Happy Valentine’s Day,
everyone!
Have we mentioned lately how
much we love our Pathfinder Produce patrons, and providing fresh fruits and
veggies to area families? Our markets,
held in Edmeston on Thursdays from 1 to 5 p.m., and in Morris on Fridays from
noon to 5 p.m. are a real high note of our week. We really enjoy serving the public in this
manner.
We hope you’ll stop
by our markets this week to stock up on healthy eats to share with your
Valentines! As always, we encourage
everyone to follow our 5210 Wellness goals -- to eat five fruits and veggies
each day, reduce recreational screen time to two hours, get an hour of physical
activity, and reduce sugary beverages to zero.
***
This past weekend, my husband and I went to see my son and his
friends compete in the NYS Section 4 Indoor Track & Field Sectionals held
at Cornell University. These indoor meets are very busy, and it’s
fun to see all the colorful uniforms from the participating
schools. This meet was huge but
well-organized and it went quickly.
All of the students were busy stretching, running, pole vaulting,
throwing, hurdling, and of course, doing what teens do best – visiting with
friends and having fun. You could tell
that all of these athletes had trained
hard. If their regimens are like my
son’s, the athletes spend two hours each day to build strength, endurance, and
heart and lung capacity.
As I watched all the warm-ups and events, I was unpleasantly
jarred when I caught the strong odor of cigarettes as one man walked by – it
was so out of place. It reminded me
of a conversation I’d had earlier that morning on the nefarious marketing of
cigarettes in the 50s and 60s. There
were full page ads in magazines, larger than life billboards, TV shows with
celebrities smoking incessantly, and romanticized commercials with
sophisticated models touting the latest nicotine-delivery system. In that conversation my husband recalled how
the Marlboro Man died
from lung cancer; in truth, many of the Marlboro Men actors died from lung
or heart disease, attributable to smoking.
Later that night, my son and his friends attended the school’s
semi-formal; on the way home, we stopped at a store so he could buy a bottle of
water (he was parched). As I waited, I
watched another smoker light up underneath the fluorescent glare of the store
awning. He inhaled deeply, the burnt
ashes accumulated in a long gravity-defying cylinder before he flicked them
away. The man was probably in his late
30s – born well after the 1964
Surgeon General’s Report declared smoking a health hazard. I felt sorry for that smoker, who I guessed
would soon be riding down the trail of the Marlboro Man, slowly killing his
heart, lungs, and arteries.
So why am I
focused on smoking? As you know,
February is American Heart Month, and yet America still has new, young smokers
lighting up each year. According to research:
- close to 2,500 kids try their first cigarette each day and about 400 kids become regular smokers;
- it is the number one cause of preventable deaths each year;
- about $332 billion is spent on tobacco-related diseases and lost productivity each year;
- and in a 2014 report, the Surgeon General noted “If smoking continues at the current rate among youth in this country, 5.6 million of today’s Americans younger than 18 will die early from a smoking-related illness. That’s about 1 of every 13 Americans aged 17 years or younger alive today.
Education efforts have helped since 1964, reducing the smoking
population from 45 percent of Americans then to about 15 percent now. Yet
despite efforts, there are still young smokers being enticed through new forms
of marketing, new tobacco products, and messaging in movies and from friends on
social networks. Hopefully, for many of
these youngsters, their tobacco use will be a phase and they will turn to
healthier ways to engage with peers, like community and school sports, and daily
fitness activities, like hiking, jogging and swimming.
Until next time, love your kids, your own heart & lungs, and
be well!
Lori
