Now Thank We All Our God--again

 I love reading hymns in my morning devotions.  Sometimes I spend all my time on the opening hymn and Psalm. I own two hymnal sources, both Protestant, but often these hymns are also used in Catholic services.  Today it was Now Thank We All Our God.  I wrote about it for Thanksgiving 2022. Collecting My Thoughts: Now thank we all our God, story of a favorite hymn  Such an interesting and tragic background.  Martin Rinkart, a Lutheran pastor, wrote it during the 30 Years War, the most devasting war in Europe's history.  The war is often called a religious war, however, it was primarily political with the various Lutheran and Catholic princes fighting each other, plus disease and starvation. It wiped out about half of the German population.

I noticed today that it was based on a benediction in Sirach (The Wisdom of Sirach or The Book of Ecclesiasticus) 50:22-24. "And now, bless the God of all/ who has done wondrous things on earth;/ Who fosters men's growth from their mother's womb,/ and fashions them according to his will!/ May he grant you joy of heart/ and may peace abide among you;/ May his goodness toward us endure in Israel/ as long as the heavens are above." 

"Martin Rinkart was a minister in the city of Eilenburg during the Thirty Years War. Apart from battles, lives were lost in great number during this time due to illnesses and disease spreading quickly throughout impoverished cities. In the Epidemic of 1637, Rinkart officiated at over four thousand funerals, sometimes fifty per day. In the midst of these horrors, it’s difficult to imagine maintaining faith and praising God, and yet, that’s exactly what Rinkart did. Sometime in the next twenty years, he wrote the hymn, “Now Thank We All Our God,” originally meant to be a prayer said before meals. Rinkart could recognize that our God is faithful, and even when the world looks bleak, He is “bounteous” and is full of blessings, if only we look for them. Blessings as seemingly small as a dinner meal, or as large as the end of a brutal war and unnecessary bloodshed are all reasons to lift up our thanks to God, with our hearts, our hands, and our voices."  https://hymnary.org/text/now_thank_we_all_our_god

Health equity?

Demands for "health equity" for racial and ethnic groups is a push for more government control. The CDC reported in 2014 that the 5 top causes of death were diseases primarily of personal behavior, 1) diseases of the heart, 2) cancer, 3) chronic lower respiratory diseases, 4) cerebrovascular diseases (stroke), and 5) unintentional injuries. These are most often a result of obesity, smoking, drinking, drugs, lack of exercise and other risky behavior. HIV rates are still very high among young black men who have sex with men, and CDC says risk factors are poverty, high rates of unemployment, and cultural stigmas. Doesn't mention risky sex. I'm no doctor or researcher, but any poor, unemployed man who doesn't have sex with men will not be at risk for HIV.  The costs of unintentional injuries are huge--motor vehicle, drugs, suicide,  work, falls. The burden on employers and society in general runs in the billions of dollars annually. . . $1,097.9 billion 

Potentially Preventable Deaths from the Five Leading Causes of Death — United States, 2008–2010 (cdc.gov)

How Many People Die From HIV/AIDS Each Year? (verywellhealth.com)

Health Risks of Overweight & Obesity | NIDDK (nih.gov)

Societal Costs - Injury Facts (nsc.org)

Obesity as a disease and a label

The Cleveland Clinic began calling obesity a disease in 2008, and AMA in 2013. Supposedly, this was to reduce discrimination and increase insurance coverage and government funding for research. Changing the label hasn't changed the problem. In 1991 approximately 12% of the US population was obese, and it was 38% in 2014 (CDC figures) with no single state having a rate lower than 15%, not even those with super active, outdoorsy populations that surf and climb mountains. Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans all have different rates, with Native Americans the highest and Asian Americans the lowest.

Now obesity is called a pandemic. I can't exactly find the right figures to compare, but in 1976 the median weight for adult males and females was 170 lbs. and 137.8 lbs. In 2014, the last I could find in CDC the average (not median) weight for adult males and females was 195.7 lbs. and 168.5 lbs. In 45 years the height for men increased 1/10 of an inch; and no gain at all for women (I could have sworn women were getting taller just from watching sports.)

We seem to be victims of our own achievement. Whereas for millions of years, most of the globe except for the very rich, didn't have enough calories and had to do physical labor to survive. Now we have far more calories than we need with food waste being a huge problem, and technology from automobiles to television to computers to moving from farm to city the last 100 years have conspired to create this new disease, never before known to humankind. We don't even have to get out of a chair to answer the phone or change TV channels.

Here's some librarian trivia. The 1987 report (DHHS 87-1688) used 1976-80 data, and the word "obesity" didn't even appear, except in the Library of Congress cataloging data for the report. The words used were "overweight" and "severely overweight."

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/body-measurements.htm

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_11/sr11_238.pdf

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/2013/06/obesity-is-now-considered-a-disease/

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/192036

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1614362#t=articleTop