Blue Ridge Country
Sharon's vacation will be over this Tuesday, and I'm starting to think I'm going to survive it. We did have a fantastic drive down Skyline Drive last week (the pic on the left I took at the Hogwallow Flats overlook), from Front Royal going south past the Thornton Gap, back up, exiting there, and via smaller highways back to Washington. In the morning we'd stopped at a local's local diner in Front Royal — its formica, new many decades ago, had been kept clean but showed wear — where I had half a cup of coffee (bad robusta) and she an english muffin (pre-slathered with something resembling butter). I mention this, because apart from tourists and those running chichi art studios or upscale restaurants, the locals appear to be extremely unhealthy. Either grossly overweight or rail-thin. With bad color. It's a wicked contrast, against the natural beauty of the mountains: these people are only a few short steps from third world norms. Not their fault, of course. But neither do they seem even dimly aware of their situation. How much of the U.S. hinterland is like that, I wonder?
Posted by George Kenney on October 15, 2007 1:22 AM 
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I've driven the length of Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway several times, and it never grows old. I was just up there last week myself, and drove from where they meet, near Charlottesville, down to just south of Otter Creek. Not much color yet, but beautiful nonetheless.
Regarding your question, George, I spend a lot of time in the rural Appalachian South, and what you're describing is all-too-common. Healthy food in this country is practically a boutique item; thus, heavily processed, mass-manufactured "junk" food is the bulk of the diet for many poor and working-class people, and their health reflects the consequences of that diet. The poor also smoke more and exercise less. Even jobs that require a lot of physical exertion, like construction or farming, don't necessarily translate into better health.
And this isn't a problem unique to the South; I see the same phenomenon in the Midwest when I travel, and I've seen it in the poor neighborhoods of Dallas and the Bronx.
I also work in a field where I see a lot of sick people, and can testify to the fact that these trends definitely translate into real health problems--esp. heart disease--and are not just cosmetic concerns for those involved.
I don't think there's really any solution for this, either. It's a logical consequence of trying to feed comfort food to hundreds of millions of people at prices that they can all afford.
Posted by: Monkismo
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October 15, 2007 11:51 PM