Get your copy of our weekly print products at any of these convenient locations.

Obesity rates spike for state's African Americans

Shawn Doherty  —  7/23/2008 11:17 am

Don't go telling Marilyn Ruffin that she is not healthy. She grew up seeing plenty of relatives and friends fighting diabetes and obesity and she wasn't going to let that happen to her or her family.

She walks around her east side Madison neighborhood every morning listening to Michael Jackson on her iPod. She cooks none of the sweet potato pies and fried chicken her mama used to make for her -- instead she grills chicken and fish for her husband and two sons. And none of this supersizing stuff either from McDonald's, she said. Her cholesterol is good, her blood tests are good, and if the doctor and the charts say she is heavy, well, that's the way she was built.

Like many African American women, Ruffin is tired of being measured and judged by standards she thinks were fashioned for white women. "I have big hips and I have big thighs. That's the way I'm made," she said. "I don't worry about what the charts and the stats and the magazines say about African Americans. I worry about how I feel. And I feel pretty good."

Last week the federal Centers for Disease Control released its annual survey of weight measures across the country. While the latest figures show a slight improvement in the battle of the bulge for Wisconsin overall, a closer look at the numbers shows that obesity in the state's African-American population shot up to 42.7 percent, compared to 24.7 percent of the white population.

The disparity is most pronounced among women -- almost twice as many African-American women are obese compared to white women in the state. And that disparity is what makes black women believe they are being held to a white standard of beauty and body type. Which is nothing new, said Beverly Burns of Madison, who was recently treating her visiting granddaughters to ice cream at the East Towne Mall food court. Burns recalls that as a young girl her mother was forced to stand with her back against the wall in the school gymnasium, and told that the space between her body and the wall meant that she was too fat. Burns is still indignant.

"In our family, we have butts," she said. "We have a tendency to be more rounded and more plump. The standards out there don't take into consideration the shape of the African-American woman."

But while Burns and Ruffin chafe at measures they feel are unfair to black women, both women also admit they need to lose weight and so do many others in their communities. Not because there is anything wrong with the way they look, but because they know the health risks.

In Wisconsin, blacks die at a significantly higher rate than whites from heart disease, cancer and strokes. The rate of hospitalization for blacks with diabetes, another illness linked to obesity, is three times the rate of hospitalization for whites in the state.

"Historically African Americans have been in denial about a lot of things, " said Michelle DeBose, a minority health officer for the state of Wisconsin and an activist on health issues. "The old philosophy was that some men and families wanted you to be heavy. But as we see more and more people dying from chronic diseases like diabetes and heart conditions it's hard to be in denial about this."

One of the biggest barriers to keeping fit is old eating and nutrition habits. "The types of foods many of our families eat are a lot of fast foods or fried foods," said Billy Fletcher, a deacon at the Mt. Zion Baptist Church. "Trying to eat and live the healthy lifestyle is very expensive. It's a lot easier to go to the dollar menu at McDonald's."

Fletcher is only 24, but his doctor recently told him if he didn't lose 80 pounds he was in danger of developing diabetes and dying young. News like that, Fletcher said, is convincing many African Americans to make changes. "Maybe the standards and scales need to be updated for African Americans but we also need to be walking in the truth and being honest with ourselves," Fletcher said. "This is a life and death matter."

Fletcher is not the only one at Mt. Zion tackling the issue. Rev. Richard L. Jones Sr. suffered a heart attack a couple of years ago. Since then he has lost weight and taken to preaching healthy eating and living from the pulpit. On a recent Sunday, a table in the church hall was full of pamphlets from local health authorities.

Marilyn Ruffin has tried, with little luck so far, to get a walking group going at the south side church. She and some of the other women active in the church's health ministry have had better luck controlling what the 2,000-member congregation eats at church events and picnics.

"You get one scoop of potatoes, that's it -- and just one or two pieces of fried chicken. And vegetables, vegetables, vegetables," Fletcher joked. "We're used to it by now, nobody dare say anything!"

Another key barrier to staying fit is exercise. Many African-American families cannot afford to join posh health clubs or live in neighborhoods like Ruffin's where it is both pleasant and safe to take a walk or a jog. African Americans in Wisconsin are four times as likely to live in poverty as the overall population.

"It's really a perfect storm," said Patrick Remington, the director of UW's Population Health Institute, which in its 2007 Health of Wisconsin Report Card gave the state A's and B's for many overall health categories, but F's for categories measuring the health of African Americans.

"You have a combination of a bad environment and a bad family history," he said. Many African Americans, he added, "are fighting an impossible battle against great odds."

Even children are aware of the odds they face. Nearly half of black youth, compared to 22 percent of white kids, surveyed in a report soon to be released by the Department of Public Health for Madison and Dane County complained that their community had too few organized team sports. Forty percent of minority youth also complained of inadequate outdoor facilities in their neighborhoods. It's no wonder that the same survey will show that black children watch much more television than white children, and snack much more on soda. Almost 40 percent of black kids drank two to three servings a day, and another 26.2 percent, compared to 14.6 percent of all children, had up to six servings a day.

None of these findings surprise local officials, who have been struggling for years to improve access to better nutrition and recreation in predominately minority neighborhoods. City and county directories list dozens of programs aimed at improving these disparities. Girls at the Bridge Lake Point Waunona Neighborhood Center on Madison's south side, for example, meet every week for yoga, Frisbee and lessons in cooking nutritious meals like tacos made out of turkey instead of beef. Their goal this summer: to earn a pair of free sneakers if they walk the equivalent of the state's width, or 180 miles.

Local and state officials now glumly admit that despite such efforts, the state's target of reducing obesity in Wisconsin to 15 percent by 2010 now seems highly unlikely, especially for the African-American population. "This is one goal we're not going to meet," said Mary Pesik, the nutrition and physical activity program director for the state Division of Public Health. Pesik vows the state will keep trying. "This is a fairly new topic area. Science hasn't yet caught up, but we're getting more and more evidence to what works and what doesn't."

Ironically, experts and parents also worry that the zealous public health campaign against obesity could have what Remington calls "unintended consequences" and lead to an increase in the diagnosis of eating disorders, which, contrary to popular belief, are prevalent among African-American as well as white girls and women.

Burns recalls that her grandmother was "very small and very vain." She was scornful of other members of the family who were unable to keep their weight under control. She remained a proud member of Weight Watchers for 22 years. Until she died recently at age 98, Burns said, her grandmother had her own method for being able to eat the Dunkin' Donuts she loved and keeping her weight down. "She'd ask for an emesis basin and throw

up after every meal," Burns said. "Up until her last meal she continued purging. She was the oldest bulimic I've ever known."

Shawn Doherty  —  7/23/2008 11:17 am