Posted on 01/22/2012 8:28:46 AM PST by BenLurkin
Without a single liquor store, and legally smoke-free for nearly three decades, the tiny hillside town of Loma Linda brims with pride about its devotion to health and spiritual well-being.
So news that the first McDonald's was coming to town, with its special-sauce-slathered Big Macs and 500-calorie sheaves of large fries, has triggered enough political reflux to put City Hall on the defensive.
"McDonald's does not fit the Loma Linda brand of health and wellness," said Dr. Wayne Dysinger, head of preventive medicine at the medical school. "Compare it to smoking laws: There's no question that smoking is harmful to people's health. Exposing people to fast food also is harmful to their health."
That healthful lifestyle is a core tenet of the Seventh-day Adventist faith, which is woven through the San Bernardino County town of 21,000, from the Adventist-run Loma Linda University Medical Center to a City Council governed exclusively by church members. There's even a Loma Linda line of vegetarian food, produced by the same company that makes Morningstar Farms vegan burgers.
Along with being vegetarian, most Adventists shun tobacco, alcohol and fancy dress. They are quick to brag about being home to the healthiest, and longest-living, folks in the nation. National Geographic in 2005 identified Loma Linda as one of the world's four "blue zones" — towns with greatest number of people living healthy lives into their 90s and past 100. The others were Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; and Nicoya, Costa Rica. "It's a great point of pride that their commitment to health is paying off," said Dysinger.
For 81 years, the post office didn't deliver mail on Saturdays, the Adventist Sabbath, opting for Sunday instead. The postal service ended that policy last spring in a cost-cutting move, which faithful Adventists took as another slap at their traditions.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
“I am watching fat people here in Appalachia limping, hobbling, and dying in their 40s because of their addiction to fast fat food.”
I doubt it is fast food. It is just addiction to food.
One can get overweight on homemade lasagna carbonese, or pancakes, or steak and eggs.
Or McBurgers and fries.
Plenty of thin people eat at McDonald’s. Plenty of fat people don’t.
Thanks for letting us know your penchant for nanny state government.
A city near us, Rolling Hills Estates, didn’t want fast food, so they made a rule that there can be no drive-up windows. There is still a Burger King, but no window. Perhaps Loma Linda ought to look into that sort of a regulation.
I had the pleasure of working with a Seventh Day Adventist some years ago. She was the one person in the office who absolutely would not gossip, and deflected it so gracefully that you never thought she was being holier-than-thou. I was impressed and humbled.
Loma Linda is also home to the world-class Geoscience Research Institute,
www.grisda.org
Freepers interested in Creation Science might want to visit.
So would a Halal food establishment be accepted where y’all live?
Loma Linda Children’s Hospital has a Ronald’s McDonald’s House. Just saying.
Is Dr. Dysinger confusing fast food and plutonium?
Excellent observation!
I'm looking, as you asked, but since I don't see any fat deposits I don't understand the point of your exercise.
Loma Linda has always been a world unto itself. Great hospital and citizens of a different sort. There are probably 10 MickyDs within a five mile radius of downtown.
As an aside...if you want a real treat, go to the Loma Linda Market(a vegan mecca) and buy a Chocolate Prune Cake.
Best. Cake. Ever.
Correct, our son was recently in ICU at loma linda, they are world class. Ron McDonald’s house was full up with exhausted parents desperate for healing for their kids. McDonald’s ROCKS, thankfully our son is Ok now. When Obamacare has had its way with this town people will DIE.
Bacon.
Found the recipe here.
http://www.grouprecipes.com/19979/loma-linda-chocolate-prune-cake.html
I'd tweak it a bit: change the vegetable shortening to butter, and that's it.
I’d see it as a simpler problem than that. Basically, someone wants to sell you something ordinary, and you want to buy it, yet a third person steps in and says you *can’t* buy it, because (they think) “It’s not good for you!”
Unless that third person is my wife, which I don’t have one, btw, all the consideration they deserve is to be told to butt out.
Yet there is a seemingly endless supply of people who want to be that third person, over just about every thing under the Sun. If you allow them to rule your life, you have no life. Or, you can tell them to butt out. And many people do tell them to butt out.
So their recourse is to try and persuade government to force everyone to do what they want, because they know better. At this point, an annoyance becomes a tyranny, and such people no longer need to be told to butt out, but to be punched firmly in the nose.
“I am watching fat people here in Appalachia limping, hobbling, and dying in their 40s because of their addiction to fast fat food. Sad.”
Sad, maybe. But the bottom line is that they are not your concern. You yourself are, or at least, you should be, your concern. They have their own lives to live, their own destiny to follow, and to help and harm others as they see fit. It is best to lead by example, not by jeremiad.
To be a good person, you can help them get up when they fall down, if they ask for help; you can feed them if they are hungry, if they ask and you are charitable; and you can give them good advice, if they ask for it and you have what you know is good advice to give, in a way they are receptive to.
To be a bad person, you must assume that you always know better; that you know a person’s path and heart with just a brief glance; that you can fix in them what you regard as broken or defective, whether they want you to fix that or not; and that you can protect and defend them against the challenges, mistakes and victories of their lives.
But the choice of whether to be a good person or a bad person is yours to make.
When you look at fast food gluttons, do not be sad. Instead rejoice at their freedom in designing the life they want to lead as their life’s work of art. They have spent their entire life becoming and being who they are. What right have you to criticize it?
I went back and read mountaineer’s post. Maybe you should too. No mention of nanny statism or laws prohibiting fast food whatsoever. Not even a hint. Just pointing out that bad personal choices have consequences. Hitting a little too close to home for you?
“I don’t object to a town saying “Go elsewhere to eat that slop!””
How else is it to be interpreted?
I’d rather live in Loma Linda than Dearborn, MI...just sayin’. I’ve known several Seventh Day Adventists. Even though I don’t agree with their view of theology, I thought they were generally very nice people. Being vegan, they need to supplement with B12, but they seem generally healthy otherwise.
Loma Linda is not an isolated community.
It’s city limits abutt San Bernardino and Redlands city limits, and it is NOT empty space devoid of homes and businesses that sits along most of the lines between them.
I have family in the area and they shop in Redlands, Loma Linda and San Bernardino as well as in areas adjoining any two of them. When I am visiting them, depending on the particular location we are in, they often cannot always tell me the answer to: “are we still in Redlands or have we crossed into Loma Lind now” (or vice-a-versa or substitute San Bernbardino in there). Yes each of the three towns do have a paricular “downtown” area, but all the commercial activity is not limited to them and some of the commercial activity is down-right right between them.
I doubt that Loma Linda residents alone would be or even are expected to be the only customers for this McDonalds, anymore than that is the case with other businesses in Loma Linda and anymore than is the shopping habits of Loma Linda residents limited solely to establisments in Loma Linda.
I don’t think the result would be any loss to local property values, no matter what most 7th Day Adventists in Loma Linda themselves thought of McDonalds.
McRib, secret sauce, sweetened drinks, Loma Linda has great medical service. Letur rip!
“So would a Halal food establishment be accepted where y’all live?”
There are already Halal establishments in my town. Have been for years.
I have no objection from a free market standpoint. There is no crime or sin in slaughtering animals in a halal way.
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