If you're going to panic...Part II

I love that line. That's what Mish says when he talks about the economic deflation we are all going to experience, like it or not. Whatever your flavor of paranoia (be it economic, religious, or political) now is the time to panic--lay in your supplies and order your self-sufficiency manuals. Because by the time everybody else panics, it will almost certainly be too late.

That sounds like hyberbole, but after the month I've had, the very air seems to drip with drama. And yet the very ordinary tasks of a household grind on. Nursing, diapers, fixing food, doing dishes, dressing little limbs and wiping little faces and hands--while trying to keep a grip on my own psyche--has become almost a tunnel of claustrophobic proportions. Back in Vancouver, it was OK. I had a full pantry. I had all the supplies. I had my routine, and I had my friends and neighbors to help. Here, I don't know anybody. I know few places to get things. Now the downtown and city services of our nearest sizeable civilization are paralyzed. My phone doesn't work. And if it wasn't for the Internet, I would be mad mad mad.

Wall-to-wall news coverage on the flood has ceased, for the most part. We can use our water freely again, at least here in Marion. I had to keep telling Carl to turn off "The Bachelorette" during dinner, just because he's used to having the TV on all day now. "That's garbage television," I kept telling him. "Aw, come on ducky," is his rejoinder, cribbed from the old version of 101 Dalmations. Since I can't think of an age-appropriate way to explain that people tongue-kissing in a hot tub is not good viewing material for prime time, I just told him that the emergency was over. Not true. In a very real sense, the emergency is just beginning.

How to explain? As if the recession/oil crisis wasn't bad enough (leaving religious theories of the end times completely out...at least for the moment), I believe the next major crises to play out in America will be the declining health of our population--punctuated by hurricanes, fires, flooding, increasing violence and the occasional bridge collapse.

The health angle is one people are used to hearing about...usually in the context of the health care system. "The health care system is too expensive," say the pundits. "Too many people lack access to affordable health care insurance." Various theories are proposed to explain why this is so, from ballooning malpractice lawsuits and insurance costs, skyrocketing disease stats, and the explosion in the use of prescriptions drugs (not to mention that the largest demographic group in the history of the world--the Baby Boomers--are about to retire into a not-so-golden gloaming of economic uncertainty and mounting degenerative disease). What they fail to put their finger on is that people are sick.

The next big crisis, or "long emergency", is the lack of health. Not "health care", or access to health care "insurance," but just plain being able to get up in the morning, gather your thoughts, get out the door, work a job and live a life. You can't do that when you're sick. And people are getting sick in more ways and in greater numbers than ever before.

Imagine you are at a brand-spanking new Super Wal-Mart, and you're in the back receiving your first load of inventory. Five trucks are waiting before you. The first truck contains all the candy and sugary confections a child could dream of--everything from molasses to Peeps. The second truck looks familiar as well...it contains refined white flour in all its forms, from Roman Meal Butter-Top Bread to Little Debbie Snack cakes to hundreds of boxes of cold cereal. The third truck is full of glistening gallons of pasteurized and homogenized lowfat white milk, and all the products created from it, tubs and tubs of cottage cheese, yogurt, sour cream, bricks of cheese. The fourth truck is entirely full of butter substitutes. The fifth truck is full of vegetable oil. That's it, just vegetable oil.

According to this book I've been reading, Nourishing Traditions, it's this food--this fake, "ersatz," steam-cleaned, extruded, rancid, processed-to-death food--that is killing us. Granted, we are slowly poisoning the earth. We are breathing chemicals, and eating chemicals. We are stripping our soil and loading it up with toxins. But nothing affects us as directly as what we put in our mouths. And while this might sound like a lot of other harum-skarum muckraking stuff you read, Sally Fallon and Mary Enig and their compatriots at the Weston A. Price Foundation seem to put it all together in an intelligible, not-overbearing and common-sense way.

I mean, Nourishing Traditions isn't a tell-all whistleblowing sensationalist barnburner. It's a cookbook. It shows you how to make soaked porridge and ketchup the old-fashioned way. It would never have been published without charitable contributions from family and friends. And Mary Enig herself, the scientist half of the equation, has grown old fighting the margarine conglomerates and food cartels, the government officials and American Heart Associations of the world to get the word out that not only are trans fats bad, they are in EVERYTHING, and people are eating a whole lot more of them than they think. This is finally getting out, as food manufacturers are forced to admit concessions (although they do this in as inconsistent and opaque a way as humanly possible). Sally Fallon, a former housewife, has taken up the crusade and does the bulk of the PR work, or so it seems.

Their message: Saturated fat is good for you! People have been eating animals for eons, but man has only recently discovered how to get "oil" from soybeans, and then "hydrogenate" it. When people ate 18 pounds of butter per person per year, we had a very low incidence of coronary heart disease, and zero myocardial infarctions. Now our consumption of vegetable fats has increased 400% and butter consumption has fallen to 4 pounds per person. Coronary heart disease now leads the list of causes of death in America, followed by cancer.

Saturated fat causes heart disease? The scientific evidence just is not there. The proof? The entities responsible for pushing the idea that saturated fat causes heart disease still have to put qualifiers on their messages: "A lowfat diet rich in whole grains and low in saturated fat and cholesterol may help reduce the risk of heart disease." Translation: there's a risk of heart disease but nobody knows what that is. The risk can be reduced, but nobody knows by how much. Adopting a spartan diet devoid of butter, animal products, nuts, natural oils, and meats may drive you insane with cravings but it "may help" reduce the nebulous "risk" that is out there. That one single statement has four qualifiers in it!

"Here she goes, she's on her bandwagon again!!" go the people who know me best. I know, I know, I must be depressed. All this diaper-changin' and news-watchin' has addled my brain. OK, OK, if you really don't want to hear this, punch the snooze button. Think Polly-annish thoughts and go on consuming this stuff. I do, mostly because it's impossible to avoid all of it. But people who come here deserve to hear something different from the MSM, don't they? That's why we have blogs and YouTube and stuff, right? I mostly became interested in this angle because of my poor allergic little guy, Tom. I really do think people make much ado about diet. But after my urgent care episode, I'm really concerned that I don't get sick again. So I continue to search for that ultimate reference, the unified field theory of food, if you will, that will explain so many perplexing questions.

Oh, I promised to get back to religion. "I really think Obama could be the Antichrist," my dad said when I called him last Sunday.

Heh. You thought I was paranoid.