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Here are two letters to the editor taken from the times, with my reactions below each letter. Enjoy!

Re ‘F.D.A. Panel Will Examine Menthol Cigarettes’ (Business Day, March 30):
My question is: Why should Big Tobacco be allowed this deadly exception for menthol when other tobacco flavorings have been banned?
Working in the Bronx community to save lives and dollars from tobacco use, I see the answer every day in our stores and bodegas. The tobacco industry is masterful in manipulative marketing, and mentholated cigarettes target our community, playing on the addictions of our adults and the vulnerability of our youth. It’s time to end this immoral exception. David A. Lehmann
Project Manager
Bronx Smoke-Free Partnership
Bronx, March 30, 2010
Cigarettes are addictive. Give a menthol smoker a pack of unmenthalated cigarettes, and I promise you he’s not going to quit. He’ll bitch, but he’ll bitch with a cigarette in his mouth. Some people smoke pipes, some people smoke cigars. Some people smoke normal cigarettes, some people smoke menthol cigarettes. I wish this blowhard would leave menthol cigarettes alone and let people who want to kill themselves in peace. A person who can’t quit smoking is either fully awhare of the health affects and is purposefully ignoring them or is weak, either way its a personal decision. A final adendom. Mentholated cigarettes are not a deadly exception, as all cigarettes increase the risk of death. They are merely an exception.

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Lo-Sweet, Lo-Fat, Lo-Salt’ (editorial, March 31) was a start, but the next step needs to be addressed — why we are eating unhealthy foods in the first place. Likely culprits are a fast-paced lifestyle that makes grabbing a cookie easier than cutting up an apple; the higher cost of healthier foods, a consideration for those on a budget; and fast-food and other meal-producing companies, taking advantage of these concerns, that promote meals laden with fat, salt and sweeteners.
If only food producers could be given incentives to produce healthy foods within a budget, and we as a society could make the effort to slow down.
Terry Weitzen
Highland Park, N.J., March 31, 2010

fat people are fat because they don’t care enough to change their diet. Just like with the smoking mentioned above, this is a personal decision. Proof positive of this is every person who has successfully lost weight. The fact that most diets fail reflects on the weak willed people who try to diet rather than the strong willed people who diet successfully. Healthy food costs too much? Skip lunch. Buy some goddamned celery, which takes more calories to digest than it contains. Can’t afford healthy food? get some cambles soup, a dollar a can,, 200 calories per can. Have that for lunch. Go on the “Kambles soup diet” which I just made up right now. Three dollars a day. Six hundred calories in three meals. If that’s still too rich for that over colesterated blood, go on the “I will now drink water instead of soda diet,” which is a one step diet. Replace softdrinks and sugary juices with something that is free to all Americans. Water.
Fat is a choice through apathy. Jesus christ. I want to punch some people in the face. And because I go to the gym, that punch will hurt.