Only in the South is Jello considered a vegetable.

Poverty and the need to go to work early in life usually meant leaving school before all of the critical thinking skills were completely developed. The net result being a population that on the whole was more prone to believing what they were told with less critical analysis.
-FallenMonk

I agree, we Southerners are mostly idiots devoid of critical thinking who only watch Fox News and read the Wall Street Journal. We vote for other idiots like George W. Bush and Ronnie Reagan. We only believe what Victor Davis Hansen tells us, and use the word “y’all” for the second person plural.

Wise blue state intellectuals like those from NY and SF watch reliable journalists like dan rather, read rolling stone and vote for politicians with integrity like john kerry, slick willie and jimmie carter. They only believe facts like those michael moore puts in his “documentaries”, and use the word “youse-guys” for second person plural.

We Southerners also know how to cook tasty food and we ain’t gotta lotta use for tofu or buckwheat pancakes.

I’ve heard of cheese racing but never moonpie racing. Using moon pies on the grill sounds messier than kraft singles, so I’ll stick with them.

I thought Texas was the fattest state. Oh well, I guess not.

Dad went to Georgia? I thought he avoided the South like the plague.

You forgot 2 things: 1) After Dad went to Georgia for some conference and pigged out, he had to watch his weight for the REST OF HIS LIFE and 2) That after you and I had cooked a beautiful healthy meal, Linda came home and FRIED ground beef swimming in grease. I will never forget that.

“she’s in the moving picture business.”

It beats the moving-furniture business.

You’re right about the high-calorie farm diets. Another thing is that the Depression and food rationing during WWII created a huge culinary disconnect in America, such that the generation that came of age in the ’40s and ’50s had a far higher tolerance for ersatz and low-quality ingredients than their parents and grandparents.

That’s how the Southern vernacular descended from home-made praline clusters to deep-fried Mars bars. Southerners of Faulkner’s generation would have been as horrified as any rational Northerner at the deep-fat-frying of store-bought confectionary items.

You’ve been visiting my relatives by marriage, haven’t you?

Fallenmonk — you are absolutely right about the critical thinking ability. I’ve written before about the liberal/wingnut split in my crazy southern family, and it is pretty much runs right down education lines. I never really thought about the need to go to work before that faculty developed.

I’m a Little Debbie Devil Cake fan, myself. Mmmm, waxy chocolate flavored coating with a cake-like substance and creamy filling. But moon pies are a close second.

I’m from Georgia and Pensacola, Fla. My family was NOT fat until the 1980’s. So, from 1800 to 1980, we ate progressively “healthier” food, and became progressively fat. Could cars have anything to do with this? JK

Jane – If you write up a research proposal, I think you could probably get a grant or something to further your studies.

Dan W – Moonpies rule (and I say this as a Northerner). Last year, when I was staying for two weeks in Charleston with my then gf’s family (hardcore liberals, surprisingly and thank God) her father (an English professor at USC) went online and found out about something called Moon Pie races, where, if I remember correctly, you put them on a grill with the packaging on it and see which one blows up faster– or maybe it’s how big you can get the thing without it exploding. Something like that… they had a whole league of some sort and rules and everything. I should google it…

The thing about the south and food, especially for those of us past the half century mark, is that we ate the food that was available. In my case that was the food that was prepared by Hattie Mae our black housekeeper and cook. She cooked the food she knew and that was the food of the poorest strata of the population. It took advantage of everything and that meant using left over bacon grease instead of extra virgin olive oil and other inexpensive foods that tended to be high in carbs. Jane is right in that there is a connection between this diet and the resultant obesity/critical thinking. Poverty and the need to go to work early in life usually meant leaving school before all of the critical thinking skills were completely developed. The net result being a population that on the whole was more prone to believing what they were told with less critical analysis.

Hey Fixer, did I mention Willard’s dead? And I miss him.

What y’all got ‘gainst Moon Pies? They’re downright nutrionalistic.* Specially the ‘nanner ones.

*Sort of nationalistic and nutritious at the same time…

Ah. The “moving pictures business”.
God. I love flip-books, don’t you?

When I worked as a reporter in the south, I covered a bake-off; the three most common ingredient were margarine, coolwhip and crushed oreo cookies. These are folks who like their transfats by the dumptruck load.

But seriously, I think the south took to processed foods with more zeal than the rest of the country because refrigeration was at a premium, and who wants to cook 3 meals a day when its 95° outside and you’ve got no air conditioning? And, especially in the south, old habits die hard. They’ll give up their pork-brains-in-milk-gravy-in-a-can and their moonpies when you pry them out of their cold, dead, fat hands.

Nah, I’m a meat and potatoes guy and I like a beer with dinner. I’m pretty much all there except for the occasional LSD reocurrance. ;)