‘Eat Right’ Campaign Part of First Statewide Program to Enhance Public Health : As Menus Go, Dieters in New Mexico Know They’re Just the Appetizer

From the homes of Montezuma in the state’s northern mountains to the shops of Texico on the broad eastern plains, the people of New Mexico have given their hearts (and stomachs) this winter to a major experiment in public health: the nation’s first statewide diet.

Thousands of New Mexicans--including both U.S. senators, the governor, the chairmen of most of the state’s Indian nations, dozens of sports and media celebrities and even super-svelte Miss New Mexico--have signed up and weighed in for a carefully programmed regimen designed to change eating habits and reduce the weight of the populace by about 35,000 pounds by the first day of spring.

It’s a 10-Year Menu

And this “Eat Right New Mexico” diet is just the appetizer on an ambitious 10-year menu of mass participation to enhance public health through mass changes in life style--improving nutrition, increasing physical activity, reducing smoking.

If this long-range campaign--supervised by a high-powered board of community leaders and promoted relentlessly by disc jockeys, anchorwomen and newspaper columnists--is a success here, it could become the model for statewide health-improvement drives from coast to coast.

“In the extensive involvement of the media . . . and the broad spectrum of participants, there’s been nothing as widespread,” said Dr. J. Michael McGinnis, deputy assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “It’s an example of innovation at the state level that we’d like to see used elsewhere.”

In one sense, according to Bruce Leonard, a public health authority on loan from the U.S. Indian Health Service to be executive director of HealthNet, New Mexico might seem an unlikely choice for this pioneering experiment to make a whole state healthier.

‘Yuppie Phenomena’

“The activities we’re promoting--wholesome food, lots of exercise--are thought of as Yuppie phenomena,” Leonard said. “You know, the jogging shoes in the back seat of the Volvo. But in this state we have to get big populations of fairly low-income groups, Hispanics and Indians, to adopt that same life style.”

On the other hand, Leonard said, some characteristics of New Mexico suit it nicely for the nation’s first statewide diet.

The populace is small and concentrated, with almost half the 1.4 million residents packed into the Albuquerque-Santa Fe corridor. The Albuquerque Journal and the city’s television stations cover the entire state. The Indian Health Service reaches the reservations scattered across mountains and deserts.

And, despite the ethnic divisions, the state enjoys an unusually strong sense of community, because many Americans still seem to view New Mexico as a foreign country.

Finally, New Mexico has one other asset essential to a statewide nutrition campaign: Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a Democrat, who is a popular political figure with a consuming interest in health.

“About two years ago, I heard about a community health program they had developed at Stanford,” Bingaman said, “and I got together a group of eight people from New Mexico to go out there and see what was going on.”

“They had an experimental program in five cities. But it dawned on us that New Mexico was a place where you could do the same kind of thing statewide. Having run several political campaigns in New Mexico, I was aware that the state is essentially (a) one media market.”

Recruits Sen. Domenici

Bingaman recruited his Republican colleague, Sen. Pete V. Domenici, to help set up a nonprofit corporation called HealthNet New Mexico.

Based on a plan devised by the Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention, HealthNet will sponsor three statewide campaigns annually. This winter, Eat Right New Mexico is aimed at weight loss and nutrition awareness. Next spring, HealthNet will launch Get Fit New Mexico, with the goal of turning couch potatoes into exercise buffs. In the fall comes Tobacco Free New Mexico, timed to coincide with national no-smoking campaigns.

“There’s a definite sequence here,” said the lanky, energetic Leonard. “We start with Eat Right after the holidays, when people are motivated to lose weight because they’ve been pigging out. And, if they’re successful, it’s natural that they would want to become physically active so they can keep the weight off. And, people who become physically active are generally eager to stop smoking, so we do that in the fall.

“And then what happens to people when they quit smoking? They gain weight. So, bingo! We lead right back into Eat Right.”

For each of its three campaigns, HealthNet provides weekly instruction kits for participants and rewards for meeting the rather modest goals. This winter, for example, a lapel pin and a gray T-shirt will go to everyone who loses five pounds during the 10-week drive. Leonard estimates that 7,000 New Mexicans will reach that target.

The Eat Right campaign is being pushed by 35 city governments and about 200 employers around the state. Participation rates vary sharply in different sectors of the population. Indians have signed up in large numbers, Leonard said, but Latinos have not.

Jaynee Fontecchio, who runs the program for Albuquerque city employees, said: “For reasons we don’t quite understand, some departments really got into this and some others didn’t.” She reported strong response to Eat Right from zookeepers but scarcely any interest among garbage collectors.

Tampering With the Tacos

The 10-week diet gradually eliminates sugared and fatty foods from the daily menu. Participants are given a “Sugar Diary” form to record every sweet they consume. They are urged to replace high-fat cheeses with low-fat varieties; as a result, some Mexican restaurants here are shredding mozzarella in place of the traditional Cheddar on their tacos.