We’re not that fat

By Brendan Buhler

Thursday, Feb. 14, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Good news, Las Vegans: Men’s Fitness magazine’s grand claim this week that we are the fattest metropolis in America is wrong.

No, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the fattest place in America is the Huntington-Ashland area at the intersection of West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio — or, as it might as well be known, “America’s Feedlot.” (Maybe there is a skinny metropolitan statistical area inside the Huntington-Ashland area, but if so, it is wedged between a pair of its molars. More than three-quarters of the population there is overweight and, nice hair and lovely personalities aside, 45 percent of them are obese, the CDC says.)

The CDC tracks obesity in 144 such locations nationwide. Las Vegas is but the 33rd heftiest on that list.

Curiously, Men’s Fitness included the CDC rankings in its complicated formula for determining overall “fitness and fatness.” But the magazine lumped in a lot of other data — some of it dubious — to conclude that even though Las Vegans aren’t as obese as, say, the waddlers down in San Antonio, Texas, we leapfrogged over all other cities because we do things like open too many bars, watch too much TV and elect public officials who don’t aggressively promote fitness.

In other words, the true measure of obesity — the CDC study — was outweighed by less scientific considerations.

To dissect the magazine’s claims, the Sun spoke to Editor in Chief Roy S. Johnson, whose parent company, American Media Inc., also owns the National Enquirer. Johnson was helpful to a point, but had to refer detailed questions to a private contractor who compiled the list.

That contractor spoke to the Sun, but only on the condition that his name wouldn’t be published. He explained that his contract forbade him from speaking publicly about the findings.

Reviewing the magazine’s claims, the Sun found that it ranked cities in 14 categories that together measure more than three dozen aspects of a given city. Some categories are much more important to a city’s ranking than others. The big ones? Fatness and laziness, boozing, watching TV, access to parks, government advocacy of fitness and, biggest of all, motivation.

Las Vegas scores poorly in most of them. Our population doesn’t seem eager to get fit.

But does that make us fat?

What’s more, Men’s Fitness mixed different batches of data. Some, including the CDC’s obesity data, are available in a big gulp called a metropolitan statistical area. In our case this pretty much means all of Clark County.

Other data, like city parks and recreation facilities, come from the city of Las Vegas only, so the ample parks of Henderson are going uncounted, as are parks in North Las Vegas and unincorporated Clark County.

Also, we should note that the list has outright errors.

For instance, Las Vegans don’t drink nearly as much as Men’s Fitness claims. It says we’re the second-worst heavy drinkers on its list. But a check of the CDC raw data shows that many, many cities exceed Las Vegas in alcohol consumption, including San Antonio, Portland, Ore., and heck, even Tucson.

The magazine also counted the number of bars per capita. But it did not account for the 40 million non-Las Vegans who come here every year, a great many of them to drink. Those numbers certainly are reason for more bars than the locals can support.

Tourists also help drag down Las Vegas in the junk food category. Many of them eat at our fast-food restaurants, ice cream parlors and pizzerias.

On the other hand, the tourists who buy at our sporting goods stores help pump up our numbers — and Men’s Fitness sees those numbers as a good thing.

The magazine also concedes that it did not consider the nature of the Las Vegas workforce. We get no credit for the exercise our construction workers, cocktail waitresses and valets get on the job each day.

Finally, there’s the part that is Mayor Oscar Goodman’s fault. Men’s Fitness thinks that in a city of fitness nuts, the mayor is going to be a fitness kind of guy. So you’ll get so many points if your mayor shoots off a starter’s pistol at the beginning of a marathon and you’ll get even more if he runs in it.

Oscar? Not so much.

(Some good news here: A mayor can’t earn his city negative health points by, say, acting as a gin spokesman.)