Obesity 

This article hits home on so many levels. While I am not considered obese I have several family members that are and we all live in the South. We do tend to take our eating very seriously down here, that is a fact, we are also not doing so well on the taking our health seriously. I see so many people who swear up and down that they are eating better and working on not eating as much, but then you see them somewhere and they are having 2 or 3 servings! That's not eating better, that's just eating the same amount with a small break in between plates.
Take my house, we have a family history of high cholesterol and heart problems, so our diets need to reflect a more healthy approach to eating. We are a multi-generational household at this time, and cooking is hard.  We have one who cooks a lot but uses lots of grease- bacon/old grease type of grease and lots of butter. Now, this I realize is how they cook and how they are used to cooking, but with the same type of family health history that I have they know that they should be eating better for their health but are refusing to do so. And, we have two others with family history of diabetes, they are 2 of the biggest sweets eaters in the house. They make them and they eat them, they do share though, but they tend to eat more of it than the rest of us. And finally, there are the kids, whom we all want to grow up to be healthy, happy eaters. I don't think they are getting that right now and I can see this being a problem with trying to teach them at this time about it. I love my family and my household and want them to be around for a long time, but I don't feel like I should have to be a watchdog, especially when they get upset with me about it.

So many people are going to say that the reason the South has more obesity is due to the fact that there is more use of food-stamps and such down here. We do have a lot that are on food stamps, I've been there done that. You can eat healthy on food stamps, but you have to be WILLING to change how  you cook! I think that is a bigger problem, is that people here don't know how to cook healthier and to make the changes that would show up in their health and on their scales and their children's' scales. There is not much of a push around here to get people to eat healthier even by health professionals, they keep telling people to lose weight, but they don't offer much in the way of the how to part. Nor, do we have any exercise facility that is low enough in cost for the lower income people to use when it is extremely too hot to be outside, which is pretty much July - September during the day, so that does make it hard on some people. I think there needs to be more education on how to be healthier, not just saying that people are not doing their own part. They don't know what to do or how to do it!

Ok, ramble over now.