Mark, Southern foods aren’t as unhealthy as those primarily educated by Food Network and such think.
For instance, take properly done NC pork bbq. It isn’t so bad.

I grew up at the true Southern table myself. Not at the “commercialized” ones like KFC, Cracker Barrel, etc. No one in my immediate family is overweight. My Southern parents exercised and still do as grandparents. Come to think of it, the only overweight individual in my extended family is a fellow native of Ohio who married into the family. And my mother-in-law from the Midwest is definitely over-the-line when it comes to weight.

Growing up, we ate tons of fresh produce straight from our gardens. My generation has no clue on how to make this produce as palatable as your old fashioned Southern cook who didn’t just rely solely on grease. I don’t hear Yankee kids wax poetic about their moms’ collards. . .

My parents taught us to eat well-balanced meals: a meat and some vegetables/fruit and a grain. If we went out to eat, we were taken to meat-and-threes (where things were made fresh and from scratch) or cafeterias (a dining phenomenom possibly born in the South?) instead of the fast food joint.

Hmm, maybe Southerners are more obese because our food is so good? Haha.

The other thing generations of Southern Americans taught their kids was to work hard. To provide a good service. To lend a helping hand to your neighbor and those in need. AND contrary to Yankee behaviour - we were taught: DON’T EXPECT SOMETHING FOR NOTHING. (Yankees always seem to be trying to cheat or trick others into something.)

I’m going to take a turn here.

I’m personally sick of and offended by people from other regions of the country offering “constructive criticism” to the South. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why they would leave their perches up in Yankeeland and other regions to come build their McMansions down here when they look down their snobby noses at us. . . they think we’re stupid and that they are smarter than us, they think we have more disease, they think they’re skinnier and healthier and more athletic, they think we can’t drive in the snow, they are charmed by our kindnesses but think it’s a sign of idiocy with a doormat that says “walk all over me”, they don’t like our school systems, they think they’re more sophisticated, they call all of our rural folk “rednecks” (there are Yankee Rednecks too - just look at New Jersey), etc. But our taxes are lower and they can get a bigger house down here while their children “SHINE” in the schools because our ‘native children are so stupid, lazy and fat’, right?

Or do they actually come down here because they want what we have so badly? They’re just jealous of all that we have after years of rudeness to one another up there is wearing them down.

If our education down here is so bad, why then do they insist on sending their kids to our universities like Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill? Why are they tearing down our mountains to build their retirement homes?

To Yankees who think they know everything: keep your unions, your food, your academically gifted little brats, and your snobbery up yonder (and trapped down in Florida). We’ve been too nice to you for too long.

Way back to the Revolutionary War, even George Washington thought Yankee soldiers dirty and unhealthy. I don’t see how Yankee Pride is built on that.

Bottomline: If you haven’t grown up with Southern food and culture, you are grossly misinformed. It’s kind of like racism. You make lots of assumptions based on your foodie viewing of Food Network, Martha Stewart and Fine Living.

(By the way, spending a few years in the South getting your college degree at Duke or Carolina doesn’t make you knowledgeable of the South.)

How come you can’t make comments about a black person liking chitlins and such, but you can make rude stereotypical comments about Southerners and deep fried foods?