High rates of poverty and Southern hospitality? Huh? Maybe it is the fried food. So none of the well to do are obese?

High rates of poverty

Most low income people can't afford to buy good food, so they tend to buy the cheap food that is packaged large to feed their families; marketed to cater to them and is usually higher in saturated fats corn starch, carbs, high futose corn syrup and sugar.    It costs more to buy low fat/no trans fat, low sugar/low sodium foods, fresh fruits and vegetables, and lean meat. So they tend to put on more weight. FACT.

I agree with Tenaj, although I'm not sure this is the reason. After all, look at Orson Welles and Marlon Brando.

When I've been budgeting, I eat a lot of spaghetti or rice & beans, so it makes sense that people who have families, but not a lot of money, would buy these foods. However, I'm not sure that a diet of pasta causes weight gain. So much of it has to do with one's metabolism and genetic makeup. I know people who eat very little and gain weight just smelling good food! :-)   BTW, Elvis lived in Nashville and he was very overweight, but also very far from poor. Anti-depressants can cause weight gain too. Still, you need to eat to gain weight, so it's not only the fact that people eat cheap food, but that they eat too much of it and don't get enough exercise. When a friend was struggling with her diet, she told her doctor that she was very thin before starting the medication he prescribed (which was true) He obviously was sadistic IMHO, but he wanted to make a point, so he took a book off of a shelf about the concentration camps in WWII with graphic photos and asked her to find a fat person. Nice doctor huh? Just a story I always remember.

Look at Al Gore.

I used to work part time at a Krystal's in tenn for extra $$$. That place was a mad house, with people coming in ordering 20,30,40 or more krystal burgers at a time. So i'm sure fast food has a lot to do with it as well. Whenever i went out to eat anywhere in Tenn it was packed!
We got a discount on the burgers for working there, but me and a few others that would just pop one in the mouth when no one was looking! LOL , I actually didn't mind the job, but the pay sucked.

If you don't exercise or watch what you stuff in your face is what will make you fat. It doesn't matter if you are rich or poor. No one is shoving the food into anyones mouth, eat less exercise more. More frinking excuses, when does it end? Never.

It's not allways what you eat that makes you fat is how much you eat and whether or not you walk off a few calories. If you eat and lay around all day you will get fat.

I'm in the Midwest- Mid-South (Southern Illinois- Southeast Missouri - Western Kentucky) and health-wise, the life style is bad, there's no other way to say it.
Being in the "Bible Belt" (not being originally from here, a term I can no longer take serious, food is one of the few non- taboos, so it's always ok to put on the feed bag.
I mean give me a break - even at church pot lucks are a religion within a religion. "The sermon this morning will be on world hunger, and after the service there will be a pot luck."

"The sermon this morning will be on world hunger, and after the service there will be a pot luck."

I love it!! :-)