"Mommy, why is my hot dog bun blue?"

I'm a bit of a food safety zealot, poking cooked meats with thermometers and whisking leftovers into the refrigerator. But it's hard to keep food fresh and safe when you eat outdoors. On the second day of a camping trip last summer, for example, my daughter held up a bun and said "Mommy, why is my hot dog bun blue?" Horrified, I tossed the bun right away, along with a bag of its azure-tinged companions.

One in six Americans will get food poisoning this year, which causes about 3,000 deaths annually and, not surprisingly, spikes in the summer months. The CDC argues that forces such as the centralization of food production and increased consumption of food produced outside the United States make it increasingly difficult to prevent these outbreaks. Currently, Salmonella bacteria are infecting alfalfa and spicy sprouts in the northwestern U.S. and New Jersey, and a strain of E.coli bacteria in vegetables has killed almost 50 people in Germany and other parts of Europe.

It's scary stuff. But even without food contamination that originates in a farm or a factory, Americans do a pretty good job of giving themselves food poisoning on their own. To prevent food poisoning caused by lax food preparation habits at home, the USDA, FDA, CDC, and the Ad Council just launched a consumer ad campaign. Their clever, friendly campaign encourages everyone to keep food preparation areas clean, separate raw meat from other ingredients, cook food to the right temperature, and chill uneaten food adequately.

To remind us all to be careful with food this summer, here's a sample of the ads:

Lessons from Zombies

I've spent many, many hours on the CDC website researching different health topics over the years. But this week they provided advice on a health hazard that I'd never considered before: a zombie invasion.

"The rise of zombies in pop culture has given credence to the idea that  a zombie apocalypse could happen," wrote Assistant Surgeon General Ali S. Khan in a May 16th Public Health Matters blog post. "The proliferation of this idea has led many people to wonder 'How do I prepare for a zombie apocalypse?'"

It turns out that preparing for an invasion of the undead involves the same steps as preparing for any other disaster: make a disaster kit, and create a family emergency plan. While citizens of zombie-infested areas flee town through escape routes they'd wisely planned out in advance, Khan assures us that "CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. CDC would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation."

By framing disaster preparedness in terms of zombie preparedness, the CDC brought media attention to the issue. The clever blog post has been mentioned in a wide range of media outlets, such as ABC News, The Atlantic, and Fox News. Zombie preparedness is a humorous antidote to the hurricanes, earthquakes, and other disasters regularly covered in the news, for which, of course, we really should be prepared.

Humor - and zombies - convey the message of disaster preparedness much better than a carefully crafted CDC press release ever would. Health information is often conveyed by drawing on our fear of disease or injury: get this screening test now to catch cancer in its earliest and most curable stage! Childproof your house to protect your baby! It's exhausting to worry about so many health issues. Maybe more people would follow health advice if some of it were conveyed with a lighter touch or a more positive spin. Bring on the zombies, I say.

The Extra-Wide Chair

Yesterday, when I walked into my primary care doctor's waiting room with my children, my younger daughter asked me to share a seat with her. She plopped down on an extra-wide chair in the office, the sole standout in a sea of regular-width chairs there. She thought it was a small couch meant for two, when in reality is it there to accommodate obese patients. I see more and more of these chairs in doctors' offices, evidence of the high obesity rate in America.

At first glance, the extra-wide chairs would seem out of place here, because I live in a very health-conscious city. Many people here ride public transportation, a choice that guarantees some exercise as you walk to and from your bus stop. The Central Valley and local farmers' markets provide a steady stream of fresh produce, and outdoor activities ranging from mountain hikes to tidepooling are just a short drive away.

But it's not always easy to make healthy choices. The public schools promote a Walk to School Week every fall, for example, but this is a somewhat pointless program here. The public schools in San Francisco have been decoupled from their neighborhoods in response to a series of lawsuits about the uneven quality of the education they provide. As a result, many children from kindergarten on up have to commute to school by car (driven by a parent) or school bus across town every day. Even if they want to walk to school, it isn't a possibility for them. With funding cuts reducing gym to an occasional rather than a daily class at many schools as well, schoolchildren are getting less and less exercise.

When my own children were born several years ago, I began to notice what I called the "thin grandmother" syndrome. At follow-up doctor's visits after their children were born, many new mothers brought their own mothers along to help watch the baby. Most of the grandmothers were thin, but, increasingly, many of the mothers were not. No doubt they still carried some weight from their pregnancies, but I suspect lifestyle was also a factor - lots of driving, unhealthy eating habits, stress, and very little exercise. All of this happened in just one generation. The CDC's survey of obesity trends from 1985 to 2007, based on data collected from state health departments, shows a sharp increase in obesity rates during that time. In 1990, obesity rates topped out at 15% in a the states participating in the survey. By 2007, obesity rates had increased to 30% or higher in three Southern states, and over 25% in thirty states altogether. The CDC's data shows obesity rates creeping upward and westward state by state since the mid-1990s.

I understand how we got here as a society - the lure of convenience foods, the busy work schedules that allow little free time for exercise, the stress of getting everyone where they need to go each day, the time it takes to cook a healthy dinner at home or pack a healthy lunch. When I see the extra-wide chairs in the waiting rooms, though, I start to question to idea of a national health care plan, because access to health care won't solve the problem of obesity. Increasing obesity rates and the many expensive health problems linked to obesity, in fact, could bankrupt such a plan.

It's important to provide coverage for the uninsured, with states such as North Carolina recently making news headlines because a record 25% of the state's residents don't have medical insurance. But health care needs to be just one of the tools used to fight obesity. The country also needs better public policies relating to public transportation, employment rights, housing and urban planning, public education, and other issues that directly or indirectly affect people's health. Americans also need to take more personal responsibility for their health, mindful that their children are watching and learning from them. Last but not least, their choices have consequences not just for themselves and their families but for the country and its welfare as well.

Google Flu Data Rivals CDC

Last week, internet search giant Google released the Google Flu Trends tool, which tracks possible flu outbreaks by compiling data on how often people use flu-related search terms such as "flu symptoms" and "chest congestion". Google Flu Trends provides raw data, but not context. Each year, close to 100 million Americans search for health information online, but not everyone who searches for health information is injured or ill. Since I write about medicine, for example, I usually search for health information online for my writing projects, not personal knowledge. Other searches, it seems, might be done out of idle curiosity, or even result from a keystroke error in the search bar.

Is Google Flu Trends just another odd little Google project that their employees tinker with at the Googleplex in Mountain View in between running the search engine and scanning in every book ever written? Apparently not. Google mapped five years' worth of their flu data against flu data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which the agency compiles from health care providers, emergency room visit statistics, and other sources. Data from Google correlated closely with CDC data, often predicting flu outbreaks a week or two before the CDC. Google will soon publish a paper on its methodology in an upcoming issue of Nature.

Health care researchers already search for trends in anonymized electronic medical records (EMRs) that some practices use to record patient medical data and prescriptions. More digital data will become available in the future as EMRs become more common (especially since the federal government is providing financial incentives for Medicare providers to adopt e-prescribing, starting in 2009) .

For various reasons, however, many patients are not entirely honest with their doctors about their symptoms and medical concerns, a problem health care providers have struggled with for years. A patient might be embarrassed about a medical problem, forget to mention a symptom, or simply not realize that a symptom is significant. For this reason, search engine data might provide an even larger, and potentially more accurate, data pool than EMRs to indicate the actual incidence of conditions such as pre-diabetes or early heart disease, for example. Public health officials could then use the data to create more effective screening and prevention campaigns.