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The South often gets tagged with having the most obese population.

But it doesn't appear to be true, a University of Alabama at Birmingham study suggests.

The study recently published in the journal Obesity found that there's a significantly higher percentage of obese people in a region of central and northwest states including Minnesota, Kansas and North and South Dakota.
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How did Southerners get such a fat reputation? Apparently because they are more truthful.

The notion that the South is the fattest comes primarily from a nationwide telephone survey done by the Centers for Disease Control, in which the surveyor asks for height and weight, among other things, Howard said.

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By comparing the BRFSS self-reported weight data with the REGARDS scale-weight data, researchers found that most everyone fudges, or underreports, their weight when asked on a telephone.

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"Everybody underreports their weight but women do it more," Howard said.

Men, on the other hand, do something else that affects the Body Mass Index, which is weight divided by height squared and is used to define obesity.

"They overreport their height, which makes them seem less obese."