Least health-conscious shoppers

Maybe they mean well. Maybe, before each trip to the grocery store, they make a silent vow to pass up the chocolate chip cookies and leave the rocky road ice cream in freezer case…only to crater when those goodies are right under their nose, ready to leap into the shopping cart.

The ever-vigilant list-makers at Forbes keep track of just about everything, and lately, they’ve been casting an eye toward that checkout line. Using data compiled by Catalina Marketing of St. Petersburg, Fla., they were able to identify the home bases of America’s unhealthiest grocery shoppers.

How did they do it? Catalina calculated the total amount spent on more than 100,000 individual product codes deemed generally unhealthy at 17,000 grocery stores. Those figures were then corrected for total expenditures.

Here are the 10 areas that fared worst, in reverse order, with percentage of total purchase devoted to unhealthy items:

10. Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, Wisc.: 10.19

9. Memphis, Tenn.-Ark.-Miss.: 10.27

8. Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro, Tenn.: 10.32

7. New Orleans, La.: 10.32

6. Louisville-Jefferson County, Ky.-La.: 10.65

5. Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, N.C.-S.C.: 10.9

4. Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, Ill.-Ind.-Wisc.: 10.95

3. Indianapolis-Carmel, Ind.: 11.33

2. Richmond, Va.: 11.45

1. Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, Minn.-Wisc.: 11.47

To get a better idea of why these folks aren’t eating as well as they might, visit Forbes.

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