Metadish, Fresh from NYC

The life expectancy of the average New Yorker is 78.6 years, that’s nine months longer than the life expectancy of the average American. That wouldn’t be so mind boggling unless you take into account the vast amount of ground that New Yorkers have made up over the past 17 years.

Since 1990, the average American (yeah you Jesusland) has added only about two and a half years to his/her life, while us New Yorkers have added 6.2 years to ours. Suck it all you fresh air freaks.

In essence, there is a health gap emerging between our massive metropolis and the rest of the country—some X factor that’s improving our health in subtle, everyday ways. In fact, a back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that once you take out those uniquely New York ways to die—AIDS, homicide, etc.—we’ve still added at least 200,000 extra years onto the city’s life-expectancy tables since 1980, making crucial advances in the same health areas the rest of the country struggles with. Like many New Yorkers, I’d moved here with some trepidation—always figuring that the stress, pollution, and 60-hour workweeks would knock about five years off my life. I was wrong—precisely wrong. But where, exactly, is our excess life coming from?

In my opinion the two main factors are education and means. I think New Yorkers are better informed about their health and what is good for them, while your average middle America family is still frying up pork chops and eating fast food 2-3 times a week.

A few months back I spent about five months in Ohio consulting for a rather large corporation out there. I was shocked to see their cafeteria and what they offered their employees on a daily basis. Sure there was a salad bar but it was small and sub-par and other than that, you were basically left with whatever fried special of the day the cooks were mustering up. There was no fresh fruit, no low-fat, alternatives. Just pure, heavy, Midwestern eating. It was just shocking to see it in such a corporate environment. If you go into a corporate cafeteria in NYC it’s like walking into a Whole Food and a Trader Joes all thrown together with five or six healthy dishes to choose from every day.

I don’t even think these numbers include the dramatic decline of smokers in the city since Mayor Bloomberg’s clean air initiative took effect. Soon New Yorkers will live forever!

What do you guys think? Why are New Yorkers leaving the rest of the country in the dust when it comes to increasing our average life expectancy? Or is all that fresh air and stress free livin’ talk just bullshit?

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