I just returned from a trip to Memphis with one of my best friends. She had never been there and being from Philadelphia, she didn’t quite understand how much southerners love their food. One of her comments about half way through the trip was that she thought her skin was going to seep oil from all the fried foods.
I didn’t need to read the newest report from Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to know that the southern states have the highest obesity rates. We will fry anything (where do you think fried Twinkies and fried pickles were invented?). I took me years to get my grandmother, who was a wonderful cook, to quit putting bacon grease in her green beans. And trust me, they were incredible green beans, but I knew how bad it was for us.
Ten of the 11 most obese states on the list were in the south. Mississippi topped the list followed by Alabama and Tennessee (tied for second), West Virginia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Michigan and North Carolina (tied for tenth place).
But, the news from the report isn’t that great for other states either. It stated that adult obesity rates had increased in 28 states over the past year. That is more than half of our states! Thirty eight states have an obesity rate of higher than 25 percent and eight states have a rate higher than 30 percent. If you wonder how things have grown (forgive the pun), in 1980, the national average was just 15 percent.
Part of the problem is that we are not exercising. Twelve states reported a rise in adults that say they don’t engage in any type of physical activity.
All this obesity is, as you might imagine, bad for us. Diabetes in adults has risen 19 percent in the last year. The report seems to find a link between lower income and obesity, with 35 percent of those earning less than $15,000 a year being obese, while less than 25 percent of those earning $50,000 or more a year were obese.
You can read the entire report at the “F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2010.”