Bulge Battles For Black Americans

Southern Cooking Good For The Soul, Tough On The Waistline

(CBS)  Here, gospel is blended with a call to curb obesity.

The black waistline is bulging. The result: heart disease kills blacks at a rate 30 percent higher rate than whites. Diabetes is twice as prevalent and four out of every 10 blacks have high blood pressure, CBS News correspondent Mika Brzezinksi reports.

Now, historically black colleges, like Alcorn State University, are reaching out to students, trying to trim the fat and lower the risk of disease. Warren Rowan signed up.

Rowan says his family has a history of high blood pressure and diabetes. He adds that he's hoping to drop nearly 100 pounds. "I'm 363 and I'd like to get least about, least 280," Rowan says.

Alcorn professor Ross Santell, who chairs the department of human sciences, is leading the university's new diet and exercise program.

"The idea is to try to affect some kind of lifestyle change in the students," Santell explains. Asked what challenges the eating habits specific to the Mississippi Delta region present, Santell says, "Portion control. Large portions. Ay, cooking methods. High fat."

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Fried chicken, greens seasoned with pork fat and buttery cornbread might be a recipe for disaster, but it's a cuisine steeped in tradition. During slavery, blacks made throw-away foods taste good. And, nurse Francis Henderson says tons of calories made sense.

"In the past, you ate heartily because we worked very, very hard," Henderson says. "You needed to sustain your body for that kind of work. Now, you don't have that, but we still eat the same amounts."

Henderson prescribes just a pinch of restraint.

Pointing to some sweet potatoes, Henderson says, "They have sugar. Put a little butter and nutmeg on it and it'll taste just as good."

But making healthy changes does not mean changing the black view of beauty.

When Brzezinski asks a pair of female students at Alcorn if they'd prefer to be super thin, one woman responds, "No. It just wouldn't look right to us."

Her friend adds, "We want a little hips and little this and a little that, but not a whole, whole lot."

But, for Rowan, and thousands of others, the choice is clear: a lifestyle change is necessary.

Rowan, whose father and grandfather both weighed up to 500 pounds, was asked if he is ready to make the change. He says unwaveringly, "Yes. I am."