We don't control everything. There are genetic influences. There are environmental exposures we don't control. I cannot guarantee anyone I counsel that by following what I hope is the good advice I offer them, they will live long and prosper. That's what I'm hoping for but I can't guarantee that. What I can tell them is this: "Look, I can help you firmly grip the wheel, and you can steer the ship. You're never going to control the winds and you're never going to control the seas. But if you sail well you can get through just about anything."

What we need to do now is recognize that it is the sum total of human ingenuity that is responsible for the epidemics of chronic disease. Throughout most of human history, calories were scarce and hard to get, and physical activity unavoidable. Calories are now abundant, and physical activity is hard to get. We took an unstable, uncertain food supply and fixed it. What now passes as exercise and requires specialized footwear used to be called "survival." You had to do it. Now you never have to do it. We solved it too well. Now we don't need our muscles for anything.

There is one thing that very reliably try to trumps the food supply and that is food demand. At the end of the day, the business of business is business and they are just trying to keep the customers satisfied, it depends what we want. The problem in our current mess is we want all the wrong stuff. Why do we want the wrong stuff? Because taste buds are very malleable little fellows. They learn to like what they know. We're bathing our taste buds in too much sugar, too much salt, too much processed food all day long. That's what they know and crave.

When I went to medical school, I was taught about two basic kinds of diabetes: juvenile onset and adult onset. From the time I did my training in medical school to the end of my residency we were already seeing the transformation of adult onset diabetes into Type II, which is what we call it now, which from my perspective is a euphemism we have draped over this condition to conceal the fact that what was a chronic disease in midlife is now epidemic in children. Frankly, Type II diabetes in a seven year old is adult onset diabetes. We just don't want to confront that unpleasant fact.

We have a society that monumentally conspires against the pursuit of health. We have wave after wave of labor-saving technology that says don't ever use your muscles for anything, along with messages that you should be more physically active. We have, every year, the introduction of hundreds, if not thousands, of new highly processed foods, the majority of which glow in the dark. At the same time we're telling people: eat foods closer to nature. We have schools where we teach children to sit still all day long so they can become adults we can't get off couches with crowbars.

We are creatures. We have a link with a native habitat just like every other species. Throughout most of human history, physical activity was unavoidable, calories were scarce and hard to get. In the modern era, calories are unavoidable, physical activity is scare and hard to get. The traits that allowed our ancestors to survive, and let's face it, the survival of our ancestors is the reason that we're here because the people who don't survive and make very crummy ancestors, are our traits. But they're very much at odds with the modern environment.

Color, rather than shape, is more closely related to emotion.