New Jerseyans can afford to add a little extra turkey to their Thanksgiving plate this year. According to a new report, per Life Extension, residents in the Garden State are amongst the healthiest across the nation heading into the holiday season. However, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t still be concerned about your health despite daily exercise, healthy eating habits, and stress levels. With the holiday season approaching, there is always an increase in unhealthy eating habits, excessive drinking, spikes in stress, and extra exposure to germs due to traveling over the break. Our neighboring state, New York was used in a study that was shown to have emergency room visits increase during the holiday season, with New York City doctors estimating a 5-12% spike for this year. Life Extension also showed that preventive behaviors like exercising and eating well also tend to decrease over the holiday break while sales of health supplements were 22.8% lower in December 2021 than they were in January 2022.
In order to find out which states were the healthiest Life Extension “analyzed eight key metrics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spanning nutrition, exercise, smoking, and mental health.”
New Jersey came in at No. 10 as one of the healthiest states in the nation. Life Extension was able to pinpoint key areas in deciding New Jersey resident’s overall health by the categories stated below:
Fruit consumption: The share of adults who say they eat fruit every day
Vegetable consumption: The share of adults who say they eat vegetables every day
Exercise: The share of adults who say they have gotten physical activity in the past month
Health status: The share of adults who say they are in excellent, very good or good health overall
Mental health: The share of adults who say they’ve had no poor mental health days in the past month
Heart disease rate: The share of adults who say they have ever been told they have coronary heart disease
Smoking rate: The share of adults who say they are current smokers
Heavy drinking rate: The share of adults who are considered heavy drinkers, defined as 15 or more drinks per week for men and at least eight drinks per week for women
Take a look at New Jersey’s stats below and see which state got the top spot as the healthiest state:
Please note: Overall score is reported as z-score, or distance from the average.
