In this case the numbers don’t lie. As a nation, we’re eating more refined carbohydrates, consuming more calories, getting less exercise and, as a result, dying of cardiovascular disease. How much do you think these heart attacks and strokes cost the U.S. in medical bills? $100 million a day? $500 million a day? $700 million? Keep going. It’s more.The American Heart Association defines ideal cardiovascular health based on seven factors: smoking status, weight, physical activity, healthy diet, cholesterol, blood pressure and fasting glucose levels, as well as the absence of a diagnosis of heart or blood vessel disease.
Based on that definition, the data on our health shows that 94 percent of U.S. adults have at least one and 38 percent have at least three of the seven factors at “poor” levels. Half of U.S. children 12 to 19 years old meet four or fewer criteria for ideal cardiovascular health.
And it’s costing us in dollars as well as lives lost. One in three deaths is due to cardiovascular disease. The medical bill is estimated at more than $800 million a day, more than $570,000 a minute every minute of every day.
Our daily habits are killing us.
Comparing the 1970s to today, our average calorie consumption has increased by 22 percent in women (from 1,542 to 1,886 kcal/d) and by 10 percent in men (from 2,450 to 2,693 kcal/d). Many of these increased calories come from consuming more carbohydrates, particularly starches, refined grains and sugars; larger portion sizes and calories per meal; and consuming more sugar-sweetened beverages, snacks, commercially prepared meals (especially fast food) and high-calorie foods.
Burning those calories is also an increasing challenge — 33 percent of adults engage in no aerobic leisure-time physical activity. Furthermore, in 2009, among adolescents in grades nine through 12, 29.9 percent of girls and 17 percent of boys had not engaged in 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity — the recommended amount for good health — even once in the previous seven days.
http://easyhealthoptions.com/alternative-medicine/eating-ourselves-to-death-and-bankruptcy/
