Food for Thought

The layers of reasons why people in the U.S. and here in our own city of New Orleans live unhealthy lifestyles are many and rather complex.  I’ve been dwelling on them for a couple of weeks now – you could almost say that I have been losing sleep over it because it’s such an intricate matter.

Billions of dollars are spent on education, research, lobbying, and regulations in order to reverse the current health trends in this country…so what are the major reasons why we still have the same (and increased) problems with obesity, diabetes, heart diseases, etc.

Is it a matter of education, accessibility or poor decision making?

I haven’t found the answers or solutions to explain why…but I narrowed it down to those three components.

Education

There are still plenty of Americans who don’t know the difference between good unsaturated fats and bad saturated fats or appropriate caloric and salt allowance; they still can’t read food labels.  They don’t get the negative effects process foods have on our health. Many folks also still don’t get all the benefits of daily exercise, taking a multi-vitamin, getting adequate sleep and stress management.

To some extent, it’s hard to understand this fact because of how readily available all of this information is…it’s on the news, TV shows, magazines, newspapers, blogs, radio…pretty much everywhere.  But it is a reality that for some people; the concept of living a healthy lifestyle which includes a balanced diet and exercise is completely foreign.

Accessibility

Accessibility is an entirely different issue.  We really don’t have to look very far for an example and the difference accessibility makes.  Let’s for example look at Uptown compared to the Bywater (Upper 9thWard)  and Lower 9thWard.  The comparison of accessible fitness establishments and grocery stores in the Uptown area compared to the Bywater and Lower 9thWard is astounding.

Nationwide, USDA estimates that 23.5 million people, including 6.5 million children, live in low-income areas that are more than a mile from a supermarket. Of the 23.5 million, 11.5 million are low-income individuals in households with incomes at or below 200% of the poverty line. Of the 2.3 million people living in low-income rural areas that are more than 10 miles from a supermarket, 1.1 million are low-income.

If you have no accessibility to healthy options…or your neighborhood isn’t safe for walking or sports and there are no fitness facilities or you can’t afford a membership to a gym – what are you suppose to do?  This is definitely the type of initiatives and problems that the Tulane Prevention Research Center is tackling with support of the Federal Government and the local Government.  Hopefully, they will get  more support from the local Government once our new Mayor, Mitch Landrieu,  is sworn in.

As New Orleans continues with her re-building efforts, we have an opportunity to make sure every neighborhood; no matter the level of income of the residents, has accessibility to a proper grocery store and health and fitness facility.

Poor Decision Making

Although tackling the accessibility issue is a major undertaking – I somewhat believe this particularly issue of constant and repeated poor decision making is more disheartening.  The culprits of this issue normally have both the education and access but choose to make the wrong choices.

We’re sadly talking about people who don’t take care about themselves and therefore choose to live unhealthy lifestyles.  People who either work too much, “are too busy”, don’t care, party too much, and are full of excuses as to why they can’t take care of their health.

In reality, these are the people who have no excuses but choose to kill themselves instead of prolonging their lives by making healthy decisions.  How do you get someone to care about their health who knows about all the risks they are putting themselves in…but still don’t want to change?

I don’t necessarily have any answers or solutions…I just wanted to share what is starting to keep me up at night. What are your thoughts on the matter?