Dying of Thirst?

I've heard it said that water is the most fundamental element of life on this planet, and that is true.

It is so fundamental that sometimes we joke about it. We treat water as if it is our right to have fresh drinking water yet we give little thought to whether we actually do have fresh, clean water to drink.

But the integrity of the water supply is no laughing matter.

Did you ever see "Dr. Strangelove?" Do you remember the crazy general who orders a nuclear strike because of his paranoid perception of a plot against "our precious bodily fluids," which could be seen in, among other things, the fluoridation of the water supply?

I remember hearing the adults argue about that — along with their debates about "new" math — when I was a child. No one needed to tell me how serious a threat to the water supply could be.

Long before health–conscious Americans began paying attention to how much — or, rather, how little — water they were consuming, I discovered the value of water.

I grew up in central Arkansas, where it was hot and humid every summer — and for sizable chunks of the spring and fall, too — and cold drinks were always popular. If a drink had some kind of flavor, I guess that was my first preference, but water was always a reliable alternative.

I never developed a taste for tea, though, which put me at odds with most people in this part of the country.

At an early age, I found that, when I was really hot and thirsty, nothing tasted as sweet as fresh, cold drinking water.

Also at an early age, I learned that fresh drinking water was perhaps the easiest thing for me to get, whether I was at my own home or someone else's. I usually didn't even have to go inside. All I had to do was find a garden hose or the outdoor spigot to which such a hose could be attached, and I could have water.

Because of the findings of an Environmental Working Group study, water may not be tasting quite so sweet.

Those findings may be particularly hard to swallow in Norman, Okla., where I lived for four years in the 1990s.

The EWG's findings put Norman at the top of its chart of cities that were found to have extremely high levels of hexavalent chromium in the water supply.

Now, I was never very good in science when I was in school. Fact is, I never took chemistry. I've always been one of those people whose eyes will glaze over when a multi–syllabic chemistry term is mentioned in any conversation.

But you might recognize hexavalent chromium by the name of chromium–6. A decade ago, Julia Roberts brought it to the public's attention via her film portrayal of Erin Brockovich, who was responsible for exposing the coverup of the industrial poisoning of a California town's water supply with chromium–6 in the 1990s.

The Norman Transcript appears to pooh pooh the report, saying "the amount is slight and measured in parts per billion," but it concedes that "an independent lab test ... places the level of hexavalent chromium, or chromium–6, among the highest of 35 selected U.S. cities tested this year."

That list of cities includes several of the nation's largest (far larger than Norman) and/or the most historically notorious polluters.

Clean drinking water is something no one can take for granted.

Gosh, Who Knew?

Sarah Klein of Health.com writes, for CNN.com, that a scientific study confirms that fattening foods are addictive.

Well, stop the presses.

Don't get me wrong. Some studies are necessary to contribute to our knowledge, to help us learn things we don't know. And they can confirm or refute things that we suspect.

But, really. Don't we all already know that fatty foods can be addictive? When I was younger, I guess they didn't know as much about nutrition as they do today, but the emphasis seemed to have been on sugary foods when I was a child. Maybe there was some knowledge about fat and calories and carbs and things like that, but I remember most of the attention centering around sweets.

It's really been in recent years that the attention has shifted to fats.

Well, to be fair, this may be the first study that, aside from stating what seems to be obvious, actually equates the consumption of these foods to the behavior of people who are addicted to cocaine or heroin. And that makes it only the second substance of which I know (nicotine being the other) that studies have suggested can be as controlling of an individual's life. Over the years, as easily available, high–fat, high–calorie foods have become more plentiful, the obesity rate has gone up at a staggering pace. For years, folks have been blaming poor metabolism or, if their own behavior can no longer avoid implication, an unwillingness to exercise — and to be sure, those factors can play roles.

But there are fast–food joints on just about every block in this city, and I'm sure it's that way where you live as well.

What do you know? Bacon cheeseburgers and fries and pizza and nachos taste good. And they're also fattening. And with the proliferation of the truly obese, it really shouldn't be much of a jump to conclude that the unchecked consumption of those fatty foods that taste so good has contributed to the (pardon the expression) expansion of the obesity problem.

So what can be done? Food is not illegal, like cocaine and heroin. And it can't be regulated, the way tobacco products are supposed to be.

Perhaps this study is like many I have seen conducted in academia — designed to confirm an already generally accepted truth and add bulk (but not authority) to the authors' lists of publications.

And, really, there isn't much that can be done — except possibly to encourage a change in professionals' approach to addictions. Perhaps, for example, if overeating is being equated to a drug addiction, psychologists need to stop treating overeating as a behavioral problem.

But even if they did, that doesn't mean ordinary folks would adjust their attitudes toward the overweight accordingly.

After all, they've been comparing an addiction to nicotine to an addiction to heroin for decades — yet, in spite of such an assessment, people continue to treat smoking cessation as a matter of will power.

But a long–time smoker will tell you that it isn't about will power at all. It's about the powerlessness that smokers experience. And that is not a simple behavioral problem.

What is needed, I guess, is a study that measures people's attitudes. And how to change them.

But that's a marketing problem, I suppose.

The Virtue of Being a Grumpy Old Man

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When I was a teenager, I had a poster on my wall of W.C. Fields shooting pool. A line from the film "My Little Chickadee" — "Anything worth having is worth cheating for" — appeared next to him.

I remember that poster, which was one of many on my bedroom wall. I don't remember when or where I got it, but I'm reasonably sure I got it where people tended to get such things in those days — a record store.

I drew no special meaning from the poster. I simply liked W.C. Fields, who had been dead for a long time before I was born. But he seemed — in what must have been a wave of nostalgia — to be making a comeback in the public consciousness when I was young.

I don't know if I was caught up in this wave of nostalgia. I just know that, when I saw the poster, I had to have it.

But perhaps we are only starting to understand the life lesson Fields had for us.

BBC News reports that feeling grumpy is good for your health.

Honest. And the study sounds like it would melt even Fields' heart.

Apparently, an Australian psychologist says that "miserable people are better at decision–making and less gullible," the BBC reports. And that seems to make sense — to me, at least — the way the BBC explains the findings.

The article doesn't mention whether being grumpy may actually help you live longer, but wouldn't that be a logical conclusion? Perhaps — but you couldn't prove it using Fields (who was perhaps the most famously grumpy old man of all time) as Exhibit A. He died of a stomach ulcer at the age of 66.

I wonder if Lewis Black, now 61, is on track to become the reigning grumpy old man. Even if he outlives Fields, he'll have a long way to go to match Fields for longevity.

He left home at the age of 11 and embarked on a career that lasted more than half a century.

But he always seemed like a grumpy old man to me.