Inside America's Most Obese Region

Holmes is both the poorest county in Mississippi, it's also the most obese. In a compelling series on America's war on weight, NPR journalists and Oxford American filmmaker Dave Anderson hone in on what they call "ground zero for the nation's obesity battle."

Their feature begins with a grim statistic: Roughly 1 in 3 adult Americans is now obese. In Mississippi, 44 percent of kids are either overweight or obese and 7 of 10 adults in the state are either overweight or obese, making it the most obese region in the country. Tackling the obesity problem, however, is more than just a matter of diet and exercise. The Mississippi Delta area, where the problem is most pronounced, is also weighted by a number of social-economic issues with poverty at its core.

NPR looks at how Holmes is tackling obesity amid poverty alongside the driving forces behind the epidemic in "What Makes Bad Food So Good?"