For the second time, Men's Fitness has proclaimed Las Vegas the least fit city in the nation. In fact, the editors take glee in doing so:

"Congratulations Las Vegas, you're the New England Patriots of the Fattest Cities list-perennial championship contenders. In fact, Sin City is the Fattest City in America for the second consecutive year, due largely to poor eating habits."

Today in the Las Vegas Sun, Brendan Buhler examines flaws in how Men's Fitness does the survey. It turns out there is Fattest City and fattest city. I wish I had written this story. 

Las Vegas never reflects accurately in parlor games like this one because of a failure to distinguish between residents and our 40 million annual tourists. Cookie-cutter urban surveys are usually meaningless when applied to the unique facts of Las Vegas.

So, for example, Buhler discovered that Men's Fitness measured the number of bars in a city in relation to population. That information may tell you something about other cities, but that number is meaningless when you consider the number of bars on the Strip that serve tourists. Going to the data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Buhler discovers a far more accurate number:

 

"A check of the CDC raw data shows that many, many cities exceed Las Vegas in alcohol consumption, including San Antonio, Portland, Ore., and heck, even Tucson."

 

And despite not coming with lots of media fanfare and not being presented between glossy covers, the CDC data also measures actual obesity and answers the question of the fattest city very differently than Men's Fitness' well-marketed Fattest City.

It turns out Las Vegas is not even close to the fattest city in the country. Buhler found that on the CDC list of obese places, Las Vegas occupies the far less glamorous 33rd spot.