No one thing is wrong with the prevailing American diet, and no one-nutrient-at-a-time remedy will right it any more than a single part represents the whole elephant in the room. We need to see that elephant -- and develop a better recipe.

We have a natural environment. And a world of fast-food drive-through restaurants, fax machines, escalators and email is not it. The nutritional environment we live in is toxic to us. The effects of that toxicity are rampant chronic disease and epidemic obesity.

Only by knowing Mik-tal's endowment to us can we hope to meet the challenges of the modern world. Our efforts to find our way home begin by knowing where home is, and where we are now. Our efforts to achieve dietary health begin by knowing ourselves.

This particular morning in mid-April was quite chilly, although clear. In fact, the early suffusion of sunlight was promising a day of great beauty. Not that Michelle was listening to such promises. Far too busy. And besides, the climate inside was always perfect.

If we got down to the bedrock of true prevention -- lifestyle as preventive medicine -- we could add years to life, add life to years, and save a whole lot of money by putting to use the science and sense long at our disposal.

The issue of personal responsibility for health and weight control comes up frequently in my professional circles, generating strong and opposing views. I have addressed this theme recently -- and many times in the past -- and expressed my own opinions.

BVO is much in the news of late. This is the ingredient a teenage girl noticed in her Gatorade, prompting her to find out what it was. Her investigation revealed potential health risks associated with BVO, and she started an online petition to get this ingredient out of her sports drink.

Blood pressure is best treated holistically. Severe or poorly-managed stress could be the reason for it, and if so, blood pressure is merely a sign of the underlying condition. Always best to look for causes -- and treat as close to them as possible.

I share my colleagues' visceral opposition to everything Coke. But I think we may be letting our abdominal viscera get the better of vital organs situated higher up.

We are either a product of brute biology -- how we are designed -- or of culture, and designs of our own. To some extent, inevitably, it must be both. But how the balance is struck is itself subject to evolution, and we may lend a guiding hand. We may mix the batter.

Many unpatentable modalities in the realm of complementary and alternative medicine do not inspire huge and costly trials. We need such trials to know for sure what does and doesn't work. In the absence of them, we need to avoid a rush to judgment.

We have gained too much from the reductionistic probings of science to abandon them. But we are losing much -- including lives every day -- for failing to see past them as the circumstances warrant.

The trouble is, like most misfortunes of health, mental health disorders come to us across a spectrum. In some cases, they are merely troubling, and do not rise to the level of renouncing personal autonomy. In some cases, they are so extreme as to be all but unmanageable.

At the population level, epidemic obesity is incontrovertibly established as a clear and all-but-omnipresent danger. It is absurd to suggest otherwise. And it's those who do so -- who play ping-pong with science -- who frighten the hell out of me.

Hanging on to a bit more of our money might sound good until the day of reckoning, whenever and however it arrives, when our flight is ending and our landing becomes salient. At that point, we are apt to find ourselves wishing for... a pool.

Happy ever after is possible after all -- if we tally the reasons for it in one another's eyes. And remember why we started to keep that tally. And remember to keep on doing so. And remember to remember.

Children trying to overcome the burdens of obesity on their health and self-image are routinely obligated to weather a daily storm of bullying, abuse, and derision. They are denied the solace of friendship -- and often turn to food for comfort.

My opinion is that the next big thing in health promotion will be a rediscovery, and reaffirmation, of the family. Because children and parents shape one another's culture. Because adults and kids will get to health together, or probably not at all. Because in unity, there is strength.