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Los Angeles Is Realistic About Our Health, Unlike Other Cities
Photo by Lucyrk in LA via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr
Apparently, all of our trainers, gyms, boot camps and hiking trails are for naught: recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ranked Los Angeles as the least healthy big city in the US. But before you reach for that Shake Weight to counter this disturbing finding, there's a catch -- the data was based on self-reports, in which respondents from across the country were asked to rate their own health as excellent, very good, good, fair or poor. In Los Angeles, 77.2% of survey participants ranked their health as "good or better," reports CNS News -- the smallest percentage of people to rank their health as such among the 20 biggest cities in the U.S.
In case you're wondering, citizens of Minneapolis feel the best about their physical well-being, with 89.9% describing their health as "good or better."
What this survey says to me, though, is not so much that LA residents are in the worst health, but maybe, in fact, something more positive -- like, that we're constantly striving for excellence when it comes to our health, and that it takes legitimate wellness for us to feel that we're truly healthy. Because even though we're coming in lower than other cities, let's be real -- 77.2% of us in "good or better" health is still pretty high.
Which leads me to wonder...what with the ever-increasing rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease in this country, perhaps the real story here is that other cities are delusional...?
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