Jamie Oliver, ABC ' s pop Alinsky

Photo: Jamie Oliver in Britain, where he transformed national school lunch policy.Ms. Dr. Hemodynamics and I were having a little bit of TV time the other night, and Jamie Oliver was trying to convince the lunch ladies of West Virginia that cooking from scratch was a good idea, and railing against some state bureaucrat ' s affection for chocolate- and strawberry-flavored milk.Surprisingly, we kept watching.OK, so, admittedly, I ' ve only seen one episode thus far--but still, I found myself surprisingly compelled by the episode I saw, as a template for health-oriented community organizing.I have mixed feelings about the moral panic in progress about obesity. The term " obesity " has become so loaded with moral judgment that I ' ve taken to showing people in my clinic theNHLBI BMI calculator while holding my hand over the category labels. I always explain that this is a continuum, and that it ' s my view that the terms " overweight " and " obese " are better understood as " higher risk " (for 25 to 29.9) and " even higher risk " (for over 30). I don ' t think that calling someone " obese " is that useful. And absolute weight numbers, especially around the high 20s/low 30s fairly " overweight " /slightly " obese " range that so many of my patients and I occupy, may be at least as important as proxies for other things--like cardiovascular fitness and nutrition--as problems in and of themselves.But my own struggles with weight and fitness, and those of my patients, are for a diffe...
Source: hemodynamics - Category: American Health Tags: community organizing food health policy Jamie Oliver obesity television Source Type: blogs