Center for Consumer Freedom

Yet obesity rates vary widely across the country. With about 21 percent of Rhode Island officially fat, the state is ranked fifth leanest. Edging out other leaner states for first place are Coloradans, 19 percent of whom are fat. The Centers for Disease Control found that a third of Mississippians are obese, making it the fattest state in the nation.

The rankings are puzzling to those convinced that obesity is simply the result of eating too much, or the wrong things. Do people in Mississippi really have the biggest appetites? State-by-state obesity trends make more sense when you look at the other side of the obesity equation — physical activity. Simply put, residents of states with high obesity rates tend to move less.

On a recent visit to Colorado, Kansas’s Wichita Eagle food editor Joe Stumpe noticed that Colorado had all the usual fast-food eateries. So why is the state leaner than Kansas (which ranks 19th fattest in the nation)? “[T]he answer,” Stumpe says, “does appear to involve walking, running, skiing, boating, biking and a host of other physical activities. Colorado residents just seem to be more active than people in a lot of other states.”

This observation was echoed by the co-founder of the National Weight Control Registry, James Hill. He suggests that people’s failure to get trimmer can be attributed in large part to our narrow, food-only approach. “We focus too much on diet and not enough on physical activity,” he says.

Both Stumpe and Hill’s hunches are backed by the facts. Of the top 10 most obese states, government surveys show nine of them are also the most sedentary. The residents of the most obese state — Mississippi — report the lowest rates of leisure-time physical activity in the country.

Are fast-food outlets too numerous? Census statistics indicate that none of the top 10 obese states have the most fast-food restaurants per person. And seven out of those 10 “fat” states rank in the 15 lowest concentration of fast food. In fact, the heaviest state — Mississippi — is third lowest in the country. Colorado — the leanest state — is among the 10 states that have the highest concentration of fast-food restaurants.

This reality is mirrored by scholarly studies. A 2007 study published in the International Journal of Obesity concludes, “The obesity epidemic is often speculatively blamed on fast food, when the actual evidence shows very little, if any, association of fast food with weight gain.” There is an unambiguous relationship between physical inactivity and obesity in the United States. At the same time, there is no clear relationship between obesity and access to fast-food restaurants.

The self-appointed food police in society don’t like those facts. Because controlling food prices or limiting the availability of food is easier than controlling people’s physical activity, activists and politicians like New York Gov. David Paterson push for increasingly harsh measures, such as the 18 percent “obesity tax” on non-diet soda.

It won’t end there. The ultimate goal of food activists is the prohibition of high-calorie foods. As one activist put it, “There is no difference between Ronald McDonald and Joe Camel.”

Statistics tell us that the nutrition of our meals is virtually unchanged from half a century ago, but fewer of us are burning off the calories we ingest. If there’s a lesson to learn from Colorado, it’s this: Have a soft drink with lunch, or a beer with your dinner — but don’t forget to go for a walk. If they can do it in Denver, you can do it in Providence.