This is the very CDC(Center for disease Control) study that was used to reformulate and define federal dietary guidlines for school programs throughout the U.S.A. It’s the CDC and if they ran the study it must have been done right…right?
*Note I’m not from Alabama and “roll tide” can go down the toilet bowl but even I have to respect their scientific results…
First thing I noticed, surely a total coincidence. Other than North Dakota at 11, every state is in the top 10 in corn production.
the West North Central part of the country, which includes North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri, is the fattest area
Intresting correlation, I totally missed that. The federal school lunch program has the dual purpose of first feeding children and second to absorb and distribute excess agricultural production (I very strongly suspect you could reverse the list priority depending on your economic interest though…ala food pyramid)
In my defense, I was stunned at magnitude of the faulty assumptions made by the CDC study and how the actual applicaton of real science by UAB exposed its defects. That, and that the study accidentally ended up being a fantastic sociological survey of self body image across regions of the U.S. I mean if i was a graduate student in sociology/psychology I could earn a Phd with that study. They would call me brilliant.
Funny, I never thought southern states were the fattest. I always assumed it was northern states. I’m only surprised MI isn’t on the list.
We need our extra layer of fat for those cold winters. 
I dont know how ya’ll do it. The idea that it’s cold enough that you could turn into a solid and cease functioning leaves me …cold, very , very cold
I just don’t believe it. I work for a company headquartered in West Virginia. Been going all over the U.S. for work since 1985, and traveled like a maniac during the 4 years before that, on my own.
I have no doubt there are regional differences in self-reporting accuracy, but I cannot believe that actually puts the Dakotas, for example, above West Virginia and Mississippi, for obesity rates.
Of course my own experience is subjective, but the results here seem sound to me:
There is a site link on your referenced study that leads back to the CDC, the same source as the original scientifically disreputable self reported study. I am less irritated by the inaccurate conclusions, no one disagrees as to a nationwide increase in obesity, as I was by disappointed by the CDC for doing the science so incompetently. They should have done regional physical sampling studies to test their assumptions given the billions of tax dollars involved. It seems the new study is a simply reconfigured and regurgitated form of CDC distorted data into a new lovely graphic form. Below is what they revealed, and yes it was self reported as I suspected.
Annual Data
Data for this analysis was obtained from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System dataset (publicly available on the web at www.cdc.gov/brfss)…
BRFSS is an annual cross-sectional survey designed to measure behavioral …Data are collected from a random sample of adults (one per household) through a telephone survey. …
Jay, I don’t know if the same errors have been made over and over, historically, but things have been fairly steady, with respect to state rankings, for a long time, though of course the nation’s overall obesity rate has increased dramatically and quickly. 20 or 30 years ago, it was the “usual suspects,” i.e. WV, MS, LA, etc., just as some more current analyses have it. The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s results are the big outlier, that I’ve seen. And maybe they are right - it’s just really tough for me to swallow.
Some places just stand out in one’s perception. Yes, definitely - not as many fat people in Colorado, for example. Or walking around in Boston, versus Jackson, Mississippi (or practically any other decently-large town…) 