From The Oklahoman’s Monday Morning Quarterbacks discussing my post on Oklahoma City’s #2 fattest city ranking:

Talking, not walking
We beat Miami! Um, no. Not in basketball. Miami was the only city Oklahoma City beat in recent fattest cities list from the magazine Men’s Fitness. Blogger Blair Humphreys, an Oklahoma City native studying in Boston, wrote at imaginativeamerica.com that despite the citywide diet, our fair city bumped up the list and is “just a few burgers away” from taking the cake. Humphreys wrote that Mayor Mick Cornett’s diet plan didn’t seem to help the ranking and that better-performing cities seemed to have planning and policies that encouraged more activity. “As for OKC,” he wrote, “we are talking the talk, but we are simply not walking anywhere.”

Well, not sure if this is the post I would have preferred to get press for and I take offense to being called a “Monday Morning Quarterback” as I have been pushing for better planning and improvements in walkability since before the citywide diet was created and certainly before the Men’s Fitness rankings were released. But oh well, I guess it will have to do.

I think one of my earlier comments sums up my take on the whole thing:

I will join you in tipping my hat to the Mayor for creating more awareness of the problem, but also encourage anyone and everyone to take serious the impact that our built form and public infrastructure has on the health of OKC residents!

Hopefully, this will be the start of a bigger conversation about the limitations of our wholly auto-focused infrastructure and how it hinders people’s ability to live a healthier lifestyle.  I am really not worried about what Men’s Fitness thinks of us, but I am worried about improving the quality of life in OKC!  And we need to take seriously the health consequences associated with the way we are currently planning and developing our city.

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