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American Morning
Philadelphia Seeks to Quit Throwing Weight Around
Aired July 03, 2001 - 11:16 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Now to accountability in Philadelphia, not about money, but about weight -- the mayor there hoping the city has stopped throwing its weight around. He challenged residents to take it off after Philadelphia was named the fattest city in America.
CNN's Maria Hinojosa joins us on Weigh In Day, where Philadelphians can claim to be slimmer than many of us across America. Maria, good morning again.
MARIA HINOJOSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn.
Well, this is what it looks like when you throw a party to celebrate your diet but no one really shows up. The City of Philadelphia has been on citywide diet starting 76 days ago, and today is the last day. This is what was supposed to be expected for the official weigh out, for people to come in and say how much weight they have lost. The city is saying that they had 25,000 people signed up to lose the weight. They wanted to lose 76 tons of weight, which actually would have been just 30,000 people losing five pounds each. But it's hard to tell here whether or not that's actually happened.
But this all did start because of something that happened, a challenge from "Men's Fitness" magazine, because they called Philadelphia the fattest city in the nation, and the person who did that was Jerry Kindela, the editor-in-chief of "Men's Fitness." So, you just wanted to take Philadelphians on, right?
JERRY KINDELA, EDITOR, "MEN'S FITNESS" MAGAZINE: Not just Philadelphians, the entire country. Philadelphia happened to be the worst city at that particular year out of 50 that we tabulated.
HINOJOSA: Now, what is the idea with naming the fattest cities? Is this what you are hoping, that they would go on a citywide diet? Or is there something more that you want?
KINDELA: We wanted to get America talking about the problems that we saw four years ago -- obesity rates, diabetes increases, and we wanted the country to start talking about it, to create a dialogue, and the best way we thought to do it was to the cities across a broad range of parameters. And that particular year we nailed Philadelphia big time.
HINOJOSA: So what was the problem with Philadelphia, that it was the fattest city? KINDELA: It had to do with obesity rates. It had to do with smoking. It had to do with drinking. It had to do with lack of exercises. It had the highest number of pizza parlors of any city in America and when we took a look at all of these, they rated out that particular year that way.
HINOJOSA: Now this year Philadelphia is not the fattest city. The first two, it's number three, and the first two are?
KINDELA: I can't remember.
HINOJOSA: I think it's Houston and Detroit. Does that mean I need to go work for "Men's Fitness" magazine, when I know more about...
KINDELA: What we wanted this year is that's Houston, and I got hate mail from Houston when we announced them. And unlike Philadelphia, which embraced the program and decided to launch their own campaign, Houston was a little recalcitrant, initially, but then they moved on and now they're, and as part of the deal, they're doing it, too.
HINOJOSA: All right. Well, that's the report here from Philadelphia, where we'll continue to so whether or not they met that goal of losing 76 tons of weight. Reporting live from Philadelphia, Maria Hinojosa -- back to you in the studio.
KAGAN: Maria, before we let you go, let me get this straight. The city expected all those chairs behind you to be filled at this point of people showing up to weigh in and not that many people are there?
HINOJOSA: Well, that's what happened. I mean they're saying that it's because of the fact there is, it's a workday. They did start off this morning at 6:30 with a 1.5 mile walk from downtown to here, and there were maybe 100 or so. But the city is claiming that 25,000 people signed up for this. Those 25,000 people, we haven't seen them yet to come in and do the official weigh out. So I think it's going to be hard to tell what officially the weight loss has been in Philadelphia over these past 76 days.
KAGAN: Well, let's give them the benefit of the doubt and think they are out there running a marathon and that's why they couldn't make it, perhaps.
HINOJOSA: OK, Daryn.
KAGAN: Positive thinking, how about that?
HINOJOSA: Sounds good.
KAGAN: Maria Hinojosa in Philadelphia, thank you -- Brian?
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