April 11, 2019

Fat city?

I love the city of Huntington. I'm no doubt biased. It's my county seat and it was always the city we could go to when we need a break from our small town. It's home of Marshall, my alma mater twice over.

It's been hit by tidal wave after tidal wave. Major deindustrialization, bad health, ground zero for opioid overdoses. But it keeps fighting back.

Usually any national attention it gets has to do with the opioid epidemic. This would be a case in point. Things are still bad there, but the fact that the city has made major progress in reducing overdoses doesn't always get the same level of attention.

I was pleasantly surprised to see this Washington Post story about how Huntington turned the corner from being America's most obese city. According to the CDC, the rate dropped by 13 percentage points over the last decade.

Some may remember when Jamie Oliver did a Food Revolution TV series about Huntington, with plenty of made up drama, but the heroes and heroines of this story are local.

And the city keeps plugging away.

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