Anna and Troy’s Weblog

I had heard from one of my students that Fort Wayne was ranked right up there on the “Fattest Cities in America” list. Having lived here for over a year now, I would have to say that the claim did surprise me a little bit at first, but upon further contemplation, I thought….”well….” There are a lot of fat people in Fort Wayne, and once you start paying a bit of attention, there are A LOT of fat children in Fort Wayne.

So as a woman quickly approaching the age where serious weight gain can sometimes become an issue, I began to wonder why this might be….. First of all, Fort Wayne does love restaurant eating, and not really great restaurant eating……chain restaurant eating. For a city that has a lot of restaurants, the is a surprising lack of variety in the dining landscape. There are an outstanding number of Pizza Huts in Fort Wayne. Secondly, while Fort Wayne is a very nice little city, it is not a spectacularly beautiful city, and there isn’t an extraordinary amount of outdoor activity. In the neighborhood in Michigan where I spent my formative years, if you looked outside on a nice day you would see lots of people outside running, walking dogs, riding their bikes, etc. This is not as true in Fort Wayne. This leads me to believe that there is something in the scenery, climate, general city layout, or general city attitude, that is not outstandingly conducive to an active lifestyle.

Having thought about these things for several weeks, and plotting my exclusion from the Federation of Fatty Fort Waynians, I decided to do a little fact checking and see if we are in deed one of the fattest cities in the country. Because, while there are a lot of pretty obese people in Fort Wayne, I really don’t know if there are any more in Fort Wayne than there are in other cities. If you listen to the news it seems that the waistline of the entire United States is on a steady upswing.

Well, my preliminary research has been a bit inconclusive. Men’s Health lists Houston and Detroit as the two fattest cities in the US, according to their 2008 survey of such things. Fort Wayne was not even on the list of cities ranked. Inconclusive evidence. My first Google search has not turned up much evidence to refute or deny Fort Wayne’s national fattness ranking.

But, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again….and viola!

“Called the Dumbest City in America (by Men’s Health in 2005) and the Fourth Fattest City in America (by the Centers for Disease Control in ‘02), Fort Wayne has attractions that are somewhat subtler than Miami’s.” -Sports Illustrated 02/05/2007

FAT AND DUMB!!

“This heartland city of 255,000 has been dubbed the dumbest town in all the land by Men’s Health magazine. It came in dead last, losing out at the bottom of the heap to the likes of Laredo, Texas” -USA Today 01/19/2005

See what you learn when you do a little research into the place where you live? You are fat and dumb.

Obviously these two polls were tallied before I moved to Fort Wayne.