Bases on Health, Life and Fitness we made the worst list at #9 for men and # 11 for women
Worst cities for men to live in:
1. Charleston, WV
2. St. Louis, MO
3. Las Vegas, NV
4. St. Petersburg, FL
5. Birmingham, AL
6. Memphis, TN
7. Bakersfield, CA
8. Riverside, CA
9. Jacksonville, FL
10. Detroit, MI
http://www.menshealth.com/metrogrades/09-jan-feb/best-worst.html
St. Pete! I guess that means if you're a guy in St. Pete then your on your way out. :)
No surprise. So many in this city enjoy a steady diet of takeout chinese food, fried chicken, cheeseburgers and pizza. Have you seen what kids get served at school? It's disgusting.
^
And the crap getting served in schools is only the beginning. I could spend a whole thread on that issue.
But I digress.
Once the kids get fed the slop at school, they eat the take-out slop that their parents buy for them because they don't have the time or the desire to cook something more healthy for the family.
Then the kids don't go outside and play and get exercise, because they have a Wii, XBox, and PS3. The ones their parents bought for them. To entertain them.
Then they grow up to be obese young adults. Who have kids. And it starts anew.
I blame the parents.
Quote from: Doctor_K on January 06, 2009, 01:34:58 PM
^
And the crap getting served in schools is only the beginning. I could spend a whole thread on that issue.
But I digress.
Once the kids get fed the slop at school, they eat the take-out slop that their parents buy for them because they don't have the time or the desire to cook something more healthy for the family.
Then the kids don't go outside and play and get exercise, because they have a Wii, XBox, and PS3. The ones their parents bought for them. To entertain them.
Then they grow up to be obese young adults. Who have kids. And it starts anew.
I blame the parents.
Here, here.
This list is silly
So I'm supposed to believe Madison WI & St Paul MN, where people are forced to spend 6 months of the year indoors (because if you go outside you might die) is better for your health then sunny warm Jax FL.
I was trail biking in Ft. Clinch day after Xmas not on my couch bundled up painting pictures of mallards and riddled with cabin fever.
Nobody stays indoors during the winter in those places... There is too much to do! Downhill Skiing, x country skiing, sledding, snowshoeing, snowmobiling, ice fishing. Staying warm burns calories! :)
Forgot ice skating... :D
http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=21484
I don't anyone who does those activities at -20 degrees.
I was plenty warm during the holidays right here in Jax... wearing shorts.
I used to live in Madison, WI and trust me, the people there are way more fit and healthy than here. In fact I'm more out of shape living here than I was up there. During spring, summer and fall the running and rollerblading trails are jam packed. During the winter, people do all kinds of outdoor sports and many still run in cold weather, at least down to about 0. Students at UW bike and walk everywhere and it isn't uncommon to encounter households that only have one car with one or more family members who bike or walk/run to work. Madison has invested a lot of money in bike paths/trails all over the city and people use them. When I lived on the outskirts of the city I used to bike into downtown (about 9 miles) hang out at the lake with friends and then bike home. And there they actually build bike lanes next to car lanes. Jacksonville has what? Eighth avenue and Hendricks with bike lanes? Come on. Jacksonville has earned its crappy rating. Please don't defend this city. I will say that people who live near Jax Beach are probably a bit more healthy because many depend less on cars. The rest of the city was built for cars and continues to build more and more roads and it shows. Look at how many subdivisions here don't even have sidewalks! I could go on and on, but I'll save you the rest of my rant.
I didn't check out the links yet, but I'll assume that these cities are the unhealthiest cities in america (Though it was Huntington and not Charleston that got that official distinction from the CDC this year).
And if that is the case, it means something very different from a list of best cities to stay healthy...Just because many people around me are overweight or inactive doesn't mean it has any effect on me and my own health. As long as there are gyms I can go to, places to obtain good food, and weather that is conducive to outdoor activity, I'm gonna be just fine.
My two cents.
I'll add...my comment wasnt to say that all places are equal. Some are more conducive to a healthier lifestyle, I think particularly walkable cities that more or less require you to use your feet to get around and good economic regions that allow you to live healthier...
but still...the healthiest populations list is a different barometer than the best places to live healthy lives.
QuoteNo surprise. So many in this city enjoy a steady diet of takeout chinese food, fried chicken, cheeseburgers and pizza.
Is that not everywhere?
If you are in MN, WI, you are out and about in -20 degrees. It is a much more active lifestyle up there. How will people in Jacksonville get out and walk more when we put a bus stop every two blocks for them, provide no sidewalks or cracked and broken up sidewalks, or surround them with homeless people where they want to walk (river walk) where they can be attacked physically or harassed for money, or have drinks and pennies thrown at you from cars...why should they walk? There is a lot the city, JSO, and the neighborhoods could do to promote a better, healthier lifestyle. Many cities and states have taken the steps to do so (zoning out fast food drive thrus and creating safe clean walking routes, adding bike lanes, and ticketing jerks who try to hit bikers and pedestrians or throw trash anywhere and everywhere. Of course in Springfield you have the whole termite issue, a swarm could kill you....for some reason I guess they are only here, not San Marco or Riverside, or anywhere else in Jacksonville ;)
QuotePlease don't defend this city.
Absurd
So you were cross country skiing and roller blading everday up in WI then moved to theis blackhole of exsersize & diet and became a slob?
I need more than the "just is" excuse on why it's more condusive for healthy living.
WI = cross country skiing
JAX = Street biking
WI = ice skating
JAX = roller blading
WI = Snow boarding
JAX = Surfing
The side walks are cracked? Theirs bums? Sounds like something that mace on your key chain and good pair of Nike's would fix.
Quote from: Coolyfett on January 06, 2009, 07:22:42 PM
QuoteNo surprise. So many in this city enjoy a steady diet of takeout chinese food, fried chicken, cheeseburgers and pizza.
Is that not everywhere?
I really don't think it is. I have lived in Seattle and it's not like that. I have also spent time in Minneapolis and it's not.
You make it sound as if temperature is some kind of limiting factor for outdoors enjoyment and exercise...
Here is the truth in temp... As you can see -20 is more an anomaly than the norm.
(http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/msn-tts-2008.gif)
Shwaz, think about it for a second.
When a municipality puts so many roadblocks in the way of integrating exercise into daily living but making it dangerous to walk or jog or bike outside don't you think that has a huge effect on the population AS A WHOLE? I am not talking about really motivated outliers who join gyms and pencil in working out come hell or high water. That is not what this survey is about. As far as cracked sidewalks how do a pair of nikes help with trying not to trip every two feet. have you ever tried to jog or even walk on these crappy sidewalks? They are a lawsuit waiting to happen. Impossible to navigate without picking your way carefully over them. Complete booby trap city. Say goodbye to your teeth. Also a much larger percentage of the population is Jax are smokers and proud of it. That alone causes way more health problems than lack of exercise or being overweight combined.
It has nothing to do with takeout or Pizza. Or school lunches (that's just silly). It has nothing to do with anything I've seen mentioned yet. The truth is Jacksonville has a very large poverty rate in the Urban Core. My fiancée was just showing me yesterday the statistics for volunteer work she is doing with the Azalea Project. The core is where the city's diabetes, obesity, STD, infant mortality, lowest life expectancy .. you name it is concentrated. It's also the highest density of Jacksonville’s population. So all of the warm weather and surfing in the world by us isn't going to help them, or Jacksonville over all on some stupid list. They're not going to get out and jog either when they're worried where their next meal is going to come from (which is probably one of the crack marts on 8th).
There are definitely some cracked sidewalks in Jacksonville... but that's just a poor excuse in my book. My girlfriend jogs almost every day in Riverside and still has (all) her teeth.
For instance Herschel St. = bad sidewalks but Riverside Ave & Park St. are just fine. The track that leads from the Fuller Warren to past the Landing is phenomenal. We have organized marathons like the Gate River Run that people train for all year. 3K's 5K's 10K's etc.
QuoteYou make it sound as if temperature is some kind of limiting factor for outdoors enjoyment and exercise
What I'm trying to say is place like Jax with mild temperatures year round seems much more conducive to exercising IMO. If anything it's a mentality problem vs. a shortage of available activities here.
Your Neighborhood Affects your Health
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/content/view/771/115/
(http://www.metrojacksonville.com/photos/thumbs/lrg-4565-duvalhealth2.png)
Quote from: jtwestside on January 07, 2009, 11:19:31 AM
The core is where the city's diabetes, obesity, ... is concentrated.
They're not going to get out and jog either when they're worried where their next meal is going to come from
I disagree with your logic. Massive obesity rates are not indicative of a population that's going hungry.
However, I agree with your point in general. Jacksonville has concentrated urban poverty, particularly among the black community. That's a strong trend in almost all the "unhealthy" cities on this list, and other similar lists. There's a huge correlation between ethnicity and obesity, presumably because of poverty rates.
On one hand, I suppose it's nice to have the uniquely American problem that our poor are too fat. On the other hand, it's yet another problem for communities that already have too many problems.
QuoteI disagree with your logic. Massive obesity rates are not indicative of a population that's going hungry.
Where did I say anyone was going hungry?
I think my point was that the poor are more worried about living day to day, not about how healthy that moonpie they're about to eat is. They eat what is available, convenient and affordable to them . They also are not going to be concerned with things they would consider as a waist of time (and probably socially unacceptable no matter how nice the sidewalks or weather is) such as jogging, or surfing.
QuoteYour Neighborhood Affects your Health
That's like putting up a map of average salaries in Jacksonville and saying "Your Neighborhood Affects your Salary", when it most certainly doesn't. Living somewhere doesn't determine ones health any more than salary. It's more like "Your income dictates your available Neighborhood, Food, Healthcare and Lifestyle choices which affect your health"
I am a little confused, a bag of doritos costs more than a head of lettuce or six apples. I don;t think it is a matter of what is affordable, I think it is a matter of knowledge. Knowledge that moonpies and doritos will kill you. Why would jogging be socially unacceptable, yet sitting on a bus bench drinking all day is acceptable? Why would taking a morning walk around the neighborhood be considered socially unacceptable? If it is, again, this is knowledge issue. Day to Day survival? How about getting rid of the cell phone, mad dog 20/20, and brand name clothes.... that would help out a lot with the bills for day to day survival I think. The funds for food and the time for a walk or jog are there, yet it is not happening...sounds like education and motivation are the bigger culprits here.
Quote from: copperfiend on January 06, 2009, 01:13:59 PM
No surprise. So many in this city enjoy a steady diet of takeout chinese food, fried chicken, cheeseburgers and pizza.
OMG and that was just my lunch
I’m glad someone finally stated the obvious. It’s really easy to oversimplify this issue, dismissing the cause of the local obesity epidemic as lazy and slovenly behavior and overlooking complicated matters like socioeconomics.
It’s delusional to suggest that the answer to the obesity problem is simply walking into Moncrief and urging the local residents working multiple minimum wage jobs to simply use their surf boards and road bikes more often during their off hours, which are probably between the hours of midnight and 6:00 am. Or perhaps buy themselves a new pair of Nikes.
The worst foods in the world tend to be the cheapest. You can feed a family of four at McDonalds or Taco Bell for less than the price of a sandwich at Subway. Go into gas station, supermarket, or drug store and try to maximize your dollar. Are you going to get the $3 bag of lettuce, $2 tomato, $4 gallon of milk, etc. Or are you going to get the $.25 fudge brownies, $.99 potato chips, $.49 burritos, and $.49 bottle of generic soda. Sure, they are loaded with hydrogenated oil and saturated fat, but they keep you alive.
Research has shown that stress and sleep are two of the most significant factors in physical health as well. I’m guessing that the lower socioeconomic class in Jacksonville, or anywhere else, has a surplus of one and a deficit of the other.
I’m in the best shape of my life right now. I run seven miles after work each day, eat healthier than I ever have, and have literally never felt better. But I’m one of the lucky ones. I work 9 to 5 and live in a neighborhood with a nice, 1.7 mile sidewalk looping around a golf course. I can afford a gym membership and have working hours that allow me to get there while it is still open. I can afford healthy, organic food. I have a reasonable degree of financial security and thus, a relatively low level of stress. I have the luxury of 8 hours of sleep per night if I want it.
A different toss of the dice, who knows, I could be the 18 year old father of two in Moncrief.
Seattle, Minneapolis, and San Francisco and other affluent cities with exorbitant costs of living are healthier than Jacksonville? You don’t say.
Patching the sidewalks isn’t going to solve this problem. Nothing short of a major social reform will. Education, not surfboards, is the only real solution.
I believe you're over simplifying the argument by saying this about rich vs. poor and the education that coincides with your social class. If that were the case wouldn't the poorest metro area's top the list?
Jacksonville doesn't even crack the top 20 of cities with 250,000 or more in population
Poorest American cities
(Population over 250,000)
Median household income
1 Miami, FL $24,031
2 Newark, NJ $26,309
3 Cleveland, OH $27,871
4 Detroit, MI $27,871
5 Buffalo, NY $28,544
6 St. Louis, MO $30,389
7 Philadelphia, PA $30,631
8 Milwaukee, WI $31,231
9 New Orleans, LA $31,369
10 El Paso, TX $31,764
11 Tucson, AZ $31,901
12 Pittsburgh, PA $31,910
13 Cincinnati, OH $31,960
14 Memphis, TN $32,399
15 Baltimore, MD $34,055
16 Toledo, OH $35,239
17 Tulsa, OK $36,255
18 Oklahoma City, OK $36,347
19 San Antonio, TX $36,598
20 Stockton, CA $37,322
Oh no, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that there aren’t a million other factors that play a part â€" walkability, local cuisine, ethnic demographics, and (yes) a lazy and slovenly lifestyle â€" I just think socioeconomic positioning happens to play a particularly large part. It’s far from black and white though. Nothing is.
There's a million reasons why people are unhealthy... theres another million why this top ten list is bs.
QuoteWhy would jogging be socially unacceptable, yet sitting on a bus bench drinking all day is acceptable? Why would taking a morning walk around the neighborhood be considered socially unacceptable?
I'll let you know when I figure that one out! ???
QuoteThe Rev. Jesse Jackson called Tuesday on Democrats seeking the 2008 nomination for president to give S.C. voters “something to vote for†when they go to the polls in January...
Jackson sharply criticized presidential hopeful and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for “acting like he’s white†in what Jackson said has been a tepid response to six black juveniles’ arrest on attempted-murder charges in Jena, La....
“If I were a candidate, I’d be all over Jena,†Jackson said after an hour-long speech at Columbia’s historically black Benedict College.
“Jena is a defining moment, just like Selma was a defining moment,†said the iconic civil rights figure, who worked with Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1965 Selma civil rights movement and was with King at his 1968 assassination.
From WikiPedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acting_white (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acting_white)
QuoteActing white is an epithet usually applied to African-Americans, and also within ethnic groups such as Asian-Americans and Native Americans as well as sometimes culturally diverse groups such as Latinos and Hawaii residents, which refers to a perceived betrayal of one's culture by incorporating the social expectations of white society.[1] The phrase was coined by Signithia Fordham and first popularized in her groundbreaking 1986 study, Black Students' School Success: Coping with the "Burden of 'Acting White.'"[2] Black people that are accused of acting white are sometimes referred to as Black Anglo-Saxons, a term coined by comedian Paul Mooney.
Case studies
Though not all scholars define acting white in precisely the same way, most definitions include a reference to situations where some minority adolescents ridicule their minority peers for engaging in behaviors perceived to be characteristic of whites. In 1986, Signithia Fordham co-authored with Nigerian sociologist John Ogbu a study that concluded that high-performing African American students in a Washington, D.C. high school borrowed from hegemonic white culture as part of a strategy for achievement, while struggling to maintain a black identity. Ogbu made a related claim in his 2003 book, Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement, concluding that black students' own cultural attitudes hindered academic achievement and that these attitudes are too often neglected. However, as Ogbu made clear in his seminal work Minority Education and Caste (1978), school disengagement among caste-like minorities occurs because of the glass ceiling placed by white society on the job-success of their parents and others in their communities. He reasoned that non-whites "failed to observe the link between educational achievement and access to jobs."
Though the study's conclusion gained a popular foothold and has been exposed by figures such as Bill Cosby, a later study challenged its validity. In 2003, Karolyn Tyson, a sociologist, and William Darity Jr, an economist, both at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, directed an 18 month study at eleven North Carolinian schools. The study concluded that white and black students have essentially the same attitudes about scholastic achievement; students in both groups want to succeed in school and show higher levels of self-esteem when they do better in school.
A 2006 study titled An Empirical Analysis of "Acting White" by Roland G. Fryer, Jr. at Harvard University and Paul Torelli suggested that the phenomenon probably had little to no effect on students achieving at average levels, but might explain a significant role in the disparities between black and white students at high achievement levels.
The culture one is immersed in actually controls behaviors and attitudes. Apparently, in many poor areas, it's culturally acceptable to sit on a park bench drinking alcohol and consuming moonpies rather than eating an apple and go surfing. The culture in places like Colorado and California heavily emphasizes exercise and eating right...rather in California, it's more for superficial reasons like looking good in a bathing suit.
Notice that income levels also affect the culture with many of these cities having higher incomes than people who live in the urban core.
I do think this list is BS, because some of the cities that were used show a complete skew in the measurements. Take Columbia, for example. With the lack of decent fitness centers and recreation centers, the heavy emphasis on fried foods and barbecue, and the lack of natural amenities, Cola deserved a much worse ranking than Jax. In addition, you have a lower median income, inferior culture (both thug culture and redneck), and a lack of walkable streets around the area (far worse than Jax, believe me).
Quote from: copperfiend on January 06, 2009, 01:13:59 PM
No surprise. So many in this city enjoy a steady diet of takeout chinese food, fried chicken, cheeseburgers and pizza.
Sounds good. You forgot to add BarBQ though. :D
The story I originally referenced, about Huntington being the unhealthiest city according to the CDC, speaks mostly about the economic struggles as the primary factor and looks to improved education as the most promising solution.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,452864,00.html