Truth vs. Weight

Interesting. From People in the South are not so fat after all -- and they lie less by Mike Oliver. Not unlike the issues in the 1948 election when surveying by phone vs. direct interview provided such different forecasts of the outcome.

The notion that the South is the fattest comes primarily from a nationwide telephone survey done by the Centers for Disease Control, in which the surveyor asks for height and weight, among other things, Howard said.

That survey, the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), shows the South as the most obese, with Mississippi and Alabama, the number one and two fattest states respectively.

But the UAB researchers found that when people were actually weighed, the numbers didn't add up.

Mississippi was fourth and Alabama was in the middle of the pack, Howard said.

The numbers come from UAB's long-running REGARDS (Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke) study.

"We have this big REGARDS study, and we've shown there is more hypertension, diabetes and stroke in the South so we were thinking the South would have more obesity too," he said.

When the numbers didn't reflect that thinking, REGARDS researchers thought they were wrong.

"Everything said we are not the fattest but scientists are trained to think 'what did we do wrong?' "

But over time, they flipped the thinking realizing maybe they were right and there's a significant "differential misreporting" at work here, Howard said.

By comparing the BRFSS self-reported weight data with the REGARDS scale-weight data, researchers found that most everyone fudges, or underreports, their weight when asked on a telephone.

Turns out that Southerners fudge less, he said.