Thread by @AlexandraErin

There's more than one cause of this (as there is for everything) but when I hear it phrased like that I can't help but think about how much we have relied on moralization and stigmatization in place of health education, in all aspects of life.

https://twitter.com/lenubienne/status/1479478256772558849

We've got a culture that largely gave up on teaching kids to like vegetables (and teaching parents how to help them do so) in favor of the message "No one likes eating vegetables, but you have to do it, because it's good for you."

Our compulsory physical education involves games but in a "You've got to play this sportsball because today we're playing this sportsball" way, with a lot of bullying and sanctioning of bullying, and adolescent anxiety multipliers built into the system.

Honestly, the enduring power of Flintstones vitamins even in decades where there isn't much Flintstones merchandise to fly off the shelf might be because it's like the *one* aspect of US health culture that's like, "You know this doesn't have to suck, right?"

You want kids to take vitamins? Chewable. Cartoon characters (albeit from a primetime sitcom from the actual stone ages). Fruit flavors. Added sugar.

In this light, I find myself less surprised at how many people immediately fought the very idea of masking like a cartoon kid fighting off a serving of vegetables: this is how life has prepared us to react to anything that's good for us.

Hee. And while I was double-checking that Flintstones vitamins do still exist and do have added sugar, the first result was a blog post condemning them for having sugar and urging adults to therefore stop taking them.

https://twitter.com/NaomiKritzer/status/1479486691736010753

Honestly, when you put it like that, this is probably a part of how avocados became the intergenerational symbol of transgressive indulgence? Green veggies* aren't supposed to be a treat!

(*I am aware, thank you.)

https://twitter.com/moofable/status/1479487282897903618

...and just realized how this all dovetails in with "Keep isolated, unless you have work"-style guidance, and possibly also the repeated irrational insistence that we could/should "isolate the vulnerable but why should I, a healthy, suffer?"

As the people making that claim doubtlessly have internalized that their relative current healthiness is down to the morally correct suffering they've already done, while the vulnerable are no doubt vulnerable because they didn't choose to suffer correctly enough.

In their mind, isolation is a punishment that the vulnerable justly deserve, while they themselves deserve to avoid it.