Dallas Is Fat City. And It's Only Getting Fatter.

By Robert Wilonsky Fri., May 7 2010 at 4:12 PM

Categories: Dish, News

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When last we took a peek at Men's Health's list of America's fattest cities, Dallas came in at No. 6. But that was two years and, apparently, 13,923 trips to Whataburger ago. Because now: We're No. 4! We're No. 4! We're No. 4! And that ain't all: Corpus Christi comes in at No. 1; El Paso at No. 3; San Antonio at No. 7; and Houston at No. 9. That's Lone Star pride right there, that's what that is. Rankings are based on:

[The] percentage of people who are overweight, the percentage with type 2 diabetes, the percentage who haven't left the couch in a month (CDC Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System); the money spent on junk food (Bureau of Labor Statistics); and finally, the number of people who ate fast food nine or more times in a month (Mediamark Research).

And: How effing hard you're hoping for an In-N-Out.

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Yeah exactly, but I guess that's just not "catchy" enough to sell magazines, huh? Plus I'm not fat. Karen is fat. Brett is fat. Me: Not fat.
Yeah well, a lot of those suburbanites work in Dallas and are racking up plenty trips to City of Dallas Burger Kings and KFCs on their lunch breaks. Really, it's not that hard to determine the relative fatness of a city by calculating the amount of trips its people take to fast food joints regularly, and how much money they spend on junk food. Look if you don't like Men's Health Magazine calling Dallas "fat", fine then, it's the Number Four Fast Food Buying City and the Number Four Junk Food Spending City and the Number Four Percentage of Obese and Diabetic People City.
I believe a more accurate (and interesting) relationship to explore would be the average weight versus distance from a city's center. I think you'll find the 'burbs are heavier than the center (uptown/downtown). Its simple, urbanites walk & suburbanites drive.
I wasn't calling you a racist, cp. I was glad someone else made that point, sparing me the potential nastiness I've experienced elsewhere when I made the same observation. Sorry for the impertinence/incoherence. At all events, you can set your watch, or calendar anyway, by the appearance of yet another Men's Health article deriding Dallas as "fat." All I know is, I'm sure as hell not fat, and I got their point the first seven times.
Yes, any visit to a Golden Corral, Luby's, Ryan's, Furr's, ect. will show you why Dallas is on this list. These resturants are regularly packed with entire obese families making 3 or 4 trips to the buffett. Add to that the fact that a fast food drive thru resturant is on every corner, with lines wrapped around the building at lunchtime and there you go. Oh, and alot of high schools have KFC's and Taco Bell's in their cafeteria. Kind of counteracts the point of having a Health class for ONE semester.
Daniel- that is the stupidest thing I've ever read. I love how enlightened you are to explain how this racist minfeild works... so you're superior because you can refrain from pointing out facts about poor and minority communities' close association with poor nutrition, obesity and diabetes. Because doing so would make you a racist and since you didn't now we're racist? Sorry if I might have misconstrued anything...
Rawlins, you suspect correctly. I've not been to the Golden Corral and I'll likely go to my grave having never been to the Golden Corral. I've also never done yoga. Juan, you can pry my Tex Mex platter #2 out of my cold, dead mandible. Could you put it in a to-go box? trek1red and cp, thanks for walking through the minefield so the rest of us don't have to. I wasn't going to say anything lest I be misconstrued. Everybody, <i>Men's Health</i> comes out with this "survey" annually and their methodology, such as it is, isn't. What they really mean is "Dallas isn't very outdoorsy." The way they choose to say this is "Haw, haw! Look at the fat hillbillies! In a place like Seattle, everybody is white and educated and clean on account of enlightenment. People in Texas are fat racists because that confirms a stereotype that's acceptable to harbor and, like all stereotypes, it serves mainly to underscore our own innate superiority." The end.
I live and work in a minority community in Dallas and a lot of the kids I work with want to eat crap like hot dogs and donuts and chips and drink cokes all the time. Even their parents and team leaders (adults) get on to me for making the kids drink Gatorade and water, and eat granola bars and apples as snacks. The trash I see around our parks are full of Taco Bell and McDonald's sacks.
The survey results make sense if you consider the ethnic makeup of the cities at the top of the list. Minorities and poor people tend to be fatter because the eat low cost high calorie food. The same applies to education levels. The less education you have the fatter you tend to be. The only irony is that the same time our city is getting fatter, city govt. is trying to block efforts to change this by discouraging community gardens.
So, most of Richie Witts "Nots" are from Dallas?
Dallas is FAT. (If not the FATTEST). I always remember flying TO Miami...everyone was skinny and lean. Flying back from Miami to Dallas, I was always stuck between these morbidly obese people that barely fit in their seats. Stop drinking sodas. Control the Mexican food and the tortillas. Easy on the cakes. And people move! walk! run! Do something. The most interesting thing (at least in my office for example) is that no one cares that they are overweight. Its like their destiny. And they accept it.
The one factor that is not accounted for is the bias of the " researchers" and the interpreters of the research. For those not familiar with the world outside of Texas , especially both coasts , there is considerable anti-Texas bias out there. In fact , Austin is universally the only Texas city spoken of with any amount of civility in the Northeast , for example. So is there a linkage between this ugly reality and this survey? Impossible to tell. But I'll bet you a chicken-fried steak that we just might be on to something.
If someone thinks they're seeing a cross section of Dallas when we're on the Katy Trail or at White Rock, I suspect they've not been to a Golden Corral. Reminds me of a friend who told me they didn't "know anyone who eats fried chicken". I guess not. She was a vegan yoga instructor. PS. I'm fairly trim & fit & active but I live in a very mixed race working class area of this city where one actually DOES see a cross section & believe me, a whole lotta Dallas is indeed fat.
This same survey that had Dallas at #4 has Fort Worth at 66!! Fort Worth is much fatter than Dallas...and the people are much less attractive, but that's another survey.
Texans love their cars!
This is a survey of the cities (and states) the editors of Mens' Health hate. Go to White Rock Lake any morning and you have to take a number to jog or ride a bike. You can barely cross the Katy Trail without getting run-over. You can't tell me Dallas is fatter than cities which spend half the year under a blanket snow. It's literally impossible. Where are they, like Chicago? It's slander pure and simple.
The BRFSS survey has a <i>four-digit</i> field for weight (rounded to the nearest pound). Holy mother of chicken fried bacon...
No doubt Texas (and Dallas) is fat. But Austin made the the cut for top 10 leanest cities on this same survey. Austin is fat - maybe not top 10 fat, but definitely not top 10 lean.