Saturday, September 01, 2007

Maps of Food for the Children of the U.S. Americans

Many people in the webiverse have by now heard of the unfortunate plight of poor Miss Teen South Carolina and her, um, infamous speech about why Americans do so poorly in geography. Apparently, she isn't alone. Too many Americans don't know much about geography, or know where the US is on a map! Maybe that's unfair, and I would like to see some hard data. But to hear about one woman, who wanted to fly to California to take the train to Hawaii if it was cheaper (!) - well, I hope she and Miss Teen South Carolina are in a lonelier boat than people say they are.

One person's answer to our geography crisis:, to which map users can upload any map of any kind.

So why are Americans so bad at geography? It can't just be Miss Teen SC, right? Oh, but too bad it isn't.

I had nothing food related to add to this, so I thought I'd find a foodie map! This isn't on (yet).

Above is a map* from Calorielab of just how fat Americans are. The leanest state? Colorado, where almost 18% of the population is obese. The fattest? Mississippi, where almost 31% hold that distinction. Yikes!

* I linked directly to the graphic at first, but they replaced it with some strange advertisement. So I copied the actual graphic and inserted it from my computer. It's copyrighted by CalorieLab and not mine at all.


Cham said...

What I don't understand is how you can go to the Super Wal-Mart in Hagerstown of I-81 and some people are fat, but you drive 5 miles over the line to the Super Wal-Mart Martinsburg, WV and everyone suddenly weighs 500 pounds, then you drive another 5 miles on I-81 to the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Winchester, VA and people in that store are back to being just semi-obese. This is mystery that just boggles the mind. What are they doing in West Virginia to become such huge moo cows? Tudor's Biscuit World?

Fairfax said...

Have you seen those on-line maps where you have to place the states on an unmarked US map? I got 95% on the US one, but only 80% on the european one... it's those pesky former soviet union countries.

Heading to Miss Shirley's for bekkie

John said...

Have fun! I already ate - I made a less-than-successful bacon and egg wrap with garlic, onion and red pepper. Next time, I won't try to scramble the egg. Doing so made it all discolored.

I might head up to the State Fair today, seeing as how my road trip has been grounded.

Cham said...

The state fair is going to poison you. They have fried oreos on a stick, fried bacon on a stick and fried lard on a stick. There is cow feces everywhere so don't touch anything and take hand sanitizer. If you don't get poisoned by the food you run the risk that one of the other attendees might slip on the cow turds and sit on you, this could be deadly. Eat before you leave.

John said...

Too late. I already went just today. Sufficiently poisoned and I'll write about it tomorrow. **URP**