There are many reasons why modern people are fatter on average than ever in history. For instance, food has become less and less natural. In the last century we’ve gone from having fresh milk delivered to our doors, to chemically-treated milk that is shipped from God knows where. Corporate food sources.

People used to walk to their neighborhood grocer or produce stand that was supplied by local mom and pop farmers. Now food travels across the country - even the globe - before it gets to your dinner table. It doesn’t stay fresh by magic. It has to be preserved for a longer shelf life.

Then there is the “dilemma” of modern conveniences. What did people do before computers, phones, and televisions? If it wasn’t engaging friends and family in conversation, or reading a book, they were probably tending to responsibilities that included physical work outside the home.

Modernization comes with all kinds of wonderful amenities, but it’s often at the expense of our health. How we address our national health care needs is a political debate for another time and forum. But nobody can argue with the philosophy that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

One such preventable measure is zoning cities to be “walkable” again. People still need to want to be active, but if you present them the ability to get around by foot (and gas costs going through the roof), you can hope that they learn the good old fashion art of putting one foot in front of the other.

“Any city built in the 1800s is likely to be walkable because everyone who lived there walked. Cities like Boston, Manhattan, Washington D.C., inner Baltimore, Savannah, Charleston, are all very walkable,” says Jim Sallis of San Diego State University.

One West coast exception is Portland, Oregon where the city has long been pedestrian-friendly.

The moral of the story is that a public investment can make a world of difference in the health of its citizenry.

My Mt. Whitney hike is one week closer, and I still don’t know what date we will be going. But I do know that it will be in the first week or so of June. So, last night I had the panic moment that I fully expected when I got about 5-6 weeks out from my first big hiking trip. As in, “Oh #?&%, I need to get serious.”

Like in the TLC show I Can Make You Thin, I need to fight my inner eating voice that tells me that it’s okay to cheat today, “you can be better tomorrow.” Well, with the aforementioned “panic moment,” the time to be serious is now. I’ve decided that I will be hardcore with my diet six days of the week, allowing for one cheat day.

I’m also stepping up my actual “on the job training.” This weekend I’m taking a day trip to Sierra Buttes in Tahoe National Forest, California. The hike will be about 6-7 miles and about 8,000 feet above sea level. Not bad preparation but still only half the mileage of Mt. Whitney and 4,500 feet lower. I’ll let you know how sore I am, and even better, publish some photo evidence of my trip next week.

I’ll leave you with a couple of tips that for anyone doing long-term endurance exercise, like day hikes:
- An hour or two before your trip, drink about 20 ounces of water to make sure you’re hydrated.
- Stay hydrated during the exercise with a sports drink, or water with an energy bar.
- And when you’re done, guess what, more hydrating.

See ya next week.

If you survive Armageddon, or something more likely - global warming - you may have Norway to thank for your survival. The government of Norway funded a project called the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which has banked more than 1.5 billion seeds, representing every major food crop on Earth.

The vault was built on the island of Spitsbergen and is 600 miles from the North Pole. It has all the attributes of a doomsday structure - it looks like a slab of concrete jutting from the side of an icy mountain. And inside the structure, it’s just about as nondescript.

It’s built to last 10,000 years - we should know by then whether or not we’ve royally screwed up the planet. While there could also be a global catastrophe, the more practical purpose of banking the world’s seeds is that the plant life that we eat is already going extinct.

The main culprit - surprise, surprise - is corporate farming. One amazing example given is that just only a little over a hundred years ago there were over 7,000 types of apples being farmed in the U.S.

Now? About 300.

It used to be that seeds were handed down through family generations, essentially like family recipes. But with corporate farms dominating the market, many of the seeds have gone to the wayside.

There are an incredible amount dramatic and exponential changes happening on our planet. Just look at how quickly the population has doubled over and over again in just the last 200 years. So, the idea that we need to plan for “food extinction” is not only not far fetched, it’s a practical idea. The following video from 60 Minutes goes into more detail.