Without today's two honorees, we would not know why we should (and thus don't want to) eat our vegetables, and we wouldn't be able to keep much of any food fresh as long as we currently can.

These two men have changed our national diet and our society. Consider taking your daughter to the doctor because her blood isn't clotting properly. Or think about taking care of an elderly parent whose spine is compacting.

Or think about buying meat six months before you use it. Think about the supermarket — which is by no means the way things work everywhere, but which is a staple of First World countries. Sure, you can still go to the farmer's market, and when I was in France in 1995, the local market was still going strong, but you can also load up on food for the next month and not be worried that it'll go bad.

As you think about all of this, think of Nobel Prize-winner Frederick Hopkins, who helped discover vitamins, and who was born on June 20, 1861. And think of Lloyd Hall, born on June 20, 1894, whose work on preservatives has saved countless billions of pounds of food and made the stuff cheaper (and thus more available to the poor).

My dear Ms AAF made the remark yesterday, after reading the last few grim diaries on food riots, that I'm writing lugubrious pieces of late and that I should occasionally show my lighter, goofier side...and that there are some good things to report about, albeit not many but some, she added. "Like what?", I asked. "I dunno, something positive, you can write just about anything...so why not a piece on your favorite person...or fruit or something."

I have been mulling over this conversation during breakfast, unable to think properly, staring into my bowl of muesli for what seemed an eternity. I began to play with the slices of banana, making a heap with the oats, and like a minor Sisyphus at work, I pushed the largest bit of banana over the mound, reflecting on the maddening nature of the peculiar punishment the Greek Gods had imposed on the king of Ephyra...when suddenly it hit me right between the eyes: write about the banana! It is a remarkable fruit, possibly the most popular of all fruits. It's a sunny fruit, one that fits with my disposition...I got up and walked to her study and told her about it. She laughed and said that I'm nuts, a diary about bananas on DKos will sink without a trace.

The evidence continues to mount supporting the single, cheapest, most cost effective medical treatment available...and your body produces it...except not always in sufficient quantities...Vitamin D.

In just the last few days even more data has come out in support of taking 1000 IU supplements, especially if you live further north and/or you are non-white.

Today: Researchers sound alarm over shortage among non-whites

Vitamin D tests conducted on a group of University of Toronto students have found that virtually all non-whites had insufficient levels of the sunshine vitamin, putting them at elevated risk of debilitating diseases such as osteoporosis, cancer and diabetes.

The research, which is awaiting publication in a medical journal, found that 100 per cent of those of African origin were short of vitamin D, as were 93 per cent of South Asians (those of Indian or Pakistani origin), and 85 per cent of East Asians (those of Chinese, Indochinese or Filipino origin, among other countries).

And there has been even more info out recently...

This is an action alert to those interested in protecting their right to participate in their own healthcare through diet and supplements.

Maybe I am doing this issue a disservice by opening with the greed factor in the attempt to regulate supplements as drugs. But from my consumer perspective, the corporate pigs in pharma are at the trough again, attempting to gobble up another freedom.

Today I have my helmet and flak jacket on because the last time I posted on the topic lots of rotten tomatos and squishy fruit got lobbed my way. Diet and nutrition seem to be one very hot topic on dkos!

more follows........

Unless there is action to block the FDA, on April 30th the FDA wants to sneak through this legislation to regulate vitamins, herbs and even massage oils like drugs:

Docket: 2006D-0480 - Draft Guidance for Industry on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Products and Their Regulation by the Food and Drug Administration

more....

Every day we deal with important health research, like today's revelation that people taking antioxidants may have a 5 percent higher risk of death. That's an abstraction, however.

A health care reality is that our system couldn't pay for a child's $80 tooth-extraction but could pay $250,000 to treat a brain infection caused by his rotted tooth. Too late, though. He died.

The legal use of drugs is getting to be just as bad as the illegal use, not because of what's in them but because of how people take them.

My daughter became a stranger to me around age fifteen.

This talented, creative, intelligent child-this daughter that I love-somehow morphed into a kid at risk.

   What many Americans  many not realize, or have forgotten, is that Bush was raised in an environment of the CIA. His father, G. H. Bush, having been the director of the CIA years before, is an expert at evasion and misrepresentation... otherwise known as "lying."  To be sure, it is not outright lying to use misstatements, but it does fall under what is considered the "sin of ommission."   That is, not telling the whole truth and purposely misleading by false association and manipulation of information.

   Today's news gives a great example:  Bush was quoted by Katherine Shrader in the  Associated Press in reference to the recent Intelligence Assessment, as admitting at a White House news conference,  that the fighting in Iraq:

 "has been used as a recruitment tool for extremists _ one finding of the intelligence assessment that suggests the Iraq war has nourished terrorists' ranks."

You've seen the statistics.  Americans are getting fatter and fatter with every passing generation.  In just the last decade, childhood obesity has nearly doubled.  The average weight of adult Americans is increasing by nearly a pound a year.

Theories on what causes this are almost as common as chubby teens.  Increased television viewing.  Video games.  Supersized fries.  No doubt all those things contribute, but the universality and constant march of the numbers is baffling.  It crosses social and geographic boundaries in a way that runs counter to most every idea of how trends (or diseases) spread.

So what's really at the root of this generation by generation weight increase?  It may not be Twinkies.  It may be vitamins.