Healthy Future US Blog

The headline reads: Cancer Deaths Decline 27% Over 25 Years But the subheadline reads, rather ominously:  Improvement reflects reduced smoking but obesity could influence future projections Yes, indeed:  the American Cancer Society declares that obesity has ALREADY become the second biggest preventable cause of cancer, after smoking.  And the Mayo Clinic reinforces that with the slogan:  "Sitting is the New Smoking." We reached our highest cancer mortality rate in the early 1990s, following inevitably after our highest cigarette smoking rate in the early 1960s...        ...Yet we haven't even reached our highest child and adult obesity rates yet. So look for a big uptick in obesity-related cancer in the coming decades, as we continue to neglect to address the main obesity root causes: inactivity & unhealthy nutrition. We can pray for a miracle cancer cure to emerge in the meantime.  But we can also do something much more concrete and certain, now:  Ramp u

Sorry for another Downer but... The 3rd biannual Physical Activity for Children and Youth, 2018 US Report Card was published recently.  No surprise: the USA received a D- grade for overall child physical activity. One thing I like about these report cards, even though the data are imperfect and the bad news is daunting:  they get media attention.  Both Cronkite News and the local CBS and independent TV affiliate have contacted us about this so far. One of their initial takes: well, at least Arizona is more fit than most other states.  Boy, that is looking hard for a silver-lining in a very dark cloud. This Report Card measures fitness by % of children who are overweight or obese--using BMI: Body Mass Index.  This is not a great approach for measuring fitness. (We all know that kids--and adults--can be fit yet overweight, or unfit though normal weight.)  But BMI is a readily available proxy statistic that is roughly comparable across all states. And the really bad news:  th