It Ain’t Hard to Decide on Good or Healthy

By John Kuykendall

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), at least one in five adults (about 20% of the population) in the United States is living with obesity.
Now, if you live in Georgia, that number is greater.
According to the CDC, the states with the highest adult obesity rates (35% or higher) include: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
How do you know if you are suffering from obesity? The CDC says anyone with a body mass of 30 or higher is suffering from obesity.
So, I decided to look into what might be considered what makes healthy food. According to Healthline, the foods most people consider to be healthy are whole foods that contain beneficial nutrients, are low in saturated fat, sodium and do not contain additives like sweeteners. In other words to eat healthy the food has to be what I would consider to be kind of, well shall we say bland.
Notice, Georgia is one of the states that has a high obesity rate and I would guess that is because of what we like to eat.
In the South, we love our fried foods. Dang it, fried foods are deeply rooted in the South because it is part of our history and sure enough part of our culture. We have more fried chicken restaurants in the South than Carter’s got liver pills.
Heck, every restaurant in the South that survives has some kind of fried food on the menu.
Why do we love our fried foods in the South? Well, mainly because it is a staple that has been handed down from generation to generation as far back as when the South was discovered. Fried foods provide us with a blend of flavors and textures that we crave dagnabit.
So, low in saturated fat and sodium is difficult. In the South, grits and fried eggs with bacon or sausage and biscuits is our go to breakfast. Not so bad until we fry it up, add all that butter and salt, but it sure taste good. Don’t it?
As for sweeteners in the South? How can we do away with such a thing? We love out desserts like pecan and other southern pie delicacies. Shoot, what is a meal, except for breakfast, that don’t include southern sweet tea?
In the South, food is part of our southern hospitality. Every time someone visits we have to feed them. That’s the southern way. Everybody knows we can’t let company eat alone. That would be just down right rude!
Good food is so much a part of the South, many of our southern slang expressions have developed because of our love for our food.
Growing up in the South you learn some of these sayings pretty quickly and probably are saying them before the age of two years old.
While the Yanks are saying, “I’m so full,” in the South we bring out the true meaning of a good meal and compliment the chef with the saying, “I’m plumb stuffed.” For y’all who don’t know the meaning of the word plumb, it ain’t a fruit, it meaning full.
In the South, you known the meal is good when you hear somebody say, “I’m fixing to get seconds.”
Heck, food is so much a part of our life when we hear good news or get a pleasant surprise, we don’t say, “Oh, wow.” No, in the South we say, “Well butter my biscuit.” That means it’s goooood.
When we are extremely happy in the South, we express it in a way only southerners can understand when we are happy and feeling good. We say, “I’m as happy as a pig in slop.”
So you see, food in the South is important, but only good food and unfortunately that don’t mean low in unsaturated fat or sodium. No when meal time comes it means it’s time to break out the bacon grease.
I could go on and I probably will write some more about our southern way of life. But I got to now, sweet tea and pie is calling.