Tennesseans apparently have been trying to be healthier, bringing the state's obesity rate down two and half percentage points last year from 33.7 to 31.2. But that still means that roughly one in three of us is seriously overweight.
Worse still, one of five of Tennessee children aged 10-17 are overweight, the fifth worst rate in the nation. And 16.9 percent of the state's high school students are obese, the fourth worst rate nationally, according to the report released last month by the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Those extra pounds translate into health problems, and 13 percent of Tennesseans suffer from diabetes - the second-worst level of any state, according to the report. The state also has the sixth-worst rate of high blood pressure in the U.S.
Yet Tennessee is one of the states that has declined to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act or under Gov. Bill Haslam's Insure Tennessee plan, which was a Tennessee specific waiver plan to take advantage of the ACA.
Tennessee also is one of several southern states that has spoken out about healthier lunches, claiming waste because children and their parents don't like healthy food. Go figure that the Republicans who have wanted to cut healthy school lunches come from some of the most obese states - like us.
It would seem to be hard to be against healthy food in schools, but the plan has two strike against it: Michelle Obama is for it, and Big Food's processing lobby is against it.
"When we began our Let's Move! initiative four years ago, we set one simple but ambitious goal: to end the epidemic of childhood obesity in a generation so that kids born today will grow up healthy," the first lady said last year. "Back in 2010, Congress passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which set higher nutritional standards for school lunches, also based on recommendations from the Institute of Medicine.
"Today, 90 percent of schools report that they are meeting these new standards. As a result, kids are now getting more fruits, vegetables, whole grains and other foods they need to be healthy. This is a big win for parents who are working hard to serve their kids balanced meals at home and don't want their efforts undermined during the day at school. And it's a big win for all of us since we spend more than $10 billion a year on school lunches and should not be spending those hard-earned taxpayer dollars on junk food for our children."
If the choice is Twinkies or an apple, kids by themselves might not make a good pick. Clearly many Tennessee adults don't make the right choice. That certainly doesn't mean we shouldn't do everything in our power to offer the apple.
The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act was up for reauthorization on Sept. 30 and was allowed to expire. Technically, it is still funded and hopefully will be renewed with bipartisan legislation at the end of the year - along with all of our other important spending.