South Carolina has, once again, landed near the top of a new list of fattest states.
But here’s a silver lining: Other Southern states have shown ways to improve childhood obesity in just a few years.
“The signs of progress that we’re seeing around the country are very, very encouraging,” said Dwayne Proctor, director of childhood obesity programs at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Read it all from the local paper.
Well, I don’t know what data to believe. I hear we are overweight and then I go to Disney World or Las Vegas which attracts people from all over the country, and there are morbidly obese people from everywhere, knocking each other over to get to buffets. In SC when I was in Law School we also had the highest heart death rate in America. Come to find out we really didn’t. Prior to the mid 80s the local coroner was usually the local funeral director and unless somebody died of something else they would put down heart failure, which is technically what everyone dies of. Who knows what bias goes into the figures. I think the odds of government statistics being correct are are about the same as the odds of winning the lottery. A couple of hundred million to one.
Scripture also points out that those who follow the Lord shall be made fat and prosperous. So, people need to lay off of the constant anti-fat talk in the church.
PSALM 92:12-14
12 The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. 13 Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. 14 They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing;
Proverbs 28:25
25 He that is of a proud heart stirreth up strife: but he that putteth his trust in the Lord shall be made fat.
Isaiah 58:11
11 And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.
RE: “So, people need to lay off of the constant anti-fat talk in the church.”
I actually think that obesity — along with sex, materialism, and drugs — is a part of the US’s current idolatry.
We are obsessed with “more stuff” — food, drink, gizmos, drugs, and sex.
So I actually think that the issue of godly treatment of our bodies and a godly relationship with food is important for pastors and clergy to address in the US.