Having just returned from two weeks in Georgia, your op-ed piece on "healthy" diets really rang a bell. If you do not like deep-fried food then the South is not for you. Once we were in Memphis and my wife, Nancy, was so tired of the deep-fried stuff that she ordered poached eggs for breakfast--they arrived slathered in grease!

However, when we hear about the oldest people in the United States, it seems I recall a high proportion of them are in the Old South. The people there are more relaxed, hospitable, talk slower and take a less intense approach to life than people outside the South.

My theory is that stress is one of the main causes for health problems. There are other causes, of course, but one of the things that sticks in my mind are studies of lifelong nuns, very much at peace with themselves in their chosen vocation, living a low-stress life. The studies were years ago but it seemed that, as a group, they were more healthy and long-lived compared with the general population.

That leads me to the conclusion that low stress is more important to health than diet.

—Colman McDonough, Sunnyvale