Saw a reference to this on the news yesterday - Hawaii, Mass, and Conn being the healthiest states and Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama being the least healthy. It intrigued us (what can I say, we’re a science “nut” family) so we looked up the whole report. Then we tried to guess the individual category bests and worsts - getting quite a few correct, but being surprised by some. PA is almost smack dab in the middle, both overall, and in many categories. That didn’t surprise us at all. I still wish we didn’t live in one of the worst states (at least it’s not the worst) for air pollution though - definitely hurts being downwind of the Rust Belt.
We also liked seeing how sub categories fared by income, education, and urbanness.
There are a whole lot of stats in there. It’s easy to scan thought the pages and get into a discussion - at least - among my family! (We could be weird…) Anyone else curious about the findings?
Thanks—interesting info. Sent the relevant summary page and report to a friend who works for Hawaii’s Dept of Health.
Having tobacco cessation funding and working hard to pass clean air legislation gas really helped our state, as hasve laws requiring medical insurance coverage for folks working at least 20 hours/week.
We do have sky high kidney disease and diabetes tho.
I know we love HI, though haven’t been out there in years now with college payments and other places in the world to explore. We thought about living there, but it’s so far away from everywhere else, including our families. 'Tis tempting to go again now.
I gotta admit, I wondered how Spam worked into it all…
Kidney disease is a common effect of diabetes, so it is no surprise that kidney disease is high in places where diabetes is high.
Diabetes is not a surprise in Hawaii, where most of the population is non-white, since non-white people are known to be more likely to be genetically prone to diabetes.
HI is where we learned to enjoy Spam and Saimin. The lunch plates there never seemed healthy, but were tasty. I can see some health issues from regular diets of things like that, but honestly, I wouldn’t consider them worse than cheesesteaks or BBQ or other local favorites in places we travel to. There’s a ton of diabetes in my family line alone - not one incident of kidney disease, even among the oldest who dealt with it until their death. The two may run together, but it seems there would be something else affecting it too. Now I’m wondering… keep us (me?) updated when they find out more @Himom (pure curiosity again).
Though now that I think about it, I’m thinking Type II diabetes. Is that what’s high in HI or Type I?
I’m not sure but suspect it’s Type 2 diabetes. Now, instead of having 2 scoops of rice, a scoop of macaroni salad and protein of choice the plate lunches sometimes offer tossed green salad in lieu of the carbs for those who opt for that instead. It does tend to have high amounts of sodium in the protein but the plate lunches ARE tasty.
When they figure out why we have so much kidney disease, I’m sure that will make national news. I’m sure our large % of nonwhite population is one factor.
The traditional high calorie Hawaiian plate lunches were supposedly originated as meals for farm workers doing hard physical labor (i.e. exercise) all day… Obviously, typical levels of exercise are much lower today.
It has been many many decades since most folks have had hard physical labor jobs in HI and the sodium count in many plate lunches is sky high, as are carb calories. There are “healthier” lunches that sub vegetables for carbs and use lower sodium or folks can easily split a lunch and have it fill both eaters quite well.
