A Square Meal, Palliative Health Care

America’s Great Depression Food Legacy Guest: Andrew Coe, Authors of “A Square Meal” Depressing. There’s really no other word to describe the cuisine of the Great Depression as explored in the new book, “A Square Meal.” Loaves of mystery ingredients, chopped meat in white sauce on slices of white bread, casseroles swimming in cream of chicken soup, “salads” made of canned fruit mixed with gelatin and mayonnaise.  All of those things still show up at church potlucks. They don’t represent the finest that American food has to offer, that’s for sure. But for some reason, the culinary influence of the Great Depression stays with us. And with the feasting and potluck holiday season upon us, what better time to consider the origins of these quintessentially American offerings?  Dying Well - The Role of Palliative Care Guest: Timothy Ihrig, MD, Palliative Care Physician and CEO of Ihrig MD & Associates The end comes for all of us. Some, like 100-year-old Robert Allman in Tennessee, will have a surprising number of years to check things off our bucket list: last month Allman parachuted out of an airplane. For others, the end will come suddenly and too soon. But many of us will spend time in a middle zone, declining unevenly with age or suffering from a long illness or faced with a fast-moving terminal one. How to make sure those days, months, and years are spent comfortably, and with dignity – that’s the goal of palliative care. The field is generally misunderstood.  A third of US hospitals don’t even offer it to their patients.  But, the growing concern over health care costs in America has given palliative care more of a place in the conversation. Unnecessary interventions at the end of life cost a lot of money and also tend to cause more pain and heartache for patients and their families.