According to epidemiologists and physicians, Southerners weigh too much, have too much tooth decay, eat too much fat, and drink too much coke. We cushion against the hurt with the abundance of love found in food. And we revel in taking up space with sayings: “Only a dog wants a bone,” we say. The constraints are rarely mentioned: overwork, poverty, the convenience of fast food. That’s all a part of the story. It really isn’t a regional story so much as a national one and a historic one. But the sweetest of the sweet tooths grew down here in part because of how the land was organized by
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