Living fat and happy (pass the donuts please)

According to multiple internet sources, West Virginia ranks second in the nation in obesity. That’s second from the bottom – not the second best. We’re also in the bottom 10 on the list of healthiest states.

I can’t speak for the rest of West Virginia, but in Fairmont, that shouldn’t come as a shock. Go into a Fairmont supermarket and try to find low-fat products or any of a number of other healthy foods. I wish you the best of luck.

Computers in most retail stores allow them to keep a running inventory and re-stock the products that their customers buy most. Apparently, either the stores are inexplicably ignoring customer demand or the population of Fairmont is happily overweight, because the choices for healthy products are severely limited.

My wife and I moved here from the greater Pittsburgh area. In addition to a wide variety of food and grocery products, our Giant Eagle supermarket there had a restaurant, dry cleaner, post office, bank, full-service deli, sushi bar, florist and day care center with cable TV all in one place. If it had offered beds, we could have lived there.

When we moved back here 12 years ago, there was talk of a “renaissance” taking place in Fairmont. We didn’t realize we’d have to re-live the Dark Ages first.

We didn’t expect to find Bloomingdale’s here or have breakfast at Tiffany’s, but is one decent supermarket too much to ask? I do the grocery shopping and I have to bounce back and forth between Shop ’n Save and Food Lion because neither store sells everything I want. Fortunately, they’re only a mile or two apart.

Some people I know shop at Walmart for groceries, but I refuse to do that. I hate everything about Walmart, the way it comes into a town and kills off all the local businesses, so I only go there if it’s absolutely critical.

I read the local paper every day and it amuses me that our local leaders are always talking about Fairmont’s “growth.” If watching the banks play musical chairs with abandoned buildings qualifies as growth, then I guess we’re growing.

We ARE getting some new hospital facilities out by the connector, presumably to treat all of us who are grossly overweight. Meanwhile, we are eagerly awaiting the construction of our first Sheetz convenience store and celebrating the opening of a brand new donut shop.

Yeah, Sheetz sandwiches and donuts… that’s bound to help with our obesity problem.