Chronic Boom

Poor diet and health is not a measles story. But it is an American one. The excellent Eli Saslow follows a nurse as she makes home visits to her patients in Mingo County, W.Va. NYT (Gift Article): She’s a Foot Soldier in America’s Losing War With Chronic Disease. “She had worn out five cars while visiting patients on the back roads of Mingo County, and over time she had come to recognize every pothole, every scar on the hillsides left from logging, deep mining and mountaintop removal. It was a place where every resource, including the residents, had been exploited for a profit. Sam turned into Williamson, population 3,042, where two local pharmacies had distributed more than 20 million opioid painkillers over the course of a decade, though the drugs didn’t so much numb people’s pain as exacerbate it. Now the downtown was largely vacant except for rehab centers, budget law offices and a methadone clinic. She drove by a liquor store offering three-for-one shooters of vodka and a gas station advertising two-liter bottles of soda for a dollar each. ‘Every business is either trying to kill you or selling a cure,’ she said.”

+ Meanwhile… USDA cuts more than $1bn in local food purchases for schools, food banks.