someone should let Mackey know that Steve Jobs and Jim Fixx had some thoughts about healthful diet and lifestyle, may they rest in peace.
I just don’t see how you can bring up “americans need to be healthier” (which, we do in general) without also bringing up our insane work culture (some people literally don’t have the time to even go for a walk during the day), how expensive “real” food can be, food desserts, what is and is not covered by WIC or SNAP, how food is marketed to us, etc.
And that’s not even getting into all the “other” reasons that people need healthcare – like childbirth, cancer, genetic issues, etc. I’ve been to the hospital once in my life besides giving birth and it was for an emergency appendectomy – I don’t think eating better would have helped me with that?
He lives in a millionaire bubble, and is willfully clueless about the lives of many other people.
Plus he’s trying to guilt people into buying from his overpriced grocery chain.
Yes! Just buy from Whole Foods and all your troubles will be solved!
Also, I’m embarrassed that I typed food “desserts” and not “deserts” in my original post. Sorry – you all knew what I meant lol.
Americans love their easy solutions – just buy from WF and you’ll be fine.
This guy is a horrible human being. I find his comments racist and classist. Our diets are not great and we simply do not move enough because our jobs have changed dramatically. But healthcare is essential and a huge part of why the rich maintain better health. Not to mention that white people get better care. Doctors spend more time with them, believe them when they have symptoms, get more testing done. And men get better care than women. Bottom line is that this gut gets the best of everything and pretends that he’s doing well because he has the discipline to eat well. I like the WH near me for a handful of things I can’t find elsewhere but I won’t go there anymore. This man and the business he fronts deserves no customers at all – he has nothing but disdain for humankind.
Yes, @Becks, those were my thoughts as well. Why not attack society and culture for not paying people enough and working them so much they don’t have time to exercise and be healthy? I’m tired of million- and billionaires crapping on poor people for “making bad choices” when they don’t have any real choices at all.
I hope for a world in which men this mediocre land at the level appropriate to their limited faculties. They’ll bluster and bully and everyone around then will gently giggle, mutter Dunning-Kruger, and then ignore them.
Okay, I’ll stop you right there, go to cancer.org, google cancerogenic foods and ingredients and learn more about the subject before saying healthy diet is not important to prevent cancer. Do you know that red meat, cured fish, many food additives are cancerogenic? Alcohol is cancerogenic. And while we are at it, do you know that vapors from nail polish and hair dye are cancerogenic? Are you aware of how often formaldehyde is in foods or at least in that non-melting ice on which they display food sometimes?
While a healthy diet FOR SURE CANNOT help all of the people to avoid all of the diseases, healthy diet is a very important contributor to health and life expectancy. Of course, we need medics to help with A LOT of issues that could not possibly be alleviated by healthy diet but there’s also SO MUCH stuff that can be avoided through eating healthy (and exercising). Like clogged arteries. There are diseases that are solely from bad diet and junk food. There’s just not enough conversation and awareness there.
While I don’t disagree with your general point, that healthy eating and exercise would go a long ways towards helping people be healthier overall – like I said above, you cant say that without addressing the reasons people don’t eat better or don’t exercise more. For most people, its not as simple as “I don’t want to.” There are systemic issues at play – including lack of education, lack of resources, etc – and unless he is addressing those, then I don’t need to hear that “we need to eat healthier so we don’t need as much healthcare.”
that’s fair, I agree that this also needs more awareness and coverage too as these are equally important
Actually, there is sizable evidence that suggests that things like heart disease have a strong genetic component to them – if your family has a history of heart disease, a healthy diet make not be sufficient to avoid issues (for example, Bob Harper, who cannot be accused of being unhealthy, still had a heart attack and nearly died – because he has a extensive family history of heart disease). His good health certainly contributed to his survival and fast recovery, but it didn’t stop him from getting sick.
The truth is that a lot of our health is out of our control. People who preach the gospel of wellness like to promote the idea that if you do everything “right”, you can’t get sick, or you are protected. And of course, we should practice good health, because it will make our lives better. But it is not assurance. Moreover, even if you believe in what Mackey is selling, he is still wrong for reducing what are largely structural issues (farm subsidies, food deserts, systemic poverty, etc.) into matters solely of personal choice and responsibility.
Also, FYI – labelling a food as “carcinogenic” does not mean “hey, this food will give you cancer.” It means that the food, in HIGH AMOUNTS, has been implicating in raising the risk of cancer (not giving you cancer). It’s all about the dose – sure, drinking alcohol in excessive amounts is not good for you – I’d be more worried about the immediate harm to your liver over cancer – but that does not mean that your weekly beer or glass of wine will raise your cancer risk. You are not looking at those studies with the nuance they deserve.
oh, I’m actually looking directly at the studies and what kind of tumors and cell changes/mutations/etc they cause and then decide for myself what’s worth the risk. honestly, food is less upsetting than cosmetics((
@Katie – please allow me to stop you right there. I’m still grieving the death of my friends’ 6 years old daughter from an inoperable brain tumor over a year ago. This bubbly lively little girl passed within four months of the diagnosis. When I saw her the last time she told me her biggest joy in life was swinging. She was already affected by that damn humor I had to support when we raced to the restaurant (she won, of course).
I have no idea how her parents and two siblings manage to keep going. Hearing what this dumbf**** said makes me want to punch his little a** face.
ETA – in one of our conversations, her older brother mentioned that grandma had said it would get better if she had a better diet. I had to constrain myself to not start cursing. Feeding kids little lies like that to help them deal with something so traumatic will never agree with me.
I’m so sorry about your loss and grief, take a hug. clearly, this situation had nothing to do with diet (although I’m sure the health providers who actually dealt with the case could provide more accurate info than me, a random online commenter), just like many other health issues. like the commenter above said – there needs to be more education about this, while healthy diet and lifestyle are big contributors, there are so many other factors, including better medical service, equipment, doctors, and screening to help detect things early enough to treat (and even with that, not everything is going to be treatable, regrettably)
Except that there is a boatload of conversation and awareness out there. I challenge you to find a single person who hasn’t heard some form of your spiel more than once. So, yeah, I think Becks1 is spot on, while some of it IS about discipline, a LOT of it is about time, cost, availability, and other legitimate difficulties, not about awareness or choices.
Before you continue, I don’t need any Young Living oils, thanks.
I just finished reading The China Study, which advocates the benefits of following a whole foods, plant based diet and how it can help prevent cancer, heart conditions and many “diseases of affluence” (the type of diseases that are more prevalent in wealthier countries, which tend to follow a “Western” meat and dairy rich diet). It was an interesting read.
HOWEVER:
Even IF all of that was indeed preventable by diet alone, people will still get ill of something and need the hospital. People will still die and will need end of life care, and have accidents and emergency surgery and need dentistry… the list goes on an on. How can this “not needing healthcare” possibly ever work?
yep, this
Uff da. The China Study has been debunked and criticized a million times. I like plant forward eating, but I don’t love that book or others like it.
Oh, I’ve already lived through this – my workplace sponsored a “seminar” about how to maintain wellbeing during a pandemic. And the very well-intentioned lady said that we need to focus on getting fresh foods and focusing on fruits and veggies. And I had to blurt out – we’re being told to stay at home, to isolate, to go out as little as possible. Does it really make sense to prioritize foods that have a shelf life of a week or less right now? If you want us to stay inside, we are going to start existing on shelf-stable foods that can last for weeks, if not months. Lady, I get it, I’m a vegetarian for whom rice and beans has been the staple of the last 10 months, along with fried rice with frozen peas and carrots.
Mackey is likewise ignorant. Sure, are there people with the resources to eat better and they just don’t? Yeah, sure. But for most people, food is deeply complex. And I don’t see him stepping up to make sure that low-income communities (you know, the ones most impacted by these “life style diseases”) have access to the fresh, healthy foods he fetishizes. There are so many people who actually ARE busting their asses to do just that, but it seems like he is not among them.
Years ago, a girl I had goen to uni with started down a… let’s say spiritual path. I don’t know what it was, she wore floral dresses, talked about positive thinking and went barefoot in a large German city. I hope she had had her tetanus shot. Anyway, she started talking about positive thinking as a way to achieving anything and that most people just allow too much negativity in their lives to be happy. It’s their own fault if shit things happen to them. I yelled at her to go to a trash dump in e.g. Bangladesh and tell the 5-year-old who lost their parents to think positively. It ruined the evening we had planned but I couldn’t give a f*ck. This is the same bs. Sure, being grateful for the things you have and trying to bring positivity into your day can be a great thing. BUT. And I know around here I don’t need to go on.
People’s lazy thinking enrage me. It usually is accompanied by privilege and smugness.
He is just another rich guy who doesn’t want to pay his fair share of taxes to support a national healthcare system. Is American diet and lifestyle an issue? Unquestionably. But he’s focusing on just that because he can push the responsibility back on the individual, which selfish people like him always strive to do.
Your comment is spot on Milygu.
I’ll just have a little sit down with my lungs and asthma and let them know to stop making out and having bronchitis babies with every sinus infection they come across….
Yeah, while I dont have asthma I just moved to a high environmental allergy area. Need testing and treatment. How do you propose I deal with that Mr. Multimillionaire Mackey, other than the standard way?
Says the man who has the Lamborghini of health insurance plans that, at least until he sold to Amazon, was covered 100% by Whole Foods. And does not hesitate to use it.
I had a 13 year old cousin who died of brain cancer. Her family was wealthy, ate well, and exercised regularly but there was a history of brain cancer on one side of the family and the doctors. She was the middle of 3 sisters and the other two are now healthy young women. Now tell me that her family could have prevented her cancer if they had just ate some more organic food. Eating healthier can be a factor in some diseases, but this idea that you can entirely avoid any illnesses with your diet is a load of BS from people who want to believe that they have control over their destinies.
I’m the healthiest person I know, there is no seed or pulse I don’t chew on, and I found last week I have cancer, so he can go and ram his insular opinions up his a**.
Sending you love.
Thank you so much, it’s petrifying x
As a child we were food insecure at times and my mom, 16 when I was born, didn’t know how to cook. We ate food from boxes and cans. It took me a long time to unlearn those habits as an adult. I sometimes still turn to childhood favorites like Fruity Pebbles or processed cheese on white bread for comfort. And money makes all the difference. Now I can go to whole foods and drop $100 on one bag of groceries and think nothing of it but I know some families that don’t have that much to spend for an entire week of food. Not to mention food deserts. People need access to affordable healthful food AND access to healthcare.
I’m reading this in the waiting room of a hospital where I’m waiting on x-rays for the wrist I broke on Christmas Eve from falling while on a “healthy” morning walk. BMI is “normal” and I don’t smoke or drink and I have fresh fruit for breakfast every morning. But the damn persimmon I had that morning didn’t jump out of my belly and break my fall!
Eff off, dude looks like a brillo pad left out to rust.
To know how this guy ticks, just ask anyone who’s worked for Whole Foods. Unionization efforts are suppressed, workers are often required to close one night and open the next day (“clopen”) and jobs are lost for arbitrary reasons. The hot food is thrown away at night instead of donated to food rescue groups. Mackey was profiled in the New Yorker and he has all these very Ayn Randian ideas. As someone said online about him, there’s nothing worse than a hippie with money.
If this f@ckwad was interested in feeding everyone healthier food, not only would everyone have access, they’d be able to afford it when they got there. Yes, eating healthy foods is paramount for strong bodies and minds. I’m quite sure most everyone on the planet knows this bit of wisdom. Perhaps he can delve into the myriad of driving forces at work impeding the consumption of said healthy foods he pushes steering the masses into a smug atmosphere with out of reach prices. When food becomes the absolute and only thing controllable in a person’s life, decisions begin to reflect psychological bandaids. A bag of apples ain’t gonna cut it.
Someone please drop kick this fool in the chest 🙄
If John Mackey cared so much about ensuring Americans have access to fresh, healthy food, why did his Whole Foods chain charge so much for everything? (Obviously, he sold it to Amazon so he’s not in charge of pricing etc now.) Arguably, Lidl or Aldi has done more for Americans worried about eating fresh veggies etc because they keep prices affordable for more Americans.
And why are Whole Foods only in higher-income areas?
Exactly! This guy is one of those “I’ve got mine so screw you” type of judgmental jerk.
Fact: Most American diet are terrible and full of way too much processed crap.
Also Fact: this is one of the stupidest statements I’ve ever read. Eating healthy will never cure the need for healthcare :/
@BK
Seriously, what a moron. I guess all healthy old people will go on living perfectly healthy lives until the day they instantly drop dead?
Because we have to choose??? Funny, nobody else in developed countries has to. Why can’t I eat well AND have healthcare? Why does one have to be the alternative for the other? What a stupid manipulative assumption that people who are overweight pop pills, too?
I can’t believe for 1 second that someone can be a CEO and not think of those questions. He chose to ignore them.
And so what is he going to do about it? He espouses a lot of rich man nonsense and yet offers no solutions or plans to help other people attain or achieve healthy eating goals. Find ways to help, or keep your ignorant opinions to yourself.
People are just out here with their Nazi thinking not even caring. I haven’t shopped here since 2008 when they wouldn’t allow me to collect signatures for the proper food labeling of genetically modified foods because they are a scam to make the wealthy and elite feel better than others. Bottles of Genetically Modified Karo syrup are not healthy foods but they sell them! Of course eating healthily is better and of course Americans need that why isn’t he addressing the fact that there are food deserts of which they are never located and there are no Whole Foods feeding the hungry?!
Whole Foods doesn’t exist in food deserts and low income areas.
They are mainly in richer, more affluent areas. The closest one to me is a newish one, moved about three blocks over from its original spot to a new one in a neighborhood where the houses sell for 1-2-3 million at a starting price.
It’s hard to get to by bus and there’s only one bus that goes up there. Once an hour. I’ve done it myself to get to other stores that are up there, it’s not very convenient unless you have a car.
So tell me again WF CEO how it’s the fault of poor people for not having access to fresh food? How a 7-11 on the corner is an easier choice for people than having to travel by bus to do shopping at a real supermarket.
You know….
….lots of people have made great points about the fact that for most of us, needing health care for a largish problem is inevitable (also, we ALL need health care – preventative medicine, if it were available to all, is an amazing thing). Lots of people have also made points that there are valid, deep seated reasons some people eat crap diets.
What has gone unaddressed in this thread so far is environmental pollution. It is the silent backdrop to so many health tragedies. It’s no coincidence that people in Louisiana who live near all the industrial plants live in an area called “Cancer Alley.” And air pollution contributes to heart and lung problems. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the soil we grow our food in – it’s all filthy. And wealthy corporations are the culprits and the ones who want to keep spoiling it all.
So, Whole Foods CEO: FCK OFF.
If we had an actual public health system (instead of a for profit system that benefits from people being sick) Then the government would also have incentives to keep people healthy by preventative check ups, getting healthy food to food deserts and encouraging exercise. The standard American diet is crap but Many people don’t have access to grocery stores, a car to load the groceries into and drive them home and time and space to prepare food. Instead insurance companies and drug companies are making billions off of Americans being sick and keeping us sick. Ideally we would all have access to healthy food in a safe place to work out AND freaking healthcare when we need it. God I hate this country’s lack of public health and victim blaming.
EXACTLY! Do you think the Sacklers give a flying rats @$$ about anyone’s health? Do you think the US government and healthcare system helped or hindered their efforts to make billions off of people’s pain? My daughter has epilepsy so I won’t hate on big pharma as a whole because her meds keep her alive and not seizing all day but we also give her CBD which has helped tremendously but it’s not a cure or end all be all for her so we appreciate both sides. That being said, the US health care and pharma industry is in the business of making a few people who have tremendous power a ton of money and in the end that is the driving force and all that matters and unless we completely dismantle the system nothing will change.
Absolutely true. Canada is a bit better, but make no mistake in thinking that we are entirely free of all of the same problems. We have food deserts and tons of food insecurity across the country. We also have a lot of small-minded idiots who subscribe to the bootstraps theory.
General public: Healthcare is too expensive and we can’t afford it
This guy: Spend hundreds of dollars more on healthy food every month and you won’t need it!
Definitely a “let them eat cake” moment
Do people like him think like this as an excuse to compliment themselves, ‘well im healthy because i choose to be. i make smart choices’ insinuating everyone else is lazy? What a huge assumption to make for an excuse to compliment yourself. Didnt steve jobs turn down treatment for his pancreatic cancer insisting he could cure it by eating fruit? these accomplished people think they know more than everyone in any field
I invite John Mackey to visit and bring his infinite wisdom of easy healthcare to the poorer areas of southern Nevada, right in Las Vegas. going to grocery stores in these neighborhoods, I can assure you will be lucky to find meat that is not freezer burned, vegetables that are not fading, and even basic store cleanliness. The owners of these supermarkets hate their poor, EBT customers and they rightfully hate the owners right back
Now we have insane food lines. Fuck this guy. Really. Fuck this guy and all people as clueless and harmful as him. Fuck this guy
And he’s never heard of food deserts either. He’s never seen the prices in regular grocery stores on reservations. He’s lived in a bubble his entire life.
You guys have said it all. What a d*ck!
My friend was athletic, vegetarian, and one of the most brilliantly smart people I have ever known. She was still diagnosed with a glioblastoma at age 24 and died aged 29. Brain cancer doesn’t really discriminate based on diet and exercise.
Jeff Bezos come and get this clown. So does that mean he doesn’t want to give healthcare to the employees at Whole Paycheck?
Ugh, ok, dude. Ideally, you don’t want to depend on the healthcare system. Nobody wants to be sick or lose an ability they’re used to having. But has he never heard of chronic illness and disease, or does he think they can all be cured by eating Peruvian wildflowers and good vibes? He doesn’t understand that even the healthiest people can have something happen to them. You might lessen your risk if you do all the right things, but there are no guarantees.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to prevent things because they’re inevitable that it’s all futile, but it also doesn’t mean that you have an invincible force field around you if you’re “healthy.” Feck off, John.
He sounds like my parents. They revere thin people and make fun of overweight or obese people–even their own family members. They are under the belief system that those people should just eat less, no exercise needed.
I have PCOS thanks to my dad’s side and genetics and I have a very difficult time losing weight. I have a personal trainer, new weight watchers app, watch my sugars, carbs, no caffeine, no alcohol, and still I am about 60 lbs overweight. My parents don’t understand why I have such problems with my weight when they don’t and they don’t understand why I have to workout so much (4-5 times per week) and watch what I eat. They also don’t understand how even with healthy eating and exercise I barely lose anything. I live away from them even as an only child because it is unhealthy for me to hear their comments when I struggle so hard to be healthy and I worry I will develop other health problems due to my weight and they seem to care less about my struggles. I am 40 in March and I still sadly have to deal with this attitude with my parents (they are in their 70’s).
This is the general attitude–if you haven’t struggled with weight, you have no idea how hard it actually is.
It’s not just food. It’s stress from work, relationships, Trump et al., etc., that makes you sick.
I guess that’s why I knew/know two vegan never-smoking fitness instructors who were both diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. Screw that guy.
He’s not wrong in the overall idea, but he loses the plot completely when he says this: “Clearly, we’re making bad choices in the way we eat”
No, you absolute fuck, it’s not “clear” that people are “making bad choices.” Millions of people in America don’t GET a choice in what they eat, overwhelmingly due to poverty, and the inability to access healthy, nourishing food.
This man talks like this, but he’s also not going to lower the absolutely exorbitant prices of the marked up, appropriated products that he sells in his store, so what is the purpose of saying this shit really?
WHAT A SELFISH MORON…BET HE HAS THE VERY BEST HEALTH INSURANCE
Let’s also remember that Siskel died before Ebert. Idiot
Bunch of people on Twitter who worked for / works for WF talking about how much perfectly good food WF throws out every day, into padlocked bins so the homeless can’t get at the food.
He has a good point under the terrible phrasing and blaming people for it. To some extent, people need to be encouraged and supported with the right food infrastructure to eat well. This then goes directly to the demand on healthcare system. On the other hand genetic diseases or certain incurable diseases aren’t things you can “eat well” away. And what about pollution? People who live in heavy water/air pollution have higher risk of developing alzheimer’s etc. In all his point is just not factual. Personal responsibility won’t solve public healthcare crises around the world.
Here’s one of the threads: https://twitter.com/shazzah_harm/status/1346397957369823232