America's Fattest States

No matter how fat American are, they are fatter in some places than others - not the waist line, but the location.

Gallup has released its report on the states where people are fastest and least fat, and have the highest chance of being diabetic and highest odds of heart disease.

Unfortunately, for those who have to cover these subjects, there are few surprises.

Fat people primarily live in the South. Thin people live in the Northeast or Plains states for the most part. An examination a little deeper than Gallup's likely would show that the states with the most obesity are also those with the highest percentage of poor and uneducated people. These two things may not be direct correlations, but they almost certainly are related factors.

Fat people tend to live in West Virginia, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky and Tennessee - the Confederate states that left the union, the states south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Thin people live to a large extent in the far northern states, an irony given the buffer that weight provides against cold.

Below are some of Gallup's data.

The fat:

The thin:

The quick:

And the dead:

Methodology: Results are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index survey Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2012, with a random sample of 353,564 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, selected using random-digit-dial sampling.

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