Diet coke is addictive! Everyone knows it is. We still think it killed our good friend Dave Inzer so many years ago. He could sit down and drink six diet cokes or three ice teas at a sitting. A double chili size and an additonal side of fries. Dave died young….46 years old.
Looking at our 50th Anniversary High School Reunion….out of the 1179 students that graduated in 1959 from Fullerton Union High School, just 20 are deceased. Not many for people that are now upwards of 67 to 69 years young. The majority died of obesity. Not Viet-nam…though we had a couple. Some from alcohol and prescription drug abuse….but mainly from being overweight for virtually….no reason other than the type of food and drink they ingested. It is a scary thought to get to the reunion in October and find out how many more of our schoolmates are now having medical problems and can expect serious health costs in the coming years.
President Obama wants us to have Universal Heathcare. A noble thought regarding the value of human life and life quality. But more importantly, it is what we are putting into our bodies, which is allowed by the government that seems to be doing the bad stuff. We are not allowed to know where meat, chicken or fish comes from. We are not allowed to know the calories that each serving provides. BHT and other preservatives have taken the taste out of most of our foods. The storage and shelf life of some foods verges on years in some cases. We look at Rush Limbaugh and we see him grow in size in front of our eyes. He was first hooked on Oxicotin and now what? How about all the fast food, junk food, tainted food, old food, salmonella peanuts, onions from Mexico and more!
Rhetorically, people say….”We should have the same healthcare that members of Congress and the Government Employees are provided with!” Well, if you didn’t notice we have had rationed healthcare in the country for the last 15 years. Once we got HMO’s, we just volunteered for Rationed Healthcare. When each step of our healthcare requires a bureaucratic approval…that can be denied…..we are all being rationed….whether we have a PPO or not. Insurance Coverage is changing radically. Today, anything considered not emergency…..the percentages are either changed from 80 – 20 to 50-50 or totally denied. These are all issues which complicate the broad brush concept of giving everyone Universal Healthcare.
Most importantly however, it is the poisons that we ingest that are doing the most damage, causing our bloated obesity, our diabetes, our list on ongoing required prescriptions. The time has come to dump the Diet Coke into Boston Harbor. The time has come to say to the pharmaceutical giants that advertise on every television channel…..that we want our drugs “for free”! We don’t want “Generic”….we want “Brand”! A good example of the difference from Generic to Brand goes like this: Bactrim DDS which is used to treat most staph infections. Generic from the pharmacy: $3.60. Brand from the pharmacy: $43.40 for same number of pills. The difference: Generic makes some, sick to their stomach and doesn’t work very well. The Brand on the other hand….does not upset your stomach and seems to work quite well.
President Obama has a big challenge on his hands to save our health. We all can help by dumping our Diet Coke, taking the right drugs and demanding that we get all our drugs as part of this Universal Healthcare without fee! Big pharma must be Nationalized, have their CEO’s and Sale people get salaries that are not obnoxious….and still take care of the citizens in the process.
Sympathy for your friend. But Diet Coke didn’t kill him…gluttony did.
Are you kidding…it is now governments job to regulate responsible behavior? Kruschev was right when he said “America is not ready for communism but if you feed them small doses of socialism they will wake up to it”…..
This country needs to stop looking at the government for bailouts and policies that protect us from ourselves….
Anon
Diet soda is not good for you just as much as regular soda. anything is good in moderation.
It is all about personal responsibility. And perhaps stop giving ADM subsidies to force us to consume corn syrup.
No, anything is not good in moderation. That’s ludicrous. Who told you soda was good for you? That’s what these companies want you to believe so that you’ll keep buying it. The truth is, it’s poisonous. And yes, you’re right, it’s our responsibility to stay away… because if we keep drinking it, they keep making it.
Curious about the signficance of 6 diet cokes or 3 iced teas.
Why was his tolerance for coke so much greater than that for iced tea.
Seems if he can drink 6 cokes, 6 iced teas shouldn’t have been a problem.
Actually, he could drink six ice teas as well. He weighed about 280 lbs…before his heart gave out. Stress and over doing stuff. We agree, that we should all be responsible for own behavior. The issues are that “Aspertame”, “High Fructose Corn Sryup” and a variety of other debilitating ingredients are well known and documented to cause problems. Instead, you get ads for Cialis or other wonder drugs that put stress on the old ticker or cause for “stroke”!
No one is talking about those things…EVER!
Our belief is: “If it is a danger – it should be
identified!”
Socialist healthcare! I saw it Costs 1,200,000,000 to bring an FDA Approved drug to market!That is why you have to pay for it! I have no problem paying these companies to develop stuff that will save my life! Would you rather drug companies not develop a cure for cancer, knowing some CEO’s are going to get paid to do it?
*Not a valid argument….the word is “patent”!
Seven years of unfettered greed should be enough.
You want more than that?
“Instead, you get ads for Cialis or other wonder drugs that put stress on the old ticker or cause for “stroke”! No one is talking about those things…EVER!”
Bill Maher talks about America’s addiction to pharmaceuticals! He basically calls doctors “drug dealers”.
I’m with you on the diet coke. But why are you picking on iced tea. Or are you looking at that Nestea crap that is no different for soda. While that may be called iced tea, it isn’t.
But the unsweetned brewed stuff can be good for you.
I’ve been drinking Diet Coke since it was first introduced in 1983. Before that, I was enjoying up to five TABs a day for years. Today, I trade off drinking Coke Zero and Diet Coke. I’ve drunk one to three of these diet drinks for over 30 years. Hell, sometimes I don’t even add the bourbon!
Anyway, here I am in my mid-fifties, playing beach volleyball six to eight hours every weekend (for the last twenty years), and I’m in better physical shape than many men half my age.
Hmmm…
must be the diet sodas.
This is an ignorant statement. You’re in your mid-fifties sir, you’re not that old. You should be out playing volleyball, and you should be in good physical shape. Unfortunately, society has made us believe that by the time you’re 55 you should be overweight and nearly immobile. You probably have yet to see what the diet soda is doing to your system, and maybe you’re right, maybe it will do nothing at all – lucky you. However, with this statement you are under-minding all the research that shows that people like you, who are unaffected, are the MINORITY.
I agree with you about the Diet Coke, however not so much about the drugs. Generic or not, the companies that develop them are only after one thing, your money. It’s time to start looking at alternate cures. Prescription drugs have become a corrupt industry and unless we stop buying into it, nothing is going to be done.