April 23, 2010
 
PARALLEL UNIVERSE: Charleston, WV Ranks No. 2 on Latest Fat City List: Does This City Make Me Look Fat?
 
By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Editor
 
Relax, Huntington: You didn't make the latest fattest city list. Charleston, WV, you're just behind Corpulent Christi... er ... Corpus Christi on the Men's Health list of America's fattest burgs.
 
(link to Men's Health story: http://www.menshealth.com/fattestcities2010/
 
Texas is a big state in more ways than land area ; it has four other cities ranking in the Fat 10 on the list: No. 3 in the nation El Paso, No. 4 Dallas; No. 7 San Antonio, and No. 9 Houston, the nation's fourth biggest city after New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Four of the five Lone Star Top 10 fat cities got an F; Houston got a D-. The good news is that the state capital, Austin, ranks 97th, garnering an A rating from the magazine. And Dallas's neighbor and rival, Fort Worth, garnered a B- with a 66th rank.
 
Why Texas? For starters, how about Mexican food, and the nation's best barbecue? Neither one is a diet food and Texas also boasts, if that's the word, all the usual fast food joints plus its home-grown chain What-A-Burger, based in, you guessed it, Corpus Christi.
 
The magazine explained its methodology on its web site: "To arrive at our rankings, we calculated 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)."
 
Tied for 100th as the nation's fittest cities were San Francisco and Burlington, VT. No surprise there, but 99th was, our nation's capital, Washington, DC, a surprise to me. Chicago, the City of the Big Fork -- famous for its pizza and other waist-expanding delights -- ranked 22nd, garnering a D rating from the magazine.
 
Seattle, WA and Portland, OR, two cities I visited in March, were predictably fit, with Seattle ranking 98th for an A and Portland ranking 95th for an A-.
 
Good advice from Men's Health. Walk off those calories. The magazine says: "It may not feel like 'exercise,' but walking does burn calories; plus, the only gear you need is a pedometer, a notepad, and a pen. In a recent British study, men who wore pedometers and then wrote down their total steps at the end of each day walked 11 percent more than those who didn't put pen to paper."