Population level metrics such as Body Mass Index (BMI) or statistical correlation using epidemiology don't do much to inform individual experience, and psychology faces the same issue. Surveys can tell us whatever surveys can tell us about what a particular group of people taking surveys think, but there is a reason that no polling group does well with Congressional districts that are contentious. It simply doesn't work. As we learned when we first believed the anti-vaccine problem was a fringe religious issue, what people claim on surveys is not their behavior.(1)

In modern American culture, two exploratory fields in science compete to scare the public or suggest the promise of miracle cures; epidemiology and studies in mice.

Though Europe and Asia still smoke far more cigarettes than intelligent people should, and therefore cancer rates due to that will stay high for another 20 years or more, the clear trend in lifestyle diseases is obesity-related ones.

That is actually a win, and far better than the bleak Population Bomb promoted by people like John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich just a few decades ago. Though there is still famine in parts of the world, they are parts of the world where groups opposed to science can manipulate people who don't trust outsiders or understand the technology, no differently than than distrust vaccines. The peaks and valleys of food have leveled out so famine is only going to decrease.

The Powering Past Coal Alliance(1) wants to phase out coal power but are hampered by limited membership who don't have to face economic realities. Finland has different energy sources available than China has. And China is not going to be bullied by Finland, Denmark, or anyone else.

Ever since President Clinton turned the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 into law, taking away federal authority over food and supplements unless bodies started dropping, the US Food and Drug Administration has been a little timid in doing the things it should do. Obviously it still approves products, but it has acted more like an agency buffeted by politics. When grassroots vaping caused smoking to drop, they responded to narrow political interests on the coasts, who were supported by both pharmaceutical and cigarette money, and basically declared all non-pharmaceutical smoking cessation products should be banned.(1)

Is it sacred land if it's two and a half miles in the air and only a few elites were allowed to visit on penalty of death for anyone else?