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Still tipping the scales in Carolina
By Myron Pitts

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Battle of the Bulge: States packing on pounds
North Carolina retains its "big boy" status in the new rankings on obesity.

We're tipping the scales as 12th-fattest state, according to a report by the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Never ones to sit still, unless there's a TV around, we jumped four places since last year.

Twenty-eight percent of Tar Heel adults and 33.5 percent of children qualify as obese, which means they're carrying enough weight to cause serious health problems.

We're joined by our southern cousins. Mississippi is No. 1, again. Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, Kentucky, Louisiana and Arkansas are all in the Top 10. Missouri and Georgia are just behind North Carolina.

I'm bummed.

I held high hopes the Yankee transplants who have flooded the state would help us out here. (In the rankings, the Slim Jim northeast states are crowded near the bottom.)

I thought that the Yanks would come bearing better diets, full of non-fried foods, and would bring the state's fat average down. Therefore, natives like myself could continue eating what we want. This was to be the trade-off for having to put up with the newer arrivals' ignorance of grits and their frou-frou diets and unfathomable preference for unsweetened tea.

But clearly that's not working, at least not here.

Virginia, on the other hand, with its North-South split between actual southerners and D.C.-area people, is distancing itself from its southern cousins. The former capital of the South ranks 38th in fatness.

Meanwhile, the tough economic times have exacerbated our state's weight problem, says Karen McLeod, the health promotions coordinator of the Cumberland County Health Department.

"A lot of times when you have less money, you aren't able to buy the healthier foods," she said.

Another study suggests a way out of our jam.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina found that people tend to put on the pounds after they get married. A married or cohabitating person is twice as likely to be obese as a single person.

Consider that North Carolina, in terms of divorce rates, is at the other end of the state rankings, consistently coming in around 32nd.

In other words: Unlike the governor of our neighboring state to the south, we stick with the one we've got.

Or, as the old players say after a couple of brutal rounds in divorce court: "It's cheaper to keep her."

(I guess it's cheaper to keep him, too, but that doesn't rhyme as well.)

Maybe we also can add that "it's thinner to drop him or her."

But hoping people break up strikes me as an unsavory way of dealing with our weight issues.

How about a more holy approach?

Among county programs to fight obesity is one that gives seed money for churches to grow a nutrition program, McLeod said.

That one holds promise, in my opinion.

We have lots of buffets around here, but many more churches, about one per corner. There are so many people getting saved around here, it's not even funny.

We've got people running to the Lord. If we can get them running the Lord, that would be just gravy.

No, not gravy. A low-fat gravy substitute.

Columnist Myron B. Pitts can be reached at pittsm@fayobserver.com or 486-3559.
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