Comment on I live in the green part
XeroxCool@lemmy.world 2 weeks agoI’d expect a county map to more appropriately show the trend. Coastal cities can steamroll stats for a state with vastly disproportional representation. I would expect cities to have lower obesity rates due to increased travel by walking while deep rural counties to have higher rates due to driving everywhere, including on your own property. Perhaps it’s not California and New York that’s doing the right thing, but rather LA and NYC doing the heavy lifting. A county map could also pull in variation correlated to ethnicity of people (genetics, imported cultural norms) and ethnicity/variety of food available, too (can you get fresh fare or is it all McDonald’s?). I would expect DC to be more in line with other large metro counties.
Basically the same issues with the electoral college. States are big and not necessarily a good representation of human statistics. Counties may not be granular enough, but I expect it to be an improvement. I’m not seeing date marked results past 2008.
I have no relevant comments for Colorado, I don’t get it
WoahWoah@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Agreed. A more granular map would be interesting to see.
Re: Colorado, it’s just a relatively healthy state with a general ethos of living well. I think you’re seeing some of that being the urban effect through the Denver, Colorado Springs, etc. and then you have the addition of rural areas of Colorado being outdoorsy still, as well as very often still affluent or “rural poor.” Colorado has one of the lowest rural poverty rates in the United States.
And since Colorado would be in the 25-29.9 category now, it’s comparable to many states that also have comparable rural poverty rates. The fact that the states with the highest rural poverty also have the highest weights, I’m sure there’s a relationship there. I imagine the obesity rates and poverty rates heavily overlap.