Baton Rouge ranked the No. 1 most obese city in America. How did this happen? And how can we fix it?
By Marcus Rodrigue
It’s no secret that in Baton Rouge, we like to eat.
Southern cuisine is a critical component of our lifestyle. Spring is synonymous with crawfish boils. Small south Louisiana towns within driving distance host food festivals nearly every weekend. Visit LSU’s campus on a fall Saturday and you’ll see hundreds of tailgates with grills, smokers and pots producing the salty, fatty meals that make Southern cooking so desirable.
We love our food. Maybe a little too much.
Baton Rouge’s 36 percent obesity rate made headlines earlier this year, when Gallup-Healthways ranked it the fattest city in the nation. Obesity costs Louisiana $3 billion dollars annually, and roughly half of the state’s children are obese or overweight.
But there’s more to it than our love of jambalaya.
Experts say the heat and the lack of pedestrian-friendly infrastructure and established wellness policies are part of the problem, too.
“It should be emphasized that Baton Rouge isn’t the only city struggling with obesity—there are many other cities with similarly high rates,” says Dr. Owen Carmichael, director of biomedical imaging at Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
That said, he points to the factors driving Baton Rouge toward higher obesity rates.
“Baton Rouge is an older city that grew organically over time. Unlike many Western cities, it did not have the luxury of building large amounts of its infrastructure from scratch in recent decades,” he says.
Dr. Patrice Tyson helps a participant in the Healthy Lifestyles Program make healthful choices in the Subway line. Photo by Allie Appel
That has made it tougher for the city to build modern infrastructure that would encourage physical activity—think separated bike lanes on major commute corridors, pedestrian walkways and jogging paths. Combine that with Baton Rouge’s infamous traffic, and summer heat that none of us want to run around in, and, well, there’s your recipe for sedentary living, he says.
So how do we change things? First, start young.
The Our Lifestyles, Our Lives program is a 10-week class that educates children and their parents about eating healthy. The program is hosted by Our Lady of the Lake Physician Group in conjunction with Pennington.
“We’re trying to dispel some of those bad habits and bring them back to what they should be doing and get them on a healthy track,” says Dr. Patrice Tyson, who helped create the program four years ago. “With kids, they’re young enough that if you start breaking down those bad habits now, they’ll take them throughout their lifetime.”
Programs like these are a great way for kids to learn about nutrition in a fun way.
Still, eating right is only part of the solution.
Joining a local running club like Happy’s Running Club is a great way to get fit. Photo by Collin Richie
Dr. Eric Ravussin, a leading researcher of obesity and diabetes at Pennington, says all the factors that make up a person’s environment influence health.
“The development of obesity is the result of an interaction between your genes and your environment,” he says. “The perfect environment for [becoming obese] is to have plenty of cheap, very palatable food and no real need for physical activity. This is the perfect storm.”
And Baton Rouge is not alone—this perfect storm has swept the United States since the 1980s. Obesity rates doubled among U.S. adults between 1980 and 2000. This surge finally drove the American Medical Association to classify obesity as a disease in 2013.
Obesity causes a host of health problems, most notably diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Chronic joint pain, certain types of cancer and even depression are also more prevalent in people struggling with obesity.
Locals Courtney Milan and her three teenage daughters are enrolled in the Our Lifestyles, Our Lives program to avoid the dangers of obesity. Milan sums up the challenge facing those trying to maintain healthy habits.
“We know what we have to do, but it’s a big adjustment,” she says.
A big adjustment, indeed. Doctors and experts conclude that a total lifestyle change is necessary to prevent or reverse the onset of obesity. National public health policies should play a role in curtailing obesity, Ravussin says, but it’s up to individuals to address their unhealthy behaviors.
Besides genetics, there are two controllable factors that determine a person’s weight and body composition—physical exercise and diet. The medical community is still unsure about which aspect matters more, but it agrees that both play a major role in overall health.
Dr. Peter Katzmarzyk, a Pennington researcher who specializes in physical activity and sedentary behavior, says a balance needs to exist between energy consumed in the form of calories and energy expended during exercise.
“People think they can just go and exercise then eat all they want,” he says. “It won’t work for weight loss. There are a lot of benefits from physical activity, but you may not lose the weight you expect. If you also restrict your calories, you will definitely lose weight.”
Fat contains more than double the calories found in protein and carbohydrates, so the fatty foods common to south Louisiana cooking—fried chicken and seafood, sausage gumbo—are a major catalyst for gaining unhealthy weight.
A good strategy for limiting calories is to pre-plan meals, says Allison Davis, who visits homes and counsels families about nutrition as part of a Pennington health study.
She says planning and preparing meals deters people from frequenting fast food restaurants and eating “convenience foods.” This method costs less and results in meals that can feed families for longer, Davis says.
Davis and Taylor Ayers, a dietitian who often accompanies her on house calls, don’t make radical changes to people’s diets overnight. That wouldn’t sit too well with Cajun cooks.
Rather, they take small steps and suggest substituting healthy foods for unhealthy ones, such as grilled chicken in place of beef or non-stick spray instead of butter. People can still eat popular Louisiana dishes like red beans and rice, they say, but simply seasoning it with rosemary instead of salt can make a big difference.
Local fitness enthusiasts Ryan and Michelle Neustrom modeled for our October cover shoot at the LSU Lakes. Photo by Collin Richie
Katzmarzyk stresses, though, that going on a diet is not enough, referencing the public’s recent obsession with trendy diets to illustrate this point.
“Diets work, and you’ll lose 10 or 20 pounds. But almost inevitably, people gain that back because all they’re doing is dieting,” he says. “If you look at the last 50 years in the United States and the fad diets every year, the only thing that’s happening is people are getting fatter.
“You need a total lifestyle change, which includes physical activity.”
The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention recommends adults perform 30 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous exercise each day, while children should strive for an hour or more of daily physical activity. Exceeding these suggestions will result in better weight loss maintenance, Katzmarzyk says.
Pennington researchers have also been trying to find workarounds to Baton Rouge’s infrastructure challenges.
They brought a program called Play Streets to the Glen Oaks and Brookstown neighborhoods this summer. Based on similar concepts in other big cities, the program shut down traffic in busy areas to allow kids to safely play outside.
Getting kids to exercise by playing outside is one thing. But for adults with professional and personal obligations, finding time to stay active can be much harder.
Katzmarzyk, however, says exercising isn’t all about going to the gym for intense workouts. Simply spending more time standing or walking and less time sitting down while at work can be critical in offsetting sedentary behavior.
“It’s not about exercising; it’s about moving,” he says.
Maintaining a good weight ultimately comes down to personal choices.
There are ways for the city’s citizens to ward off obesity—you just have to look for them. Locals can utilize the Mississippi River levee bike trail, BREC parks and running clubs like the one sponsored by Happy’s Irish Pub.
OLOL Healthy Lifestyles Program’s Dr. Patrice Tyson. Photo by Allie Appel
There’s also Mayor Kip Holden’s Healthy BR initiative, a non-profit formed in 2008 that works with more than 70 local organizations to increase health. The website healthybr.com has healthy event listings and suggestions for places to get active. It even has a list of partner restaurants that have committed to offering healthy meals for children, including Bistro Byronz, Fresh Kitchen, Le Creole, Magpie Café, Mestizo, MJ’s Café, Nino’s, Ruffino’s, The Little Village and others.
The current resources are a good start, experts say, but there’s still a long way to go toward making physical activities a part of the local culture and safe for the public.
And in the meantime, no one is saying lay off the crawfish: Maybe just pay more attention to how you are cooking it.
“We were taught recipes from our parents who were taught by their parents to cook foods rich in Louisiana culture and flavor. … Learning to create recipes that are just as delicious, but also healthy and nutritious is important,” Ayers says. “These meals taste great, but they don’t have to be high in fat and sodium to be rich in culture and flavor.”
The Gallup-Healthways study used self-reported height and weight data to calculate the body mass index of 176,702 U.S. respondents in the 100 most populous metros. Americans with a BMI of 30 or higher are considered obese. The study also found ties between obesity and lower social, financial and community well-being.
THE TOP 5: Baton Rouge: 35.9% Harrisburg-Carlisle, Pennsylvania: 35.3% Little Rock-North Rock-Conway, Arkansas: 34.1% Tulsa, Oklahoma: 33.5% Dayton, Ohio: 33.5%
