Round-the-Clock Snacking

The headline of this N.Y. Times article says it all: Snack Time Never Ends. In the article, Jennifer Steinhauer writes:

During a single week in December, I was pinged with requests to bring a little food for one play rehearsal, three religious-school events, a school administrative meeting, two soccer games and two multicultural festivals.

... Apparently, we have collectively decided as a culture that it is impossible for children to take part in any activity without simultaneously shoving something into their pie holes.

“Children used to come home, change into play clothes and go outside and play with other children,” said Joanne Ikeda, a nutritionist emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. “There were not snack machines, and the gas stations only sold gas. Now there are just so many more opportunities to snack and so many activities after school to have snacks.”

And government statistics support this assessment. Between 1977 and 2002, the percentage of Americans eating at least three snacks a day jumped from 11 percent to 42 percent. That helps explain why the child-teen obesity rate has skyrocketed.

Oliver's Latest Challenge

British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has his work cut out for him. His challenge? To try to change the eating habits of the residents of Huntington, West Virginia.

According to the N.Y. Times, Oliver faces a daunting task:

Last year, an Associated Press article designated the Huntington-Ashland metropolitan area as the unhealthiest in America, based on its analysis of data collected in 2006 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nearly half the adults in these five counties (two in West Virginia, two in Kentucky and one in Ohio) were obese, and the area led the nation in the incidence of heart disease and diabetes.

The poverty rate was 19 percent, much higher than the national average. It also had the highest percentage of people 65 and older who had lost their teeth — nearly 50 percent.

Oliver succeeded in getting British school children to change their eating ways. We'll see if he has the same luck in Huntington.