[zeveb]

> No mention of controlling for a predilection for sweet tea, fried everything, and vegetables being limited to fried okra or green tomatoes.

All of which were probably intelligent adaptations to living in a post-war economic backwater. The trouble now would be that folks have enough money to drink enough sweet tea and eat enough fried foods that the formerly-subsistence-level foods are now obesity-causing.

[cglace]

Actually, the limited vegetables and fried everything happened much later. Before and after the civil war(up until modern times) southerners ate much more and a wider variety of vegetables. Vegetables were simply cheaper and more widely available than meat.

[LyndsySimon]

> Vegetables were simply cheaper and more widely available than meat.

Right... and therefore, people might have developed a cultural and perhaps even physiological preference for those foods composed of and derived from animal products. Hence, meat and fried foods.