The Dark Science Behind America's Most Obese City

Today, I am in the most obese.

City in America, McAllen, Texas. I want to find out why so many people are obese and what kind of food you see the most in the city. But before I leave, my goals are to host a free dinner for 40 people and cook a healthy dinner for a random stranger in their home.

My name is Jeremy, and I would love to cook you a healthy dinner tonight, if that's okay.

Umm, to get started, I hit the road for my first step in this plant, getting to know the people of, of McAllen.

I was doing some research, and it has one of the highest obesity rates in America. Do you know why?

It's kind of like nurturing when you go to someone's home and they just over serve you. You go to a restaurant here and they give you very generous portions here, like two months.

The food is amazing here, bro.

Food is kind of a comfort for us.

Your tacos? Yeah.

Like with one that they, that they serve you, you can make three out of.

Not even joking.

Typical western Mexican diet is not nutrient dense. Go out to somebody's little drive through where they have these little prepared snacks, and you're going to see these crazy, like, snacks that these kids are just like staples in their diet, you know? And with so many people telling me it was the food that was a culprit, it was time for me to try it out.

And what is this?

This is like a mayo. They prepare shrimp.

Shrimp.

Is this like a typical, like lunch or snack?

You won't get fooled with that.

I won't get fooled with this. Okay, so snack before the meal.

While each of these meals. Meals look like a generous helping of food, I was genuinely surprised by how long I could continue eating. Because these foods are highly processed and stripped of fiber, I can eat lots of them without feeling full. What's worse, these tasty foods are designed to hijack your brain's reward system, delivering a rush of pleasure that disappears almost as fast as it comes, which keeps you coming back for more. Which for me meant that even over a thousand thousand calories in one sitting felt like a light snack. And let me tell you, these foods, they far surpassed my expectations.

Dude, I don't know what it is. That's amazing. Yeah, this is going to be a challenge.

I'm worried because in just two days, I'm hosting a nutrition workshop, serving healthy dinners to 40 strangers of Macallan. The venue is already booked. This is my attempt to create real change in the community. But I have no idea if anyone will even show up. Let Alone. Enjoy the dinner. Fortunately, I'm going to have some help. This is Kelly, our head dietitian at Built with Science. Kelly has helped thousands of our clients make life lasting changes in their diets, making her the perfect person to call to help me with this ambitious project. And I've also scouted out a local business that seems like the perfect partner for our workshop.

Hey, Jeremy.

Yeah. Adam.

I'm the kitchen director here. Oh, nice to meet you, man. Yo, what up, dude? Good, good. How are you?

Good, good.

Bigger fast food chains, they just have calorie dense meals or combos. So what we focus on is macro balance, calorie focus, portion controlled meals, Fork.

To Fit, specializes in creating calorie friendly meals to counteract all the high calorie fast food that's available in McAllen. And I'm hoping if I can get them to cater our workshop, we'll have an amazing offer to get people in the door.

So I was born and raised here in McAllen, Texas. Seen obesity all my life as the most obese city in America. And we're trying to change that. So because of the lack of education and macronutrients.

Yeah.

And nutrition overall. Right. I'm glad that you're here to, like, help that movement. I would love to, like, work with y', all, like, going forward.

And with Alex and his team on board, we now had a great offer. Free dinner, free meals to take home, plus a free bag of our protein powder for anyone who shows up. All we have to do now is convince people to come.

Excuse me. We're doing a free catered event and just trying to do our part and giving back to the community. Would you be open to just answering a couple quick questions on camera? No. Okay. Okay. Esteban. Esteban.

Even with our offer of free food, it was not going to be easy.

Everybody thinks I'm trying to sell them something, just trying to get them some free food.

Even Kelly was having a hard time trying to recruit people inside the mall.

Much easier to watch Jeremy do it.

So if you guys aren't doing anything tomorrow night, I would love for you to join us. What do you think?

Sure. Yeah. Finally, after almost half a day handing out flyers, we had over 20 people who are committed to showing up.

Thank you so much. See you tomorrow.

However, the more time I spent in Macallan, the less I suspected that all the problems the city was facing facing could just be blamed on the food alone. There seems to be a number of hidden problems contributing to the obesity. When I tried exploring McAllen on day one, we realized pretty quickly that Macallan is pretty much a drive only city with four lane roads covering most of their streets. Pair that with sidewalks that would just end and pedestrian crossings where the buttons didn't work.

The light isn't good. It's stuck here for 10 minutes.

Even the buses only ran once every hour. It was almost like the city itself was trying to force the choice between staying at home or sitting down in your car.

Look, down here, there's nobody here.

As a result, most people here are taking just a few thousand steps per day. This means that their bodies are not only burning very few calories every day, but being this sedentary, has also been shown to mess up with your food food choices by shifting your brain to eat based on pleasure rather than actual hunger or energy needs. But worst of all, moving this little is associated with increased risk of disease and death. So as much as the food is to blame, the lack of movement is equally part of the problem. So if I want to build a workshop that actually addresses all the challenges Macallan is facing, I was going to need to take my investigation to another level. I have one. One more plan to try and get to know the people here even better.

Hello, my name is Jeremy and I'm. I'm visiting from Canada and I'm trying to get the to know the people of McAllen better. I'm. I'm friendly, trust me. Weird question, but I was wondering if you'd let me cook you a healthy dinner tonight. Just showing them you know how to go about doing that. If you ever thought about improving your health and fitness. Let's go. Random. Well, I'm not going to be here.

I work at night, so.

Oh, you work at night.

Okay, I will ask later. Okay, sure, but.

Well, maybe next time. Okay. Otherwise you'd be open to it.

Yeah, maybe.

No go.

And after getting no bites on my offer, literally, I decided to venture to another area. But let's just say the vibe here was a little less welcoming.

Man, everything is just fenced off.

Oh.

Would you be open to be cooking you guys a healthy dinner tonight? No. No? Okay. Okay, no problem. We have plans tonight. You just ate. Not gonna be hungry later. Oh, I don't think so. Hello. Hi, my name is Jeremy and I have a weird question for you. But I would love to cook you a healthy dinner tonight if that's okay.

Let me ask my boyfriend. I'm sorry, I have the dogs here.

Okay.

I'm doing an investigation of McAllen and we're studying the obesity rates and I think a good first step would just be if I could learn what you guys actually like eating and if I can make healthy swaps for you guys. Have you had dinner yet?

We haven't had dinner, actually. So I think that that'd be. That'd be great.

Yeah.

You're open to it.

Come on in.

Okay, let's go.

Be aware we have dogs here. So Odin and Hera.

Odin and Hera. Thank you for letting me in.

Yeah.

Hi. Santos. Samantha. Nice to meet you guys. Just to give you hello.

Sorry.

They get excited with new people. That's okay. At least they're not hurting. Oh, my God.

We'll take them inside. We'll take them inside.

I wanted to show you a picture. Like 21.

Yeah. But you can.

You can tell a huge difference in. You can tell a huge difference. I think it's been £100, both of us.

We grew up playing sports. We ate and we. We played sports. So I really didn't see the weight change until maybe after college, maybe during college, where I didn't have all that stuff going on.

My goal is to find the actual root cause behind the obesity here. And you guys, you know, growing up here, I would love to hear your thoughts on what you think that is.

Man, there's a lot I would say.

At least for me, like, I was ever taught what is proper nutrition. I don't think I was ever. This is healthy. This is not. Or. And what they do consider healthy is probably not even healthy.

We've got some good stuff here, and.

It'S a grind down here. I mean, yeah, you have your high, higher class people, but for the most part, it's lower and middle class and everyone's just working. For every 10 restaurants, you'll see a gym. Unless you go to an area that is predominantly wealthier, you'll start seeing healthy gym. But if you've seen low income, low community areas, you're gonna see the pizzas, McDonald's, Church's, chicken, grocery stores. You're gonna see your dollar trees. Dollar generals. Yeah, you walk in there and it's not like the best. There's no really much of anything, but that's what you're gonna see.

And while we ended up chatting well past dinner time, the next day, Kelly and I made the trip to our nearest grocery store to try and build a meal that's not only healthy, but. But overcome some of the challenges they listed. A meal of choice is chicken fajitas, a side of roasted veggies, and a surprise dessert. But with low income being A problem here. We tried to make it as budget friendly as possible by buying in bulk.

Size of my head.

Two big dogs keeping an eye out for sale items.

10 bucks. Not bad.

And getting some of our veggies canned and frozen, which are not only cheaper, but often more nutritious than buying them fresh. Not only have we managed to get the dinner cost down to just $5 per person, but by paying close attention to the calorie labels, each fajita will only pack around 100 calories. So compared to a 300 calorie fajita you'd get from a typical restaurant. Santos and Samantha could eat three of these bad boys and still have plenty of calories to spare. Hi.

Ready for dinner? Yeah.

But there's still one problem. I have no idea if they're actually going to find it tasty. Luckily, I still have one more secret weapon up my sleeve. So if you remember that delicious quesadilla I had on day one. Well, I was dying to know how they season their meat. So with the help of good old Google Translate, I was able to convince them to give me a little bit of their seasoning to help add some authentic Mexican flavor to our chicken.

Dinner is served, guys.

Wow.

Chicken fajitas. And we got some flour tortillas here. And we got corn tortillas here.

I'm excited for this right here. Heavenly Father, we ask that you please bless this food. May you give us the nutrients we need to live our life in your will. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Thank you.

That's so sweet. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

Yes, we're excited. I want to see what these are all about.

Oh, yeah.

How was it?

Well, that's pretty good. I was a little worried about the tortilla. Yeah. I'm used to flour tortilla. Right. And I usually want to taste the, like, the buttery part of this.

Try it.

But this is not bad.

Wow.

It's really good, actually.

Wow.

Yeah, I really enjoyed it. It was very filling. I was surprised to get filled up on carrots.

Yeah, right?

Yeah. I was like, do I want another taco? Because I'm, like, kind of getting full right now, you know? And it was very interesting. Interesting, because I want to say just the other day, we probably had, like, the street tacos, and we probably ate, like, what, four or five, plus, like, a potato and beans. And I was like. And I felt like this. I was like, man, I'm already, like, getting full. And it's like a good full. Like, I'm not like, oh, I'm not thinking in the back of my head like, okay, when they leave I'm gonna get something else. You know, like, I don't feel groggy. And that's the biggest thing I think. I don't feel groggy.

That's a really good point because I think that for the most part we're so to used. Used to. You eat a big meal and it's like a. You ready to go to the couch? Are you ready to go to the bed? Yeah, let's go lay down. Right. And I mean I feel really full, but I don't feel that. So that's a good call out.

Like I feel I'm ready to like walk the dogs and I'll be okay, you know.

Exactly.

We even had the budget for dessert. Greek yogurt topped with roasted apples, cinnamon and sugar free syrup.

Mind blowing.

Mind blowing.

Only 5 calories.

And by giving the access to our new built with Science plus app, fully equipped with a meal scanner to easily keep track of their calories and science back workouts they could do anywhere. I was starting to feel like this could genuinely be a new beginning for.

Both of them in our busiest time. If we can do it now, like Santos said, you know, it'll set us up for for our lives. That is only going to get busier. You know, unfortunately, adulting.

We saw hard.

And with everything I've learned so far, I honestly felt like I had a full grasp of the many factors leading to Macallan's health and obesity problems. Which means we only have one thing left to do before our time here is complete.

Mallon baby Callan overcomes. Let's go. Nobody's here yet. Oh, let's go, let's go.

Just 30 minutes time. We're about to have a conference room filled with 40 bags of protein. Over 120 prepped meals and hopefully 40 people.

Food has arrived. You know, we got good energy. We got the protein here. We got all the catered food. We have caterers here. There's only one problem. Nobody has showed up yet. And I am starting to get extremely nervous. I'm trying not to think about it. We'll see what happens. Oh, man.

And with just 15 minutes before the workshop begins and nobody here, I was starting to wonder if even Santos and Samantha would show up. Was this really all for nothing? Either way, it was time to take matters into my own hands.

Are you interested in a free dinner? We're hosting a catered event there. Completely free. Steak, potatoes and then we give you food to take home, too. It's completely free. It's a nutrition workshop that we're hosting.

No, thanks. I already ate.

Oh, you just ate? Okay, no problem. Come on, let's do it. Anybody can come and bring your kid, have dinner. Let's do it.

So just go right there and take a right. Okay.

Thank you, man.

And as we finally found people who were open to coming in, we also had a few people we'd met in Macallan start to show up.

All right, everybody, this is the official turnout, I think. Thank you, guys, for coming here. She asked me how many slices of bread I want. I said two. She gave me half the loaf. One thing that I discovered talking to people in Macallan is that they were very aware of the struggles that they had, but they were also very open to the idea of change.

Visiting Macallan and getting to know the people here made me realize just how complex the obesity issue really is and all the invisible factors contributing to it. I've tried my best to make a change, but what makes me truly hopeful are the people. People fighting for the community and for all those who have taken that first step to make lasting change in their own lives. As for Santos and Samantha, let's just say I feel really excited about the changes they've committed to make.

And time starts now. Good job, guys.