Truly Sad Picture

The picture of the drowned bodies of Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his two-year-old daughter, Valeria, was shocking. They were trying to cross over the Rio Grande from Mexico into the United States.

The two, plus the wife and mother, Tania Vanessa Avalos, were fleeing poverty in El Salvador and had secured a humanitarian visa in Mexico. They were in a migrant camp for two months waiting for asylum in the U.S.

To me, it would take a truly unfeeling person to begrudge them for desiring to want to come to our country, and to flee their country that is mired in poverty and gang crime. I do think a lot of people who say our country can't take anymore immigrants, truly, deep down, realize that is not America's overriding, premier problem.

It's something our country has always done in times of peril--displace the blame. At various times it been the Jews, the Catholics, the Chinese, the Irish, the Italians, the Germans. Enter now the Mexicans and those of the Islamic faith.

President Trump was the right person at the right time to bring the Nativism to fruition.

And it's going to take a lot of people over a lot of time to set things right.

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Food And Mental Health

I have been reading a number of articles on how food, and supplements, may play a bigger part in our mental health than we ever imagined. Yet, it one thinks about it for a while, it makes excellent sense.

For example, say you have two people, with whom most of their habits are the same, aside from what they eat. Person 1 usually doesn't eat breakfast, eats a donut at 10am, and for lunch eats a cheeseburger, fries, and a soda. He doesn't eat anything else for six hours and for dinner eats fried chicken, fried onion rings, mashed potatoes with gravy, a few rolls, and a soda. Then he finishes it off with a big piece of chocolate cake. And let's say the person eats this way most of the time.

Person 2, without going into specifics, eats lots of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish, lean chicken, nuts, seeds, extra-virgin olive oil, and drinks lots of water.

It would be hard to argue that after one year these two people's bodies and brains would be similar. Their energy levels and demeanors, I would suggest, would no doubt be different--maybe greatly so.

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Good Book on the Food Industry

I am reading a book that has been a pleasure to read. It's called, Scientific Advances Regarding: Sugar, Salt, and Fat, by Gina Willett, Ph.D., R.D., and I bought it at a continuing education class I attended last year.

Her thesis is that the food industry has so orchestrated modern-day food that it's harder than most people think to eat in a rational, temperate manner. And she argues that there are studies that show the more one eats highly-processed foods, the less control one has over one's appetite. From my experience, this is spot-on.

As of late, I have been eating less unhealthy foods. I am finding that I am not craving those foods as much since I changed my eating and I am not as prone to binging on sweets late at night.

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