To Live in Fatville

The famous Gallup Poll people have recently put out their list of the country’s fattest cities and McAllen, Texas made won the contest for the fattest city in the nation. Wow, I’ve always wanted to live in a city that was considered number one, but for fatness? That wasn’t what I had in mind.

The truly mind-boggling statistic is that 38.8% of the residents in the McAllen Metropolitan area are obese. Yep, that’s right, that’s more than one out of three, for those who’ve forgotten their elementary school math. I’d say I’m proud to be part of that statistic, only I’m not. Besides, I don’t think they counted the little town I live in, which is just outside of the claimed area.

By the way, for those of you who are wondering where the great metropolitan area of McAllen is, it’s in the very southern point of Texas, right on the border with Mexico. For those who live in a real metropolitan area, I’m sure you wouldn’t agree that McAllen, with a population of 130,000 bodies; or the greater McAllen area, with a population of a little shy of 300,000 qualifies as a metropolitan area qualifies. Nevertheless, the statistic stands.

The problem is severe enough that it has been suggested that it will need to be dealt with on a person by person basis. After all, trying to convince that many people to lose weight at once might be a bit of a challenge. So, I decided to analyze the situation and see if the person by person plan would work.

Let’s see, if we do something about this, one person at a time, and we’re talking about 38.8% of the population, how long would that take? Hmm, that percentage is talking about the McAllen area, so we’ll go with a population of 300,000. That means that we’ll need to deal with 116,400 individuals. If we can get each of them on a crash diet and extensive exercise program, the best we can hope for is losing their excess weight in 3 months (Yeah, right; as if that’s going to happen). So, if we work on the problem one person at a time, it will only take 29,100 years. Hmm, maybe we’d better forget the one person at a time gig and go for the masses.