Why Are Southerners So Fat?

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1909406,00.html

by robg • 17 years ago

15 40 17 years ago

indiejade• 17 years ago

There are some people who think that obesity issues are a community-wide phenomenon, a kind of defective "groupthink" where people who are surrounded by other overweight or obese people actually stop seeing their own problem.

"Obesity is Contagious" http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/07/obesity_is_contagious

Random humorous observation on the OP article from Time -- unfortunate link placement following paragraph number four: Many roads are narrower than those in the North — where streets have wider shoulders to accommodate winter snow — and people who want to bike or jog find themselves uncomfortably close to traffic. (See pictures of the perfect steak.)

jzachary• 17 years ago

Because we tend to deep fry and eat anything not nailed down.

noodle• 17 years ago

this, mostly.

its the culture of the food. not just deep frying, but, for example, we'll put two sticks of butter in or onto anything. sweet tea at every meal. etc..

the things the article mentioned certainly have some consequences on the situation, but its more about the things we stuff into our faces than other things.

kingkongrevenge5• 17 years ago

Butter and fried food do not make people fat. Sugar and starch make people fat.

Southern food is loaded with sugar. Sweet tea is revolting to anyone with a healthy pallet.

catfish71• 17 years ago

Why Are Writers for 'Time' so Patronizing?

bkovitz3• 17 years ago

Because they're wannabe novelists.

mynameishere2• 17 years ago

Kind of a dumb submission. The South is dominated by two ethnic groups, except for "hot and humid" Florida which also has a relatively low obesity rate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Census-2000-Data-Top-US-An...

http://www.sogoodblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/obesity...

adamhowell3• 17 years ago

Sorry, but do you have any statistics to support what I assume you're saying, that black people are more obese on average?

mynameishere2• 17 years ago

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:PfhBNYC8YsEJ:weight-loss...

Black men are slightly less obese, black women significantly more obese. It's not just blacks but Scotch-Irish, for which I doubt there are statistics available, but the Bill Clinton/Boss Hogg body shape is not unusual.

adamhowell3• 17 years ago

Too hot? Come on. I live in the "fat South" and just run first thing in the morning or last thing at night. Just like everyone else who's physically active here does.

I can't believe the author settled on "too hot" instead of "too uneducated". I guess the weather offends less people.

The South is both the poorest and least educated area of the country. Educated people eat better and exercise more because they know better.

evgen2• 17 years ago

You engage in physical activity when it is cool (first thing in the morning and last thing at night) and then dismiss heat as a factor?!?! Having lived in the southern US (albeit Austin, which is not completely unbearable during summer days) I remember how strange the adjustment was when I first arrived. No one walks anywhere if they can help it: you leave your air-conditioned house in your air-conditioned car and drive to your air-conditioned office, at lunch you drive somewhere else and then at the end of the day you drive home. As you indirectly point out, physical activity requires setting aside specific times and is not something that you casually do over the course of the day.

Poor and uneducated does not help, but there are a lot of poor and uneducated places in the US and around the world that do not have the same absurd levels of obesity. Air-conditioning and the lifestyle that developed around this invention are a major contributor to obesity levels in the south.

adamhowell3• 17 years ago

But if extreme temperature was the only factor the North would be obese, too, right?

Running in snow is a lot harder than running when it's cool out.

briancooley5• 17 years ago

Education is not the problem. I live in Mississippi, and can attest that we are bombarded daily with messages about obesity, diet, and exercise.

I am as educated as anyone on the mainstream teaching on this subject, yet I am clinically obese (though not for much longer).

I was poor as a child, so I think I can speak to this subject a little. It's anecdotal, but when accompanied by what I have learned from different sources (in particular, Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes), I suspect that my experience was typical.

Poor people eat an unhealthy diet because they cannot afford high quality protein and complex carbohydrates on a consistent basis. Further, parents in poor families often work excessive hours, and quick meals become the norm due to the lack of time.

This leads to an excessive consumption of refined carbohydrates, creating an insulin imbalance that increases hunger. One of the worst offenders in this category is soft drinks. White bread is another big problem. A coke and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich was a common meal around my house.

Sweet tea is another big offender. I have rarely seen sweet tea outside of the southeast, and almost everyone drinks it here. If you order tea in a restaurant, you are getting sweet tea unless you specifically request unsweetened.

Surely this enviroment is bad for adults, but I think it is particularly damaging for children. Kids that grow up with an excess of blood sugar and elevated insulin are headed for metabolic syndrome and Type II diabetes.

Make no mistake about it, it is insulin that controls fat storage. When your serum insulin is high, your body is storing fat. When it is low, you are converting fat stores to energy. No endocrinologist or reputable doctor anywhere will dispute this fact. Nutritionists are often unaware, resorting to the calories in - calories out causation fallacy.

When you eat lots of sugar and refined carbohydrates, your insulin is going to rise, and you are going to store fat. The worst part is that modern day nutritional education eschews fat and, to a smaller degree protein, in favor of carbohydrates, so the "educated" individual is really in no better position to regulate his endocrine system via diet and exercise.

bokonist• 17 years ago

I don't think you can just blame it all in poverty. People in poor countries (Philippines, Vietnam, Mexico) are much less obsese than Americans. And America had much less obesity when we were poorer as a country.

Being poor doesn't somehow cause you to drink soda. Water is still much cheaper.

sdesol• 17 years ago

"Poor people eat an unhealthy diet because they cannot afford high quality protein and complex carbohydrates on a consistent basis. Further, parents in poor families often work excessive hours, and quick meals become the norm due to the lack of time."

I personally think this is BS (sorry for the tough stance) and I agree with others in saying it's an educational thing. My family grew up in poverty when we immigrated to Canada, but we still managed to eat healthy and cheaply. My parents also worked crazy amount of hours as the only jobs they could only get were poor paying remedial ones like dish washing.

Despite all our hardship, we managed to eat a healthy diet and we were able to do so because my parents understood the value of vegetables and fruit and stretching the dollar when it comes to groceries. Now that I'm all grown up, I can't go more than two days without feeling amazingly guilty if I don't integrate a good serving of vegetables into my diet.

When ever I hear stories about how people are claiming that the public is being educated, I always think of this interview that I saw once of a young girl who idealized Jared from the Subway commercials. She was with her mom and she basically said how it was so unfair that they didn't have a lot of money, otherwise she could afford to go on the subway diet like Jared. What was extremely sad about all of this was, her mom was nodding her head in agreement.

I've been out of school for quite some time now, but for the life of me, I can't remember being educated in school on a regular basis on how to eat healthier. I would hope that this is higher priority for schools now a days, but I highly doubt it.

xiaoma• 17 years ago

Americans already eat way too much protein.

Japanese and Koreans are the thinnest 1st world people on the planet and they eat more rice, more vegetables and a lot fewer steaks burgers and fries than Americans (or Canadians or British). The same is true for rural Chinese, who are far poorer than American southerners, and they don't have obesity and heart disease problems.

Here's what the American Heart Association has to say about the subject: http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=1123...

"Eating large amounts of high-fat foods for a sustained period raises the risk of coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke and several types of cancer. People who can't use excess protein effectively may be at higher risk of kidney and liver disorders, and osteoporosis.

That's why the American Heart Association guidelines urge adults who are trying to lose weight and keep it off to eat no more than 35 percent of total daily calories from fat and less than 7 percent of total daily calories from saturated fat and less than 1 percent of total daily calories from trans fat. On most high-protein diets, meeting these goals isn't possible.

Some high-protein diets de-emphasize high-carbohydrate, high-fiber plant foods. These foods help lower cholesterol when eaten as part of a nutritionally balanced diet. Reducing consumption of these foods usually means other, higher-fat foods are eaten instead. This raises cholesterol levels even more and increases cardiovascular risk."

Eat food, mostly plants and not too much.

Caged• 17 years ago

I grew up in Mississippi. I lived there for 26 years before moving to Portland, OR. The point the author makes about walking to the bus stop or to the local market is absolutely correct.

I've always been really slim, but I rarely walked anywhere in MS unless it was to the mail box. This is not because I was lazy (played a lot of sports), but because there's nothing to walk to. Practically everything involved an automobile as a means for access. Exercise as a daily routine didn't exist for me. That's not to say I couldn't make a conscious effort to exercise, but a commitment to exercise as part of a routine is much harder to adhere to than a routine that involves exercise.

In Portland, things are a completely different story. Almost nothing requires an automobile. My wife and I went 7 months on a single tank of gas when we moved to Portland. We walk practically everywhere. Exercise is built into our day to day life. We walk to the post office, bar, movie theater, coffee shop, grocery store, you name it.

On the topic of eating healthy - The food choices where I grew up were not that great. We had one grocery store, one diner, no fast food restaurants (we eventually got a subway) and two gas stations. Unless you lived in the town center, you had to drive to and from this limited selection.

Many of my family members hover just over the poverty line (although none of them consider themselves poor). Grocery shopping isn't an exercise in health, it's an exercise in conservative economics. Trips to the grocery store are usually prefixed with a question: "How can I get enough food so we can eat until the next paycheck and still have enough money left over for gas to get back and forth to work". It's a vicious cycle.

rsayers• 17 years ago

I live in Mississippi, and every time I leave the South I see a very noticeable difference in how people look. It has gotten much worse in the past 10 years. I recall growing up and going to the store, the electric carts were always parked in the front of the store. Now they are always in use by someone too large to walk. It's very sad.

And I believe this article confirms my mental state, I do go running when its 100 degrees outside.

briancooley5• 17 years ago

OT, but are you near the Gulf Coast? I'm in Ocean Springs. I've been looking for hacker meetups, but outside of the local LUG, there's not a lot.

greengirl512• 17 years ago

Three words..."deep fried Twinkies!"

I'm sure sweet tea doesn't help either.

chwolfe• 17 years ago

We eat food that was appropriate when you worked outside for 12 hours a day. We also live in rural areas so you have to drive everywhere.

kingkongrevenge5• 17 years ago

The lifestyle hasn't really changed that much in 40 years but the waistlines have. It's not like everyone was out swinging pick axes all day in the 60s. They were driving around and often sitting in AC, just like now.

_3ex7• 17 years ago

I saw food inc. the other day. one interesting point made in the documentary was that income levels effect obesity. people with less income are not able to by the most nutritious food and settle for foods "rich" in hydrogenated corn syrup. foods made with hydrogenated corn syrup are often less expensive because corn has been subsidized, is cheap, and can be stored for a verrrry long time.

kevbin• 17 years ago

Aren't the cheapest foods the simplest, least processed: produce, grains, etc.? No-high-fructose-corn-sweetener-water is cheaper than Coke. Two apples and a banana are cheaper than a bag of Doritos.

bkovitz3• 17 years ago

Yup. You can eat cheap as dirt if you cook your own Indian food. Rice, dried beans, vegetables, and spices--all are available in almost any grocery store for lower prices than anything else. It's really easy, too, and tastes way better than, hmm, just about anything.

thras• 17 years ago

Here's a 10x better question: Why did Southerners get so much fatter since 1970?

This is new. And there are lots of reasons to think it's not an epidemic of pleny: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=2121...

bkovitz3• 17 years ago

Here's a written article by the same person: http://www.nasw.org/awards/2001/01Taubesarticle1.htm

rjurney• 17 years ago

Cornbread.

lurkinggrue• 17 years ago

Fried Krispy Kreme cheeseburgers with bacon?

Mz• 17 years ago

I was born and raised in The South -- and returned 'home' a few years ago. I think this quote from the article has something to do with it: "Physical activity can be something as simple as walking to the bus stop. That's another problem, by the way: the South doesn't have many bus stops. Public transportation is paltry, and for most people, the best way to get around is by car."

I gave up my car last year. Lack of side walks is a serious issue, as is lack of enough shoulder to walk on. And things tend to be spread out. Most folks find it incomprehensible that I live without a car. (And I mostly walk. The public transit system is a case of "You can't get there from here.")

As for "hot": I rarely have to walk the entire way to or from work. Offers of rides have picked up with the summer heat. I am routinely offered a ride with a comment about how it's just too hot out here for someone to walk. So I think a lot of folks do find the heat discourages physical activity (unless it revolves around a swimming pool).

The heat isn't usually a problem for me but sometimes the oppressive humidity is. But, then, I used to walk for exercise in The Mojave Desert -- and had to wait until after dark for it to drop down to 99F in the summer.

Why Are Southerners So Fat?

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