LC Meridian

Issue date: 5/9/10 Section: Health

Oversized coffins manufactured by the Goliath Casket Company make a lasting impression. One of their models is almost seven feet wide--picture a double bed being lowered by crane into a cemetery plot. Like airlines that make obese passengers buy two seats, cemeteries often require that a grieving family purchase two or three plots for their obese loved one. You'd think if nearly half of the adult population around you were so obese they might have to be buried in one of Goliath's oversized caskets or sent to a special crematorium in a leased cargo van, someone would take notice and want to do something about it. Right?

When the CDC released a report that cited nearly half the adults in Huntington, W. Va. were obese, with double the national average of heart disease and diabetes, it was dubbed the unhealthiest U.S. City and people everywhere took notice. But when a David Felinton, then the Mayor of Huntington, was asked why health was not a big local issue, he replied, "it doesn't come up." At 5-foot-9 and 233 pounds, the mayor himself figured into the CDC statistics. If he didn't care, chances were the people of Huntington didn't either.

Enter Jaime Oliver, a young hot shot celebrity chef, espousing the idea that America badly needs a food revolution. His new show, "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" documents his attempt to change the way Americans view their food and how they eat, by way of the people of Huntington. If the shame of making worldwide headlines as the fattest city in America, and leading the nation in a half-dozen illness measures weren't enough to shake residents to the core, what chance would a affable young chef with a British accent have? The resistance is immediate.

When Oliver installs himself in the kitchen of a Huntington elementary school to see what the children of Huntington are being fed, he learns that the most important meal of the day-breakfast, consists of pizza, or cereal that the children eat with luminous colored strawberry and chocolate milk loaded with sugar. For lunch, the school offers breaded chicken nuggets with an ingredient list as long as some short stories and industrial mashed potatoes made from huge packets that have to be stirred quickly or they set like concrete. Appalled, Oliver questions the lunch ladies, who remark in tones ranging from indifferent to palpably hostile, that they like the food, and think it's great for the children to eat. The pizza served for breakfast makes an appearance for lunch the next day. According to USDA guidelines for school nutritional value, a single slice counts as two servings of vegetables. Only in America.

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