It's ridiculous considering that the kind of food healthy people eat and fat people never eat is cheaper than in other places like Alaska--and the state doesn't charge a sales tax on it!  People who live in proximity to Wal-Mart, H-E-B, United, etc. and can buy frozen vegetables, fresh produce and soup with no sales tax aren't living in a "food desert."  They choose to make those dietary choices.    Your  genetics can fuck you over by making you get insulin resistance and t2 diabetes easily, they can fuck you over by giving a more dangerous body fat distribution, they can fuck you over by giving you a low IQ and low future-orientation so you make terrible dietary choices.  But they don't magically destroy your metabolism (see also: the pubmed links in the sidebar of /r/fatlogic).  There is only one reason why Texans, West Virginians, Pacific Islanders, black women, Mexican women, Australian Aborigines, and the people you see on dating sites have high obesity rates and it's the laws of physics.