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 different day. The genius of Jam...
Source: hemodynamics - Category: American Health Tags: community organizing food health policy Jamie Oliver obesity television Source Type: blogs