We’re Lost in a Glazed

It was late afternoon in the midst of a heat wave, in that part of Southern California that tends to get left out of the rap about golden dreams. Half past five, and the mercury was still pulsing around 90. The smell of asphalt rose from shimmering Imperial Highway. This, in short, should not have been “HOT DOUGHNUTS” time.

But it was. Through jungle-style heat, through smog thick with the exhaust of a million tailpipes, lines of sweat-soaked Californians were inexplicably crowding the drive-through of the La Habra Krispy Kreme. Since the moment this franchise opened about a year ago, it has swarmed morning and night, summer and winter, with hot doughnut traffic. Vans and Buicks, light trucks and camper trailers were being pulled toward the red HOT DOUGHNUTS sign like bugs to a porch light, 10 cars deep at one point, not counting the many customers who parked in the stifling lot and walked inside.

Ten cars deep, and they were big cars, with big people in them. If the customers had actually come to the counter, they might have seen the stack of “nutritional information” fliers near the cash register, warning that each glazed confection would upholster their thighs to the tune of up to 350 fat-packed calories. But no one went near the nutritional information. The customers didn’t want details. They wanted doughnuts.

“I want two cream-filled and two chocolate-iced-cream-filled and a chocolate milk,” a plump woman in a Dodge Ram truck shouted, her French manicure tapping impatiently on the broiling dashboard. “Gimme three glazed and a milk,” a round-faced construction worker called over the roar of his air-conditioning. A big-bellied gent in a Hawaiian shirt parked a Jeep and sauntered in for a dozen; while he was gone, a kid stuffed a flier for a 24-Hour Fitness Center under his windshield wiper. The man sat inside, eating, watching the kid through the window. The leaflet fluttered pointlessly in the furnace-like breeze.

Mention California, and most people imagine roller-bladers chugging carrot juice on the Venice boardwalk. This is why, when most people visit Southern California, they become confused. As movie stars turn out to be shy and Malibu turns out to be fixated on septic tanks, so do a lot of California girls turn out to be built like Monica Lewinsky pre-Jenny Craig diet. For every hottie on skates, there are legions of Southern Californians whose idea of sport is dashing out for a Fatburger or two.

In fact, it was reported last week, more than half of all adults in California are officially overweight, and the nonprofit Public Health Institute wasn’t talking about that mythical “extra 10 pounds.” They were talking serious-health-problem fat. “People are killing themselves with a fork,” one spokeswoman warned. Another decried “a culture that says, ‘Don’t just sit there, eat something!’ ” To the extent that the fast-food joints on Imperial Highway were representative, California appeared to be too busy chomping chalupas to listen. The report might as well have been a nutritional leaflet at Krispy Kreme.

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This is the real curiosity, as relevant for the rest of America as it is for California: Supposedly we’re obsessed with health here, but if so, it doesn’t show. For years, studies have shown obesity to be among the most preventable of lethal health problems, and for years, Californians have just gotten fatter and fatter. Don’t believe it? Take a look around your child’s elementary school playground. The obesity among children--who, as adolescents, are then punished cruelly for having been taught to love McNuggets and Nintendo--is heartbreaking stuff.

Part of this may have to do with the sort of cultural divides that undermine these studies. The Public Health Institute is based in Berkeley, PC finger-wagger to the West. Its report had that peculiar quality of one California nagging another--to build more bike paths, to forswear the car culture, to force capitalist fast-food outlets to give customers even more useless nutritional warnings. The institute vice president I talked to kept referring to Berkeley’s famous restaurateur and advocate of organic cuisine, Alice Waters, as just “Alice.” Down on Imperial Highway, the drive-through diners tend not to know--or care--who Alice Waters is.

But part may also have to do with the urge to overeat in general, which is harder to talk about than, say, the decline of real physical education in the public schools. Obesity is psychologically rooted. It’s substance abuse, never mind that the substance is legally available in any kitchen. What’s interesting is the reluctance--even here in the land of golden 12-step programs--to acknowledge America’s latest, yummiest drug of choice: food.

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Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hub ler@latimes.com.