Fried Food in the South

I was reading this article about the history of fried foods and the author brought up a very interesting point, that almost every culture has its own type of fried food whether it be the English's Fish and Chips or fired oriental foods. This statement got me thinking about how some of the problems Americans have with obesity as a result of eating unhealthy foods isn't as prevalent in other places. The reason I settled on was that fried food is made so widely available and cheap. The south has always had problems with poverty, so fried fast food has been the primary choice of many southerners because it is cheap. To an extent fried food provides the poor working class with the energy it needs because of the ridiculous amount of carbs one serving provides. The problem is that people have overdone the consumption of this food and thus have begun to consume much more carbs than they could have ever needed, and thus they have become much, much larger. The thing is that the South has traditionally had oily, fried foods so why should obesity be getting bad now? The main reason is technology has made it so much easier to be lethargic. People just don't get the exercise that they need counteract what they eat. In general, life has become too easy to watch pass by.