Nov. 14, 2008
Fattest City Or Cooked Facts
By Tony Rutherford
Huntingtonnews.net Reporter
Huntington, WV (HNN) – According to an Associated Press article due for publication nationally, the writer claims Huntington to be both “America’s unhealthiest and fattest city.”
The lengthy article relies on an interview with Mayor David Felinton who was described as “the obese mayor of American’s fattest and unhealthiest city.”
However, the article takes another crack at the Appalachian stereotypes that send shudders down the backs of those attempting to polish our image.
Actually, the writer admits that when Huntington thrived on manufacturing and other laborious tasks a diet heavy with “fried foods, salt, gravy, sauces and fattier meats” saw burnt calories by manual labor.
However, Beverly McCoy, public relations director for the Marshall University School of Medicine, has accessed the 168 page CDC report that reportedly classifies Huntington as the fattest city in America.
“You will perhaps note that the 188-page report does not have one single reference to the City of Huntington or to Cabell County. All references are to the primarily rural, five-county region in three states that at more than 2000 square miles is significantly larger than the whole state of Rhode Island,” McCoy told HNN late Thursday evening.
McCoy has seen the raw data on which the CDC studied had been compiled.
“Cabell's stats (the study doesn't break down to city level unless the city is a whole Metropolitan Statistical Area) are significantly better than those listed by AP as applying to Huntington. For example, Cabell County actually is better than the national average when it comes to sedentary lifestyles; it's also well under the figures AP reports for Huntington for obesity, diabetes, and heart disease as well (since AP assigns the whole region's figures to Huntington). His stats didn't include the toothlessness one, but doctors I talked to thought it was way out of line for Huntington.”
But a USA Today report from the summer of 2008 gives the U.S. obesity prevalence in 2007 crown to Mississippi (32% obesity) while West Virginia ranks with other southern states reporting high obesity. Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, and WV qualify as “the nation’s fattest region with three of the top five states reporting an obesity rate greater than 30 percent in 2007.”
Although the writer of the obesity article, Mike Stobee, told WSAZ he stood by the article, the CDC website warns that the data should not be used to compare different cities due to too many variables. Actually, WV has a 29.5% obesity ranking by the CDC, the heaviest states are Mississippi (32%), Alabama (30.3%) Tennessee (30.1%), and Louisiana (29.8%). http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/maps
Back in 2005, Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, received a ranking as “most depressed city and most fattest city according to Men’s Health magazine. (The CDC now ranks Pennsylvania as having 27.1% obesity.)
Dr. Donald B. Ardell writing for Seek Wellness stated you should not “seriously” take “healthiest city” rankings. Dr. Ardell advocates for “positive” rankings while arguing that the classification criteria tend not to be objective indicators.
“I have not seen a sensible, wellness-focused rating system that would justify claims of healthiest cities or healthiest states or, for that matter, least healthy, or unhappiest or most depressed or any other quality, good or bad,” Ardell wrote.
“Whether such ratings are done to sell magazines (Men's Fitness, for example), promote a pharmaceutical company (Wyeth), gain consulting business (Mercer Human Resource Consulting) or even respond to governmental mandate (the annual CDC rankings of states), the measures used to assess healthiest (and least healthy) cities (and states) are overwhelmingly negative. That is, the criteria are measures of problems, morbidity and mortality rates and other dysfunctional instances of what my old public health professor Henrik Blum used to call "perturbations."
Actually, Dr. Charles McKown, dean of Marshall’s medical school, has already been quoted by WSAZ as stating, “I think there’s substantial bias… some pre-conceived notions.”
One portion of the AP report stated that there are over 200 pizza places in Huntington. McCoy said, the total city was a far cry from 200.
HNN has email requests sent to the CDC for additional clarifications.
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Fattest City Or Cooked Facts
By Tony Rutherford
Huntingtonnews.net Reporter
Huntington, WV (HNN) – According to an Associated Press article due for publication nationally, the writer claims Huntington to be both “America’s unhealthiest and fattest city.”
The lengthy article relies on an interview with Mayor David Felinton who was described as “the obese mayor of American’s fattest and unhealthiest city.”
However, the article takes another crack at the Appalachian stereotypes that send shudders down the backs of those attempting to polish our image.
Actually, the writer admits that when Huntington thrived on manufacturing and other laborious tasks a diet heavy with “fried foods, salt, gravy, sauces and fattier meats” saw burnt calories by manual labor.
However, Beverly McCoy, public relations director for the Marshall University School of Medicine, has accessed the 168 page CDC report that reportedly classifies Huntington as the fattest city in America.
“You will perhaps note that the 188-page report does not have one single reference to the City of Huntington or to Cabell County. All references are to the primarily rural, five-county region in three states that at more than 2000 square miles is significantly larger than the whole state of Rhode Island,” McCoy told HNN late Thursday evening.
McCoy has seen the raw data on which the CDC studied had been compiled.
“Cabell's stats (the study doesn't break down to city level unless the city is a whole Metropolitan Statistical Area) are significantly better than those listed by AP as applying to Huntington. For example, Cabell County actually is better than the national average when it comes to sedentary lifestyles; it's also well under the figures AP reports for Huntington for obesity, diabetes, and heart disease as well (since AP assigns the whole region's figures to Huntington). His stats didn't include the toothlessness one, but doctors I talked to thought it was way out of line for Huntington.”
But a USA Today report from the summer of 2008 gives the U.S. obesity prevalence in 2007 crown to Mississippi (32% obesity) while West Virginia ranks with other southern states reporting high obesity. Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, and WV qualify as “the nation’s fattest region with three of the top five states reporting an obesity rate greater than 30 percent in 2007.”
Although the writer of the obesity article, Mike Stobee, told WSAZ he stood by the article, the CDC website warns that the data should not be used to compare different cities due to too many variables. Actually, WV has a 29.5% obesity ranking by the CDC, the heaviest states are Mississippi (32%), Alabama (30.3%) Tennessee (30.1%), and Louisiana (29.8%). http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/maps
Back in 2005, Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, received a ranking as “most depressed city and most fattest city according to Men’s Health magazine. (The CDC now ranks Pennsylvania as having 27.1% obesity.)
Dr. Donald B. Ardell writing for Seek Wellness stated you should not “seriously” take “healthiest city” rankings. Dr. Ardell advocates for “positive” rankings while arguing that the classification criteria tend not to be objective indicators.
“I have not seen a sensible, wellness-focused rating system that would justify claims of healthiest cities or healthiest states or, for that matter, least healthy, or unhappiest or most depressed or any other quality, good or bad,” Ardell wrote.
“Whether such ratings are done to sell magazines (Men's Fitness, for example), promote a pharmaceutical company (Wyeth), gain consulting business (Mercer Human Resource Consulting) or even respond to governmental mandate (the annual CDC rankings of states), the measures used to assess healthiest (and least healthy) cities (and states) are overwhelmingly negative. That is, the criteria are measures of problems, morbidity and mortality rates and other dysfunctional instances of what my old public health professor Henrik Blum used to call "perturbations."
Actually, Dr. Charles McKown, dean of Marshall’s medical school, has already been quoted by WSAZ as stating, “I think there’s substantial bias… some pre-conceived notions.”
One portion of the AP report stated that there are over 200 pizza places in Huntington. McCoy said, the total city was a far cry from 200.
HNN has email requests sent to the CDC for additional clarifications.
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Make HNN Your Homepage (IE Users Only)
