Rethink Your Drink

From school projects to city-wide campaigns, "Rethink Your Drink" has been around for a few years now.  If you want proof this helps, I'm living it.  I stopped drinking soft drinks and cut down sugar consumption dramatically.  And it's made a difference in my life.  Now, I don't agree with certain politicians who think we should force people to stop drinking what they want, these are choices we should make on our own.  But knowing what we know today, we can prevent our children from developing horrible diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.

A school project showing the amount of sugar in each drink.

"When it comes to weight loss, there's no lack of diets promising fast results. There are low-carb diets, high-carb diets, low-fat diets, grapefruit diets, cabbage soup diets, and blood type diets, to name a few. But no matter what diet you may try, to lose weight, you must take in fewer calories than your body uses. Most people try to reduce their calorie intake by focusing on food, but another way to cut calories may be to think about what you drink." - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

AIDS - 30 Years and Counting...

It may no longer be a death sentence, but it is still a problem.  It is still a disease we haven't found a cure for.  It is still an epidemic.  If you are not playing safe, you are playing with the very people you love, the very people you call your friends and your family.  Get tested regularly.  If you got tested yesterday, do it again in a few months.

You may think that it is nowhere near you, but I advise you to take a look at this map.  You can click on it to reach the interactive version, it is the most recent statistics of HIV across the United States.  You can zoom into the county you live in, and find out how prevalent the disease is there.  The map is actually quite creative.  It was put together over a period of 14 years, and is currently being updated yearly.  The map is also searchable by gender, ethnicity, and age.  New York City and Washington D.C. are the cities most affected by the disease.  But don't discount the rest of the country, look at the entire eastern seaboard, the bible belt, through the east of Texas.

AIDSVu has created the interactive map based on 2008 data from the CDC, but as I mentioned earlier, it is being updated annually - next year they will have 2009 data, and continue yearly, thereafter.

Mind-Boggling News: The Rate of Our Nation's Obesity

As Mind-boggling as it is, I had to post this chart.  I can't believe what's happening before our very eyes.

click to enlarge