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Here are the first few grafs of a NYTimes Magazine story a couple of weeks ago. The story was very long. It is a very "heavy" subject here in Texas.
January 2, 2005
Heavy Questions By ELIZABETH WEIL
The road changes just past the Starr County sign. The shoulder disappears, the grass is left uncut and the black-eyed Susans and big pink Texas sage have to compete with the orange traffic cones set out by the border patrol. Just two counties up from the Texas tip, where the flood plains along the Rio Grande change to rolling hills and eroding cliffs, Starr County, largely Mexican-American, is one of the poorest counties in the nation. Fifty-nine percent of its children live below the poverty level, and in the strange new arithmetic of want, in which poverty means not starvation but its opposite, it is also one of the fattest.
In the colonias on the edge of Rio Grande City -- jerry-rigged neighborhoods that are home to many illegal immigrants and lack adequate municipal services -- houses that look as if they might fall down neighbor houses that look like fortresses, a result of the boom-and-bust drug economy. Little gorditos run around in juice-stained diapers, and as the kids get older, they only get fatter. By the time they are 4 years old, 24 percent of the children are overweight or obese; by kindergarten, 28 percent; and by elementary school, 50 percent of the boys are overweight or obese, along with 35 percent of the girls. The concern is not just cosmetic. Overweight children are at significantly greater risk for developing Type 2 diabetes, and by early adulthood, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, colon cancer, breast cancer, gallbladder disease, arthritis and sleep apnea. ''Stop by any time,'' said the local school district superintendent, Roel Gonzalez, inviting me to visit. The child of migrant farm workers, Gonzalez is perhaps the children's greatest advocate and the community's greatest critic. ''I will take you down the hall in any one of my schools, and you will see most of the children aren't slim anymore; they're all beefy. Kids are 30, 40 pounds overweight already, and they're only in high school. We're basically walking time bombs.''
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