A new study from the University of Alabama at Birmingham says that the South is not as fat as the rest of the world has made them out to be for years.
The study, published in the journal Obesity, says that there’s a higher concentration of obese people in states such as Minnesota, Kansas and North and South Dakota.
“What we found is the West North Central region has about 41 percent obesity compared to 31 percent obesity in the southern region that includes Alabama and Mississippi,” George Howard, a UAB professor, told AL.com.
The origins of the “fat myth” in the South began with a study released by the Centers for Disease Control that claimed Mississippi and Alabama were two of the fattest states in the US.
However, the reason they ranked higher is that repliers to the study in the South were more honest about their weight; the UAB study used actual recorded weights for its findings and found that other regions may have been lying about their scales.
You can view more about the study at AL.com.