Quality of Life

The past few months here have been amazing to say the least. I have certainly had a great opportunity to explore and experience the many different aspects of Maui. I know I have spent a fair amount of time writing about food, which has been so good here. However, I noticed that much of it is not the healthiest choice. In fact, when we drive down the street the majority of places to eat in the more urban areas of the island are cluttered with fast food joints. I heard public announcements on the radio every day about eating healthy, and I also noticed a number of jobs in public health. My initial reaction to this is that many people there do not eat healthy because of the high cost of living. Pretty much everything except for coconuts, pineapples, lilikoi (passion fruit), and bananas has to be brought to the island. When I thought more about this my mind connected this to something I had seen on the department of Education website: Click Here to read and learn more about the statistics on Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders. Through my own experience in conjunction with the fact sheet I would guess that Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders face some of the greatest challenges in regards to not only eating healthy, but quality of life.
Thinking more about myself and my own quality of life leaves me questioning how to define that based on where I live. I mean shoveling 2 feet of snow versus a sunburn in tropical climate seems like a no-brainer. But, when you start to add up the good in comparison to the bad things don't seem so easy...