New population study needed in Sioux Falls

I’m not talking about the pediatric study that was the result I was in town… I am talking about looking at the obesity rates in Sioux Falls and why they are not sky high.

Yours truly is trying to adhere to a traditional diet (the “shut-your-gob-and-get-off-your-ass diet), but I am pretty sure that I gained weight while in Sioux Falls even though I managed to exercise on most days. It is certainly hard to diet while traveling, but it is damn near impossible in Sioux Falls. Here are a few reasons why:

1) The only local restaurants are steakhouses or dives that cater to truckers. The rest are chains or fast food joints (and there are a *ton* of them), none of which seem to have a low-cal alternative menu to speak of.

2) Unlike most steakhouses and family-owned joints I have been to, their salad bars are nothing short of a disgrace. Old lettuce, sliced carrots, and maybe some radishes and onions are about all you can expect; everything else at the salad bar is some form of heavy, fatty, mayonnaise-based concoction (potato salad is the most innocuous example).

3) All the soups are either cream- or cheese-based artery enemies. Period. Vegetable soup in a chicken or beef broth does not exist.

4) The proportions are about double what I would expect from a restaurant around where I live in Durham. I once order some grilled chicken on a bed of rice pilaf and ended up getting 2 huge rubbery chicken breasts served on enough rice to feed a Catholic family.

5) Even the supposed healthy places are ridiculous. After complaining about my caloric plight, I was directed to a Wellness Center that was a part of a small medical facility for the elderly. Their eatery was the same as anyplace else… non-existent salad bar, heavy soup, bacon-laden sandwiches and burgers slathered in mayo, etc. The best thing I could get was a cordon bleu chicken sandwich... sure, it had some Swiss cheese, but no mayo and ham isn’t too bad. Instead, I could hardly see the chicken for all the cheese on it, and to top things off, the bread was essentially Texas toast (for the uninitiated, that means white bread soaked to the core in butter and then lightly toasted). Remember, this was all at a Wellness Center… at least they had the decency to serve light veggie chips instead of potato chips. Whoopee!

Enough bitching. One positive thing out of it is that I know what I could do if all else fails and I don’t finish school or something happens such that I can’t practice or whatever: go to Sioux Falls and open a healthy restaurant. It would have a nice, well-appropriated salad bar and a menu consisting of delicious yet lower calorie and smaller proportioned dishes. Despite the fact that most people there clearly love their steaks, there has got to be enough folks in that town to support something like that.

But until then, I think next time I am going to have to find the closest Subway for Jared-style subs, and hit the grocery store in order to stock my hotel room with fruit.

Update: I think… check that… I *know* I found more fresh fruit and healthy options in the first two food kiosks at O’Hare than I think I ever saw in Sioux Falls…

Update: I looked up South Dakota on HappyCow.net (which has veggie and health food listings throughout the world), and I found only 4 listings in the whole state... none in Sioux Falls.