A big part of my motivation for blogging about diet and health (along with all the other subjects I blog about) is my awareness of how bad the trendlines are for obesity and other avoidable health problems.

Because we are affected by the behavior of those around us, anything visible that you do that is good or bad for your health also has spillovers for those around you. If you go off sugar, or pursue a more ambitious program of eating right, or exercise, you are benefitting not only yourself, but all the people who (possibly unconsciously) are inspired by your example. Conversely, if you eat scores of different foods with substantial sugar content (as you well might—look at the details on the box), delve deeply into junk food, or pursue the life of a couch potato, you harm not only yourself, but all the people who see such destructive behavior as a little more normal because so many people act that way. And some of the people you are likely to affect most strongly by the example of your behavior are those in your own household.

I am coming more and more to the view that a lot of what we think of as the normal effects of aging are the result of ways of behaving we take for normal in 2020, but won’t look normal at all when people look back from the year 2100. Much of what you need to know to be much healthier is known now but will take decades to become conventional wisdom and decades beyond that to be embraced as actual behavioral change. I hope to shorten that lag time for readers of my blog.

So far in this post, I was talking about physical health. But mental health is crucial as well. A key dimension of positive mental health is turning down the volume on the voice in your head that is constantly hypercritical of you. I am trying to write things that will be helpful there, too.

Don’t suffer in ignorance of all the things that could make your life better.

For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see:

• Miles Kimball on Diet and Health: A Reader's Guide

For links to posts on positive mental health and maintaining one’s moral compass, see:

• Forgive Yourself