FALCON HEIGHTS, Minn. - It's sort of a party where the whole state is on the guest list.
“It’s the great Minnesota get-together!” said Dina Richie of Vadnais Heights.
But many at the state fair aren't just getting together, they're eating together. And everybody has their favorites.
“(I love) Sweet Martha's cookies, pickle on a stick, and I can't forget the beer,” Richie said.
And forget about things like portion control.
“I don't watch what I eat. I don't count calories or anything,” said Mary Traxler of Chaska. “I just eat what I want to eat.”
That may seem like a good idea, until you walk into Health Fair 11, a building with 18 different booths offering free and low cost screenings, including body fat and weight.
“They maybe don't want to know, they don't want us to see,” said Todd Amundson of Anytime Fitness, one of several people staffing the scale. “There's maybe a little bit of that timid (feeling).”
Amundson says many people are timid because they don’t want to think about the consequences of overeating, yet that reality check is exactly why the fitness booth is at the fair.
“A lot of people don't know their body fat, so that's the big wake up call,” he said.
It certainly was for Jaime Kastner. He already lifts weights and walks up to 10 miles a day, but even he says he'd like to be fitter.
“The body fat percentage is a little higher than I hoped,” Kastner said. “But I'm 50 years old and I feel good, and that's what matters. I feel great.”
Kastner says that’s why he's like many visiting the fairground’s food vendors: determined that a new diet won't start until the state fair ends.
“This is once a year,” he said. “We can work out a little harder afterwards!”