Lost in the U.S. health care debate is whether the country's citizens are hurting themselves with bad habits. The bottom line is mixed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Americans are imbibing alcohol and overeating more yet are smoking less (black lines in center graphs).
Some of the behaviors have patterns; others do not. Obesity is heaviest in the Southeast (2010 maps). Smoking is concentrated there as well. Excess drinking is high in the Northeast.
Comparing 2010 and 1995 figures provides the greatest insight into trends (maps, far right). Heavy drinking has worsened in 47 states, and obesity has expanded in every state. Tobacco use has declined in all states except Oklahoma and West Virginia. The “good” habit, exercise, is up in many places—even in the Southeast, where it has lagged.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ONLINE
Full details for each state are available at ScientificAmerican.com/oct2012/graphic-science
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Add CommentI believe all of the relatively recent anti-smoking propaganda has helped wean our country off of smoking, which is a good thing. But, our continued subsidies for corn and soybeans have lowered the cost of products like high fructose corn syrup and soy lecithin, which are now in the majority of low cost processed foods. I believe that these subsidies are a major cause for Americans getting fatter, and are ultimately driving up our health care cost due to the increase of obesity related diseases. Instead of subsidizing corn and soybeans so heavily, I believe it would be more beneficial to subsidize organically grown fruits and vegetables, like spinach, carrots, blueberries, melons, apples, and avocados. As for the alcohol consumption increase, I believe we should make anti-alcohol propaganda commercials showing the dangers of heavy drinking and blast those in a similar fashion to the anti-smoking commercials a few years ago.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, and Sa gets further and further left and more biased everyday. IT really gets bad when the Scientific community has to bias its works to suit its politacl views. In the 50s and 60s scientific works were for everyone one and could be counted on to be accurate and non-partisan. Not today. Enough left bias is injected into modern science to make much of it uncredible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi believe you're confused. look at the map. Mississippi is not tops in exercise at all.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHave we reached EQUAL status with Russia (getting BLASTED on vodka) ; - or do they still have the WORLD CHAMPION status for alcohol consumption? Where do THEY stand (relative to the U.S.) on drinking, tobacco use, obesity & exercise???
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's a lot harder to demonstrate bias with facts than just to make accusations. What's left or right about health anyway?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(except that conservatives care less about those with poorer health - a demonstrated fact)
Obesity is a disease of addiction, just like alcoholism, researchers have found. This makes scientific sense, for, after all, in both cases we are dealing with physiological sugar addiction.The fact that alcohol is caused from sugar in its fermented state is just a variation on the theme of addictiveness (which means a nice profit for the state coffers,left and right, thanks to tax revenues! The unhealthy concentration of animal fats in junk foods means a further clogging of brain cells; so it's our own lifestyle curriculum vitae that's paving the way en route to Dementia, with optional stopovers at Cirrhosis, Pancreatitis, and Diabetes...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConsider this alternative: Colorific Manifesto ( Free ebook)
The tragedy of Industrial Agriculture has seen to it that our food chain no longer supplies us with natural and healthy foods containing real food ingredients grown by virtue of Mother Nature. All the way across the board, all consumables offered through the food chain are comprised of genetically engineered food .... and the purpose for modifying what we can buy at our local grocery store was not to make it better or more healthy; because we had the real thing - and since all of the good natural seeds for everything grown in the earth are long gone, I venture to say that we shall never again be able to acquire anything except fake, genetically engineered and modified food.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI might add, that any kind of gene can be incorporated into the seed: so that if a more obese society of consumers was desired, they can simply alter the genetic make-up of a given food product to literally contain the right stuff to foster weight-gain.
One only has to take a look at the big picture and it is abundantly clear that since the small-scale farmer was shoved out of business and replaced by the large-scale government-regulated & Monsanto-owned industrial agriculture growing fields, that every adverse health-related issue has gone on the rise. We can attribute the marked increase of every disease in age groups never before seen, to the advent of Industrial Agriculture. All on the rise, just to name a few, are: Diabetes, Cancer, Multiple endocrine disorders and afflictions, Obesity, Mental Health states, Heart and lung disorders, Cholesterol readings through the roof .....
And the toxic run-off from the fields infiltrates rural water supplies with countless pesticides, insecticides, fungicides & herbicides that only Industrial Agriculture requires.
If you think the drastic and unwarranted alteration of the only food we have available to us has nothing to do with all this, think again.
In closing, an issue relevant to food production, there is another critically important question you should ask yourself: When a government has dumped money for decades into developing & perfecting "Weather Modification"; why don't they utilize this technology they have perfected, for the very crisis for which it was developed - that being "Drought"? They know quite well how to make it rain - they've done it since 1947. Why haven't they utilized it to alleviate "the worst drought in history"?? If they made it rain in order to save all the crops, then they could hardly claim a "Shortage of Food", and jack the prices way up; then, could they?
Not quite sure what your particular mental illness is but you really should get help.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGraph of the Week did a three-part series on weight gain in the United States. Alcohol is not a contributing factor (anymore than it was 100 years ago). Sitting too much, high fructose corn syrup - these are the factors we should be paying attention to. http://www.graphoftheweek.org/2012/06/body-weight-in-united-states-part-1.html
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