For the Sake of Science

Apparently, Huntington, West Virginia is the fattest town in America. And they don’t care.

As a portly woman plodded ahead of him on the sidewalk, the obese mayor of America’s fattest and unhealthiest city explained why health is not a big local issue.

“It doesn’t come up,” said David Felinton, 5-foot-9 and 233 pounds, as he walked toward City Hall one recent morning. “We’ve got a lot of economic challenges here in Huntington. That’s usually the focus.”

I’m really glad the reporter went ahead and did the research for this article. The very next graf:

Huntington’s economy has withered, its poverty rate is worse than the national average, and vagrants haunt a downtown riverfront park. But this city’s financial woes are not nearly as bad as its health.

I guess I shouldn’t expect a town that doesn’t seem to even discuss its horrid weight problem to do well with its economy. Health is one of the most important aspects of life, usually regardless of one’s priorities. By ignoring something so significant, this town has demonstrated its willful stupidity. That stupidity, in addition to America’s existing woes, seems to have spread to its economy. Of course, I say its “willful stupidity” because it seems doubtful one could ignore all the broken chairs, crowded rooms, and cracked sidewalks in such a fat, disgusting town.

This city on the Ohio River is surrounded by Appalachia’s thinly populated hills

This just makes things all the worse. This is hiking country. It doesn’t take much to go for a walk in the hills and mountains (not to mention just around the damn neighborhood). These people are wasting their health when they could truly exploit it to seek out the beauty that is the West Virginia landscape. The overweight residents of this town who plainly do not care about health are doing a disservice to themselves, to their children, and to the rest of their town. It isn’t that they overweight and thus bad. That isn’t true. It’s that they’re overweight and they do not care. That’s morally repugnant behavior. We do not want to treat other humans with such physical (or mental, for the matter) disdain, why would we want to do it to ourselves?

Filed under: News | Tagged: appalachia, appalachian mountains, diabetes, fat, huntington, immoral, morally repugnant, unhealthy, west virginia | 7 Comments »