Lifestyle choices and cancer prevention

The National Cancer Institute provides the following recommendations regarding diet and physical activity:

1. Adopt policies and provide funding to improve the built environment to encourage physical activity. For example:

• Address safety issues that discourage physical activity.

• Plan new communities that encourage physical activity.

• Retrofit existing communities to encourage physical activity (e.g., install sidewalks, improve community centers, parks, playgrounds).

2. Coordinate U.S. agricultural subsidy and public health policy related to diet and nutrition to improve the food supply and help ensure that all people have access to affordable, healthy food. Specifically:

• Structure farm supports to incentivize/encourage increased production of fruits and vegetables; limit farm subsidies that promote the production of high fructose corn syrup for use in food.

• Support healthier food choices by restructuring regulations governing acceptable food choices allowed by the Women, Infants, and Children Program, Headstart, and school lunch programs.

3. Improve access to affordable, healthy foods in urban communities; implement “fair food” policies similar to fair housing policies.

4. Regulate and monitor food advertising in media targeting children.

5. Reinstate physical education at meaningful levels in grades K-12 andexpand physical activity offerings to include individually-oriented activities (e.g., yoga, weight training) that could be maintained for life. Though not an ideal measure, include body mass index (BMI) measurement, as adapted for youth, as part of school physical fitness assessments and provide this information to parents. Parents also should receive information about the relationship of BMI to disease risk and how to decrease BMI through behavioral change.

6. Replace unhealthy food choices in school food service facilities and vending machines with healthful foods and beverages. Include information in elementary and secondary school health curricula about the meaning of energy balance and how to read and interpret food labels and other health information related to diet and nutrition.

7. Make nutrition information about restaurant foods readily available on menus and understandable to customers.

8. Increase support and incentives for employee wellness (e.g., diet, fitness). Provide healthier choices in workplace food service facilities/vending machines and provide economic subsidies that encourage healthy food choices.

9. Provide coverage for nutrition counseling and fitness promotion as part of all comprehensive health benefit packages as an accepted mechanism for reducing risk and preventing disease.

10. Measure BMI as part of routine physical exams and counsel patients about the meaning of this measurement. Educate patients about the necessity of balancing food intake and physical activity to avoid and reverse obesity.

11. Seek out opportunities to increase personal and family fitness and health.