Talk Elections

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1. Mississippi
2. Alabama
3. West Virginia
4. Louisiana
5. South Carolina (tie)
5. Tennessee (tie)
7. Kentucky
8. Arkansas
9. Indiana (tie)
9. Michigan (tie)

I'm not very surprised. People especially in the West Coast have a strong social stigma against obesity. It can be discriminatory at times, but mostly it pressures people to not eat. I see it a lot at school, and all of the Hollywood stars affect it in California too.

Wow, I had a feeling it'd be localized, but I had no idea it'd be that extreme.

Insert obligatory "LOL DEEP SOUTH" comment here.

Well now we know what happened to StatesRights. He moved to Mississippi!

Nearly every fried food you can think of was created in the South so this should come as no surprise.

It's really hard to stay in shape in the South. Cities are very sprawled out and not walkable. Plus, it's too hot and humid for a lot of activity.

The top 10 dumbest states is quite similar isn't' it?  I'm guessing that isn't a coincidence.

That list was fake.

Obesity rate by state:

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Red
70%: >27% obese (Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia and Louisiana)
60%: >25% obese
50%: >23% obese

Blue
50%: >21% obese
60%: >19% obese
70%: >17% obese
80%: <17% obese (only Colorado, at 16.9%)

lol..... oh the south....

And Minnesotans are relatively fat for participating the most in physical activities... it's all the hot dish and Cool Whip infused jello salad

Looking at the map, the link between class and obesity is pretty obvious, though nowhere near perfect (Wisconsin? Maryland?)

It's much more complex than that.

Class, culture, traditional foods, availability of physical activities, location all factor in.

Colorado is skinnier than the rest of us because a lot of active people move there since they have so many outdoor activities.

Poor Michigan. It got lumped in with the hillbilly belt.

Arkansas has been making progress in this field.

I'm suprised Oklahoma is not in the top 10, considering we have the most fast food joints per capita in the United States.  Not a statistic to be proud of.  I know we have to be 11, 12, or 13.

I'm surprised Wisconsin isn't fatter with its cheese, brats, and beer.

Glad to see Massachusetts clocking in as one of the least fat states.

Montana is interesting.

"Nowhere near perfect" always indicates that something is complicated :)


It's also one of the most midd... ah no that means something different in the U.S... ah... bourgeois, yes, that ought to do, bourgeois parts of North America.

I have relatives who are cattle ranchers and they're all super skinny.  Their meals are always well balanced and they spend their entire day doing manual labor to keep the ranch running.  Also, there aren't that many fast food places out in ranch country.

Agreed.  The irony of our age (and in the first world) is that poor people are the most likely to be fat.

I'm surprised that PA wasn't higher acctually.

My guess...given how the map looks, eastern pa is probably very much like NY/NJ, and that balances out (somewhat, save philadelphia itself) the heavier trend shown in the west...

I wonder if theres also some correlation between %African American and placement on the chart...I wonder because of the higher rates of heart disease and lower rates of income (the poor as a whole might be eating in a less healthy fashion)

Well...not because of higher rates of heart disease, but in correlation to...

Rates of death caused by heart disease in the U.K correlate very closely to class. For what it's worth.

Of course it is all attributable to class.  Not only is it necessary for these poors to be fed cheaply during their brief working lives, it is preferable for their owners that they die at a young age - ideally just before 'retirement'.  Most importantly however, They have very cheap, low-quality, almost inedible foodstuffs must be sold at a high profit - or in other words force-fed to these much abused powerless garbage disposals.

Lowest % with a Bachelors:
51. WV
50. AR
49. MS
48. KY
47. IN
46. AL
45. LA
44. WY
43. OK
42. NC
41. ID

http://www.statemaster.com/graph/edu_bac_deg_or_hig_by_per-bachelor-s-degree-higher-percentage

Another class correlation (and a stronger one).

YEAH!  Go Michigan!  Oh wait, this is a BAD thing that Michigan's in the top 10 for.  I knew we'd be on this list though - just walking around, we're incredibly fat.  Or the skinny people live in Detroit, and they just get shot.

Do you have a source for this?  I wanted to do a blog post on it, but I need a little more details to work with.

http://apps.carleton.edu/MindBodySpirit/lifestyles/assets/US_obesity.jpg

Or, better but less precise:

http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/maps/

I was using the 2004 data; the 2006 data are even worse. (Mississippi and West Virginia have surpassed 30%.)

This is also based on BMI, though, and I think race/ethnicity has something to do with it, just for the fact of body size/mass.

Minnesota has always been on the heavier side despite being a healthy, active state with a high median income and a well-educated population.

We also have a lot of Scandinavian and German roots here, so people are quite tall and generally bigger than people in other parts of the country.  According to the BMI, Michael Jordan and most football players are borderline obese... despite being quite healthy.

So, this isn't 100% accurate.

I think the 5 fattest cities are:

1.   Memphis, Tennessee
2.   Birmingham, Alabama
3.   San Antonio, Texas
4.   Riverside, California
5.   Detroit, Michigan (I think???)

Oklahoma City is #8, just like I thought.

I found it on Yahoo News, but I can't find the link anymore, so I can't post one.

Source: Yo momma.

Actual source: This (http://www.statemaster.com/graph/hea_obe_rat-health-obesity-rate).

No - that's 2001 - and MI's #3 there.

Aww yeah Colorado. Regardless, 16.9% is a still a high number

Wow, now that's scary.

I'm suprised about Arizona, especially given how hot its summers are.

lol on the Weird Al background music

Isn't it ironic that the fattest states are the ones with the hottest women? -well, except Utah

Fat women with no teeth are not hot.

My point is the same states which have a lot of fat people also tend to have hotter non-fat women. Slim Mississippi girls are far preferable to anorexic Massachussetts prostitutes.

dont forget about the south carolina girls!

The only reason that the southern fatty states have "hotter" non-fat women is because there are so many porkers down there that the few who aren't fat end up looking really good by default even if they wouldn't be that great in a non-porker state.

Prostitutes?  How do prostitutes enter into this?  Don't get my hopes up.

I don't know about Massachusetts but I hear Rhode Island is full of prostitutes. In fact, it's even quasi-legal there.

And that's why Texas and Mississippi and South Carolina win so many beauty pageants?

Well, obviously Miss South Carolina (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww) is such a shining example of the "hot" girls in South Carolina. Except that she isn't hot at all, and her amazing inability to form coherent sentences further detracts from her supposed hotness. There are plenty of women from elsewhere in the country (i.e., places where god-awful accents are not the norm) who are far more attractive and intelligent than Southern bimbos.

I think anyone who listens to Colbert would realize that Southern girls are way better.

I don't know about the NC as a whole but in Greensboro there are alot of hot girls and guys.

Not as many as in Stokes County!

Don't insult the southern girls by mentioning them in the same sentence as that thug Stephen Colbert.

Colbert is a Southern girl

What are you talking about?

He's just being the usual anti-Southern snob...

Skinny southern girls:

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Upper midwest girls:

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The southern girls would be named:

Claire, Belle, Adair, etc..

The northern girls:

Ut, Grunhild, Ingrid

Okay, I exaggerated a bit.. but the northern girls definitely look like they're made of a heartier stock.

How is Wisconsin not listed?  I thought they lived in clusters there.