As I read kat's post of 08-Jan-02 - 04:22 PM, I thought of Jim Fixx, author of "The Complete Book of Running" (1977), and I looked up a brief bio on him. Fixx is credited as a major impetus behind the US's raised consciousness with regard to fitness, yet died of a heart attack while running at the age of 52. Oddly enough, he was born the same year as Dave Thomas (birthdate: April 23, 1932).

So, promoting a healthy lifestyle won't necessarily help one to live longer. Since Thomas was adopted, I suppose we'll never know what role genetics may have played in his health problems. But we do know that he was a businessman... and, let's face it, if he'd promoted healthy eating while he was building his business – with fast-food joints all around him – his business might well have failed, and with it any hope for philathropic uses for his profits.

As kat observes, he did provide many healthier alternatives to hamburgers and fries on his menu, an innovative stroke that "Mickey D's" and "BK" are only weakly imitating. If the kids of today know little about balanced nutrition and are easily swayed by ads for fast food, their parents are responsible for not making balanced food choices for their children and for not teaching them the importance of sales resistance in this advertising-glutted world.

For whatever non-nutritional choices he may have made in his own diet, I think that all in all Thomas made pretty damned good use of his 69 years.