My editor at RealJock.com asked me to write two articles regarding the healthcare reform bill as it affects the site’s readers, gay men with a passionate interest in fitness. The bill does not cover inequities in taxation of healthcare benefits for domestic partners covered by one partner’s employer-sponsored plan, nor does it authorize Medicare and Medicaid to provide early treatment for HIV infection (earlier treatment is proven to be cost-efficient) or hospital visitation rights. The bill does provide for some healthy-lifestyle prevention initiatives, however some people in the “Comments” area complain about how fitness efforts are unrecognized in individual premium pricing.
As a health, fitness and nutrition writer, I am often asked by editors to highlight a particular mode of exercise or food or diet in an article, picking it apart for pros, cons, the biological science behind it and the research that shows it works. That’s the nature of how-to health writing – the reader expects to learn something new upon which they can act.
The challenge is that proactive health is never achieved with one solution. In fact, the basis of physical and mental vitality is best summarized by three words: balance, variety and moderation.
I tried to take that approach with this article on cardiovascular modalities (treadmills, elliptical machines, stair climbers and stationary bikes). Each has its advantages, but to use just one to the exclusion of the others would be folly. This article for client HairLoss.com instead stresses the need to mix it up, to use each of them (in balance with other, non-machine exercise).
Nominated in 2010 in the Best Documentary category for an Academy Award, “Food, Inc.” ruffled a few feathers in the food industry it examined. Sure, the agriculture-manufacturer-retail complex (largely, Monsanto and Walmart, with over-leveraged farmers in the middle) bears little resemblance to the farmer-consumer relationship of the past. And the type of nutrition that typifies the American diet, heavily-laden with high fructose corn syrup, is likely responsible for skyrocketing obesity and diabetes rates. But consumers can fight back, and the industry feeding them will respond. I wrote this review for client HairLoss.com from my perspective as a nutrition writer and former communicator for both The NutraSweet Company (Monsanto) and McDonald’s Corporation’s public relations firm.
From 1990-1994 I was a public relations manager for The NutraSweet Company. In such a position, a person has access to all the science as well as the fiction woven around the products (aspartame as an ingredient, and Equal sweetener) by critics. It was an interesting study. Since then, several other sweetener technologies (sucralose, acesulfame potassium, plus naturally-derived stevia/rebiana) have been approved for sale. My article for HairLoss.com, “Sweet Taste Instincts Run Deep. But Are Sweetener Substitutes Deeply Flawed?,” looks to the Center for Science in the Public Interest for their recommendations on sugar substitutes, based on peer-reviewed research and FDA-collected data.
Full disclosure: I still use about four packets of Equal a day, three in my oatmeal and one on a grapefruit. I’m comfortable with that level of risk, but it is about half of what I formerly consumed because of my interest in eating minimally-processed foods. I discontinued drinking all forms of soda pop about ten years ago.
I wrote this white paper for my clients at pothole.info, a website dedicated to exploring the problems and solutions associated with deteriorating pavement.
For example, the non-profit group The Road Information Program (TRIP) reported in 2004 on poor road conditions in Virginia, concluding “the quality of a region’s transportation system is an important factor in where businesses and industries decide to locate, expand or downsize. A modern transportation system is of critical importance if Virginia is to capitalize on economic development opportunities.”
Other TRIP findings:
- Regional road conditions are considered by companies when locating manufacturing and distribution facilities.
- Some companies actually cite poor U.S. road quality as a deciding factor in locating operations offshore.
- The state of Minnesota promotes the quality of its highways in economic development marketing.
- The state of California recognizes road quality as integral to “job creation and a positive impact on an average person’s daily life.”
- The state of Utah’s Chamber of Commerce has an official position on road quality: “A safe and efficient transportation system is foundational for Utah’s economic vitality, quality of life and growth.”
My engagement with Pothole.info is fascinating – and a little disturbing. This is a universal experience, poor pavement, and one of huge economic impact. America has invested $1.75 trillion in its nearly four million miles of roads since the 1950s. How that investment will be protected, and the impact these roads will have on our economy and quality of life, will be a major part of the political discussion for years to come. It can also be a major part of how federal, state and local dollars are used to stimulate an economic recovery.
This work also adds to my portfolio as a construction industry writer. I am a feature writer for American Business Quarterly, Luxury Homes Quarterly and Green Business Quarterly, publications that look at some of the best examples of construction, design and sustainability in American companies.
It takes six pounds of plant protein to produce a pound of beef. If you know nothing else, that fact helps drive home the central message on the environmental cost of Western-style diets now being adopted in developing nations that include China, India and Brazil – following Americans’ 33 percent increase in consumption of animal protein since 1960. This article for Hairloss.com reviews the global as well as personal reasons for adopting a diet that leans much more toward plant foods and away from animal sources of protein. It doesn’t mean we all have to turn vegetarian – it’s all a matter of proportions.