Originally appeared on The Opinion Shop blog of The News & Observer:
When I see a news story datelined from West Virginia, my body involuntarily contracts, waiting for the blow. Nine times out of 10, it’s not a good news story, although there are plenty of good people and heart-warming deeds of note that could find their way into stories if anyone were looking for them.
On Monday, a story on Page 3A was headlined “In unhealthiest city, it’s the economy that gets people down,” and before I even read the dateline, the accompanying picture — with its teeny, tiny billboard advertising Gino’s pizza, a favorite of mine, for $5.99 — alerted me that this unhealthiest of cities was mine.
Huntington, W.Va., home to Marshall University and a nickel plant, is also home to
quite a few obese adults. Nearly half of the adults in Huntington’s metro area are in fact obese, the story said.
The cultural attitude, the director of Huntington’s health department said, is that “my parents ate that and my grandparents ate that” and nobody is going to tell anybody what to eat.
That’s an attitude I’m familiar with. My paternal grandmother, who lived to be 95, never met a pot of gravy she didn’t like, and many a relative pointed to Mamaw’s longevity and eating habits as an excuse to eat another piece of fried chicken.
But my grandmother also spent the first 60-some years of her long life growing, canning and eating her own vegetables and fruits. And she expended a lot of calories, out there on Raccoon Creek, working hard to supplement a monthly income of $30, the Social Security she received to raise seven children after my grandfather’s death at age 42.
In Huntington today, the poverty rate is nearly 20 percent, so there are plenty of people who can’t afford to buy healthy food, and few folks for sure are growing it themselves. Poverty and obesity have been proved time and again to go hand and hand. And the new jobs at the telemarketing call center don’t really get that heart rate up.
The kicker to Monday’s story, however, was that it naturally had to include the fact that Huntington also is home to the country’s highest percentage of elderly people who have lost all their teeth (insert remarkably insensitive West Virginia joke here).
My saint of a grandmother, it’s true, had dentures. And my maternal grandfather did, too. I grew up thinking putting your false teeth in a cup by your bed at night was just part of the natural progression of life. My adored, goofy grandfather liked to force his dentures out of his mouth at inopportune moments, causing his grandchildren to shriek
with laughter.
But there’s just nothing funny, in the year 2008, about having such a high percentage of Americans -- anywhere --forced to live with no teeth because we haven’t embraced a basic human right to health care. If we in our bleached-to-blinding-white teeth society actually contemplated what that meant, we’d be horrified.
Just this year, a treasured employee at my mother’s Huntington Mall restaurant had all of her teeth pulled because she simply could not afford even the most basic amount of work to keep them. Dentures, you see, are the easy, cheap fix to a mouthful of misery.
Just this year, though I have insurance, I spent more than $1,000 out of pocket on dental work, getting the most expensive, longest-lasting restorative goo in the history of the universe to save as much of my tooth surfaces as possible.
In our country, there are always going to be wide disparities
between those who can afford to fork up the filet mignon and those who get by on beans or those who slumber atop 800-thread-count sheets and those on flannel.
But should there be such wide disparities in access to health care?
On Monday, a story on Page 3A was headlined “In unhealthiest city, it’s the economy that gets people down,” and before I even read the dateline, the accompanying picture — with its teeny, tiny billboard advertising Gino’s pizza, a favorite of mine, for $5.99 — alerted me that this unhealthiest of cities was mine.
Huntington, W.Va., home to Marshall University and a nickel plant, is also home toquite a few obese adults. Nearly half of the adults in Huntington’s metro area are in fact obese, the story said.
The cultural attitude, the director of Huntington’s health department said, is that “my parents ate that and my grandparents ate that” and nobody is going to tell anybody what to eat.
That’s an attitude I’m familiar with. My paternal grandmother, who lived to be 95, never met a pot of gravy she didn’t like, and many a relative pointed to Mamaw’s longevity and eating habits as an excuse to eat another piece of fried chicken.
But my grandmother also spent the first 60-some years of her long life growing, canning and eating her own vegetables and fruits. And she expended a lot of calories, out there on Raccoon Creek, working hard to supplement a monthly income of $30, the Social Security she received to raise seven children after my grandfather’s death at age 42.
In Huntington today, the poverty rate is nearly 20 percent, so there are plenty of people who can’t afford to buy healthy food, and few folks for sure are growing it themselves. Poverty and obesity have been proved time and again to go hand and hand. And the new jobs at the telemarketing call center don’t really get that heart rate up.
The kicker to Monday’s story, however, was that it naturally had to include the fact that Huntington also is home to the country’s highest percentage of elderly people who have lost all their teeth (insert remarkably insensitive West Virginia joke here).
My saint of a grandmother, it’s true, had dentures. And my maternal grandfather did, too. I grew up thinking putting your false teeth in a cup by your bed at night was just part of the natural progression of life. My adored, goofy grandfather liked to force his dentures out of his mouth at inopportune moments, causing his grandchildren to shriek
with laughter.
with laughter.
But there’s just nothing funny, in the year 2008, about having such a high percentage of Americans -- anywhere --forced to live with no teeth because we haven’t embraced a basic human right to health care. If we in our bleached-to-blinding-white teeth society actually contemplated what that meant, we’d be horrified.
Just this year, a treasured employee at my mother’s Huntington Mall restaurant had all of her teeth pulled because she simply could not afford even the most basic amount of work to keep them. Dentures, you see, are the easy, cheap fix to a mouthful of misery.
Just this year, though I have insurance, I spent more than $1,000 out of pocket on dental work, getting the most expensive, longest-lasting restorative goo in the history of the universe to save as much of my tooth surfaces as possible.
In our country, there are always going to be wide disparities
between those who can afford to fork up the filet mignon and those who get by on beans or those who slumber atop 800-thread-count sheets and those on flannel.
between those who can afford to fork up the filet mignon and those who get by on beans or those who slumber atop 800-thread-count sheets and those on flannel.
But should there be such wide disparities in access to health care?
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