New York City Mayor Bloomberg Promotes Healthy Lifestyle Choices
In the city where I live, it’s hard to buy a muffin at a Starbucks without stepping back from the counter and reconsidering. Swallowing 460 calories for a minimal-nutrient breakfast seems foolish.
So I eat fewer muffins than I used to. The posted nutritional tidbits, however imprecise, on the contents of pieces of quiche, slices of pizza and cups of thick soup, stick with me when I travel, and at home.
That’s me, just n=1.
Yesterday the mayor gave a speech at the U.N. He’s quoted in today’s WSJ health blog:
In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly earlier this week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg rattled off New York’s achievements: a tough anti-tobacco campaign that made cigarettes, at about $11.20 a pack, the most expensive in the nation and led to a reduction in adult smoking rates to 14% in 2010 from 22% in 2002 (the national rate is 19.3%). A ban on artificial trans fats. Calorie labeling in restaurants. Ad campaigns linking soda consumption to obesity, and a national salt-reduction initiative.
No wonder, he noted, that life expectancy for New Yorkers has risen faster and is higher than for Americans overall, having increased 1.5 years to 79.4 years from 2001 to 2008.
These are just correlative findings. But they support, circumstantially and in my mind, for one, that public policy can impact human behavior and health.
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