According to the Centers for Disease Control, Mississippi is the fattest state in the country with 32% of the adult population classified as obese.  It doesn't take rocket science to understand why.  We're the buffet capitol of the world.  We fry everything.  We put gravy on anything that sits still long enough.  Everybody's grandmother makes the best red velvet cake you've ever put in your mouth.  We also have high rates of poverty and illiteracy, which means that people either can't afford to change their diets or don't have to exposure to alternatives to really understand how.  Even among the educated, we have the mentality that it's not really good if it isn't either battered and fried or drenched in a creamy sauce.  People still cook their vegetables with bacon, and they still put real lard in the cornbread.

As a vegetarian, special dinners are a particular challenge to me, and I've ended up eating the roll and the desert lots of times.  When people try to accommodate me, it's even worse because they don't know what vegetarians eat, and they go to a lot of trouble to fix a plate just for me that is loaded with animal grease.  Healthy doesn't even come into it.  People would be embarrassed to serve anything without lard in it.  It just wouldn't taste right.

Thus we had perhaps one of the most asinine pieces of legislation in the history of politics taking up the time of our state lawmakers this year--the now infamous bill to ban restaurants from serving obese people.  We've also seen statewide campaigns like Let's Go Walkin' Mississippi and Get Fit Mississippi.  I love the statement on the Get Fit web site that claims our goal is simply to relinquish the fat crown to West Virginia.  What are we going to do?  Set up a Christmas buddy system where we all get together and ship them a bunch of fried Twinkies?

Everyone I know is constantly on a diet, and half the people I know have signed up for both the Walkin' and the Fit campaign to little or no avail.  We don't need to ban restaurants from serving our tubby selves.  We just need restaurants that offer decent alternatives to our normal high fat, high calorie fare.  I'd like for once to be able to order something vegetarian in a restaurant that fills me up, tastes good and smells good, and manages to do it without having anything fried or creamy inside.  The only restaurant meal in Hattiesburg I can think of that accomplishes that involves asparagus sushi, and as much as I love it, I can't eat it every day.

But I don't really want this to be about me (exclusively, at least) and my quest for acceptable vegetarian food.  It's hard for anyone to successfully diet in Mississippi because our culture revolves around food.  If it happens here, we're going to have a reception, a potluck, a banquet, or a luncheon in its honor come hell or high water.  We all say we're dieting until we get to the luncheon at which point we're making an exception "just this once."  Unfortunately, if you don't average two or three special occasions a week, you just aren't living right. 

I hope some of these campaigns will raise awareness.  I hope that people will try harder to offer healthy alternatives at special occasions.  I hope that the next generation will begin to get the point that we can't eat the diet of an agrarian society when we no longer do as much manual labor--if any at all.  I hope more restaurants will get on board with a fit menu. 

In the meantime, it's Sunday.  Even though I'm on a diet, I guess I'll have to have a piece of that pecan pie.  It would be rude not to at least sample it, after all.