"Diet Mountain Dew" (alternately spelled as "Diet Mtn Dew" and originally titled "Diet Mt. Obesity. Medicare, the federal health care program that covers 55 million seniors and disabled people, has never included insurance for routine dental services. Oral care practitioners are familiar with the term "Mountain Dew Mouth," as the particular brand has far more acid and sugar in comparison to other sodas. Its poor and thats probably being kind, Ebersole said in an interview last month in Lexington, but I cant say it's that much worse than a lot of the nation. The town was the "hub" of eight "coal camps" located along the outskirts of the town. Appalachia is an ancient land - one of the oldest mountain systems on Earth. 3. So millions of Americans go without dental insurance. are in the service sector, yet these jobs are hard to come by without a certain degree of oral health. Appalachia is less racially and ethnically diverse . The man, who proclaimed that Appalachia had been raped, now wanted to rape certain Appalachian people of their ability to procreate. Named after mountain slang for moonshine, Mountain Dew was sold to Pepsi in 1964, where the soda went national. My aunt on my father's side would actually put mountain dew in her kids' baby bottles. Appalachians are portrayed as individuals who are unable to get out of their own way problems caused by excessive Mountain Dew consumption. With limited benefits through Medicaid and no benefits through Medicare, in order to receive insurance, people must purchase private plans or employer-provided plans. Sixty-five percent of our women are on Kentucky Medicaid, Todd-Langston, manager of the Trover Center for Women's Health, told me. He had downed 4 more beers since we left Pats house, so thats 24 beers. The town sprang up after the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and Southern Railroad made a junction there in 1890. "If we aren't gaining any ground, isn't it time to revise our strategy?" I remember . His mother became a drug addict with a series of husbands or boyfriends. January 15, 2021. Public health . This narrow and extensive mountain system parallels the eastern coast of North America for nearly 2,000 miles. She's received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study the problem. Mostdental insurance limits annual benefits to between $1,000 and $1,500 per personthis cap has hardly changed since the mid-'80s, despite inflation. When initial strategies to remedy their pain, such as nonprescription medicines, failed, many resorted to seeing a dentist. Just, turn off your brain before you read this post, folks. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Your email address will not be published. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Why would this kind of line-in-the-sand stance about a beverage come hundreds (er, thousands) of cans into a relationship? Many lives were lost. This unique name is an uncommon name for boys but it a unique name. Mountain Dew bottles by Shutterstock/Darios. 1 in the nation in toothlessness. On top of that, without municipal water systems, people rely on well water, which is unfluoridated or they drink more Mountain Dew to quench their thirst. As Healthline tells us, the sugar in sodas reacts with the bacteria in our mouths to form a dangerous acid, breaking down the protective layers in your teeth and causing cavities. My consumption of Diet Mountain Dew ensures that Im served a double shot of shamecomplete with Backwoods Barbie stereotypeon a fairly regular basis. Mammoth Cave in west-central Kentucky spans 420 milesmore than twice the size of the second-longest,. 2. A study published in theNation Bureau of Economic Research found that a missing tooth can result in a loss of $720 of earnings (and178 million peopleare missing at least one tooth). Today, theres a Mountain Dew to suit every tastefrom Code Red (cherry) to Baja Blast (lime)and enough generic knockoffs with names like Mountain Lion, Mountain Lightning and Mountain Holler to really put an exclamation point on the rural connection. View larger map Learn More About Subregions Appalachia Then and Now "And we can identify them in the tissues of newborn infants as well. He concluded that Appalachia could not be fixed because its people were broken. Family and friends stopped by to share stories, complain about hardships and seek advice for problems. Brothers Barney and Ally Hartman, who had moved their business from Augusta, GA, to Knoxville in 1932, initially bottled a lemon-lime mixer they jokingly called Mountain Dew, a 19th century nickname for moonshine, for their own after-hours consumption. Id like to think if you cut me open a little Diet Mountain Dew would be right there in my bloodstream, hovering just below the surface, like the homesickness that never quite goes away. Kentuckys oral health? Unstable people beget instability. 'Children of the Mountains': Full Show An introduction to Diane Sawyer's in depth look at the people of Appalachia. In the south-east mountains of the United States this word is often used instead of hollow; A small rising valley region between two hills or mountains; often containing a creek. This often resulted in elaborate ATV trails because it was the cheapest and most popular reclamation option. When we got back to Pats house, I was given a crushed up Loratab to snort for the pain. And by quite a wide margin, one might add. Use of thesesubstances is rampant in Appalachia; a single Kentucky county filled prescriptions for over 2 million doses of painkillers last year, which is about 150 doses for every man, woman and child. Im someone who people think shouldin so many wordsknow better. We can identify the [bacterial] footprints from oral infections in heart tissues. Reproduction of material from any Salon pages without written permission is strictly prohibited. This article was expanded into a full-length book,Night Comes to Cumberlands. Great Britain. You dont have to work to read this book. As soon as it aired on February 7, 2016, the Super Bowl ad for Mountain Dew's energy drink "Kickstart" was trending online. ", Beneath all the systemic diseases linked to bad oral health, Ebersole argued, is a disastrous healthcare system in which oral health is considered a luxury. Less than 300 feet into our journey home, we rolled and tumbled. The Appalachian folk song was written in 1928. Back in 2009, Priscilla Harris, an associate professor at the Appalachian College of Law, issued the first battle cry in the war against Mountain Dew mouth with a legal brief titled "Undoing the Damage of the Dew," which explores how the drink became ingrained in the region's culture. Jin Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images On pages 228-229, Vance writes about instability in working-class families, due to relationship instability. Nothing great will ever come from consuming yellow dye #5. The basic principle in CenteringPregnancy, Rising told me in her suburban Washington, D.C., office, is that almost any group of people drawn together in a common health concern will be more motivated to alter their behavior than will a single patient hearing instructions alone in a doctors office. And Part 2 explored the link between transportation and healthcare. As the story goes, John F Kennedy read Caudills book and quickly moved to set up the Presidents Appalachian Regional Commission in order to take a closer look at what was happening in Appalachia. Mountain Dew - Willie Nelson. It's sort of like folks don't really believe them, but since their parents or grandparents said them they say them just in case they might be true . This year marks the 50th anniversary of Lyndon B Johnsons January 1964 State of the Union address. Chaotic people beget chaos. Mountain Dew is mountain slang for "whiskey"; the phrase appears in Irish folk songs from the late 19th century and in an American folk song protesting Prohibition. "They do their own weight and their own blood pressure measures. 5. This is why the folks of Appalachia reacted strongly to an honest look at some of its most impoverished people.. But did that make him a bad dad? Singer says she would like to see West Virginia and other states in Appalachia try this approach. The taste of Appalachia . I think it valuable for us to question how we arrive at the meaning of poverty. Once a month, a University of Kentucky dentist also joins the group for oral treatment. These stories grew out of reporting assignments for Kaiser Health News. Time and time again, Appalachians are portrayed as individuals who are unable to get out of their own waythe kind of people who must have change enacted upon them in order to better themselves. For 10 years, Otto researched and conducted interviews about oral health in America, traveling across the country attending beauty pageants and clinics, talking to dentists and patients alike. Even if you might not crack open a bottle in your lifetime, I encourage you to take a moment and imagine a highly carbonated, nose-tickling bubble and a tart-sweet, citrusy flavor thats similar to a church picnic punch on steroids. The sun was setting and flashing red lights from an ambulance and several cop cars were lighting up the sky on the Ohio side of the river. Today most of the time the superstitions are said in a joking manner. Growing up in Eastern Kentucky, Mountain Dew was not a novelty, not an ironic goofjust simply a way of life. Its just especially galling to see it done by someone claiming insider status. No national news outlet, it seems, cares to shine a real light on the deep and profound problems (drug wars, economic stagnation, post-coal mine environmental havoc) facing the area that causes people to place their health on the backburner and, more often than not, fall on the crutch of unhealthy food and drink. See other posts by Stacy here. I look around the classmates with whom I grew up in Appalachia and the family that has lived deep in Appalachia for generations, and I see little like the generalizations Vance applies. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. I watched as they trekked back and forth in it, finding great pleasure in turning their ATVs into boats. Both sodas and energy drinks, he says, "are more damaging than food.". Sorry, but no. Well, Ive hated it for about 3 years now for its misconceptions of Appalachia and its peoples (plural). While millions of Americans suffer because of their teeth, another portion of America supports a $110 billion-a-year dental industry, investing in procedures such as gum contouring and spending up to $2,000 on a single veneer. Nearlyhalf of the people in Kentucky, and 25 percent of the national population, depend exclusively on well water, posing a threat tonatural resources as well as peoples teeth. Figuring out how to chip away at problems so deeply embedded in a region is astronomically much more complicated than a micro lens shot of a single caffeinated beverage. SALON is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon.com, LLC. When, in 2006, Todd-Langston got a call from Jeffrey Ebersole proposing to establish a full dental service for pregnant moms, she said it was like a gift from heaven. My camera was strapped around my neck, resting against my back. Basic education, says Harris, is also needed: "We also just need to let people know that you can drink these drinks safely, but they can also do harm. no food stuff is more personal to me, more deeply burrowed into my sense of identity than Diet Mountain Dew. The distinction between dental care and health care extends to insurance. After getting an x-ray and having the tooth extracteda procedure that would have cost from $600 to $800 in a regular dentist's office Matello left the clinic, wondering why people who work hard and put faith in their government for help are obligated to endure such demeaning treatment. Lack of accessible medical care is still a reality for thousands, particularly women and young mothers. The problem isnt lack of doctors or even access to standard OB-GYN service. The phrase is inherently noxious. You could assign this in high school if it didnt have cuss words. That this violence and abuse was somehow innate to what they were, caused by the culture from which they had come. This legend centers around the Bell family. Appalachia has a high concentration of these natural voids, including the world's longest. Geography does play an important role, though. Would people feel like they could tease if I didnt have a fleck of twang in my voice, if I didnt slide deeper into my mountain accent after a couple of drinks? No. 1. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. A Mountain Dew Code Red, that is. Don't give up, though. Today, coal has left Appalachia, as have a host of other industries that brought economic opportunity. The poverty rate in Appalachia is 17.1% (the national poverty rate is 14.7%), and 87% of the region's 420 counties have more than 1.5 times the U.S. poverty rate. But dentists beg to differ. Associated Press articles: Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. My father was one of 11 children, and my mother is one of five. It is wickedly acidic and (if youre drinking the less aspartame-influenced variety) highly caloric. Growing up in Eastern Kentucky, Mountain Dew (and its diet counterpart, my beverage of choice) was an omnipresent force, its signature emerald-tinged, translucent 20-ounce bottles filling up coolers at backyard barbecues and littering the weed-lined backroads. Should I credit all this to their hillbilly heritage? The Real Winners of World Press Photo 2014: The Palestinians. The Region also comprises three federally recognized and five state recognized Native American Tribal Communities, with Tribal entities in Appalachian Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, New York, and North Carolina. How could I feel ashamed in my own house? Vance has chosen the version of his life to tell, and he chooses to emphasize what fits his narrative. BIBLIOGRAPHY. Instability begets instability. Oops. He came to believe that Appalachias gene pool had been watered down by inbreeding among what he called dullards who lived on welfare in remote mountain hollers (1). In more national conversations, it often seems to take up this stunt double role, particularly when addressing rural poverty. No one I met on the trails that day mentioned the rape of Appalachia nor did anyone mentioned that they missed the mountain. Vance also was lucky in that his book came out last year, while the national media was looking for someone to explain Trumps popularity with rural and Rust Belt whites. They offer the services they can, provide prescriptions for painkillers and antibiotics, and recommend a dental clinic for a follow-up. Before being bought by PepsiCo, Mountain Dew was invented in Tennessee in the heart of Appalachia. Various states, from Florida to Tennessee, have proposed bills that would restrict the use of SNAP to buy soda, sugary treats or other unhealthful foods. The fact that it IS a narrative is one big reason why his book has gotten the attention it has, when more deserving explanations of Appalachian culture and history have been perhaps overlooked. 1974. If others of us dont see that or dont see only that, and are tired of it being the focus Vance has already preemptively inoculated himself from such criticism. See our ethics policy. However, clinics are often too crowded to meet the demand. 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