Move over Big Sky Country There is a New Nickname in Town

Though you would not likely suspect Montana as the skinniest place around if you rattled your shopping cart down the cookie aisle at some of the local groceries I often inhabit, the latest Gallup-Healthways research poll ranks Montana as the state with the lowest rate of obesity in the nation.

That’s correct.  We can now claim to be “the skinny state.”

Montana, with an obesity rate of 19.6 percent, was the only state below the 20 percent mark on the obesity scale.  The poll revealed that Mississippi (a state already gluttonous in the consumption of certain letters of the alphabet) led the pack with an obesity level of 35.4 percent.   The national average for obesity tended upward to a point above 27 percent.

The polling information I read did not suggest any reason for why Montana is at one end of the obesity scale and Mississippi is at the opposite end.  For my part, I completely avoid the cookie and potato chips sections when I shop.  If I go there, I will buy!  

--Mitchell Hegman