3 Percent of Americans Live Healthy Lives

Many Americans eat healthy, many do not smoke, many keep their weight down, and many exercise regulary. All of which sounds great, but according to a new study whose results are published in the current issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, the percentage of the population that does all four of the above is exactly three. That’s right, three percent. Forbes.com reports that the two Michigan-based researchers who authored they study looked at data from the 2000 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, an annual survey of the nation’s health, and found that 76 percent of the people surveyed were nonsmokers, 40.1 percent maintained a healthy weight, 23.3 percent said they ate at least five fruits and vegetables daily, and only 22.2 percent said they exercised at least five times a week. That, of course, is the good news. The bad news appears when you look for the overlap. Forbes.com quotes Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine saying that the researchers "are pointing out how much of the power of preventive medicine is already in our hands. But for the majority of us, [it is] apparently slipping through our fingers."