• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, June 13, 2005

West Virginia, which ranks third in the nation for obesity with over a quarter of its adults hitting the Oh-My-God! level of the scales, called in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study "an outbreak of obesity in the same way it studies an outbreak of an infectious disease." According to The Wall Street Journal, data from the study are now "being analyzed."

Back when the world was preoccupied with hemorrhagic fever, instead of how many times a week Mountaineers eat fried squirrel and pork rinds, the CDC was this hip SWAT team of doctors and analysts and researchers (at least one of them looking like Rene Russo) who choppered into hot zones to nip outbreaks of infectious diseases before they became global pandemics.

How far we've fallen.

What was this crack team of experts doing in Morgantown, Wheeling, and Phillipi? Holding test tubes over Bunsen burners and mumbling, "Huummm, just as I suspected?" Or having those CSI-dialogue moments where the cute lab technician says something flirty and suggestive to the wizened old veteran while revealing a key part of the puzzle?

Nope. This nearly verbatim from the WSJ:

"The investigative teams spent a week and a half in each place, going to schools and asking about physical education programs and about what sort of food was provided.... They went to workplaces, asking whether there were policies to encourage physical activity. ... They went to random grocery stores and restaurants, asking whether they offered fruits and vegetables and skim or 1 percent milk.... And they asked whether it was safe to walk along the roads, whether there were sidewalks and whether they were in good repair, whether there was good lighting for walking at night."

Never mind asking do you ever get up off your fat ass and take a walk at night? Or do you ever drag your 54 inch-butt to the company gym? Or if the stores offer the low-fat choices, how come you bypass them in a beeline for the donuts and barbeque chips?

Makes you glad to be a taxpayer, doesn't it?

Rather than hold the good people of the state that calls itself "Wild and Wonderful" accountable for their overarching interest in cookies, French fries, and Moon Pies, the Feds instead focus on the environment in which everyone operates as if having nice sidewalks would somehow solve the state see-food diet.

Daniel McGee, a professor of statistics at Florida State University who has analyzed obesity data, burst out laughing when he heard about it. "They'll find out what we all know--that the country is no longer set up for physical exercise." And that schoolchildren "don't get a nutritious diet." And that "there is a lot of high-fat food on the shelves of every supermarket."

I'm surprised the CDC didn't take a hard look at the dietary impact of Internet cookies. On the other hand, the report isn't due out until August.