Southern Fried food is a frying technique that is used to crisp the outer skin of wild game, such as rabbits and squirrels, which would preserve the meat, allowing for the saving or storing for future meals.
Salted cuts of meat, not intended for consumption, were used to preserve pots of vegetables, like greens.
Deep fried food has a long history in the south.
The original settlers were scots Irish used to cooking things that way, it lasts longer in the heat, and the other major meat in the south(pork) produces lard as a byproduct.
Slavery brought in African ingredients that make deep fried food much, much more delicious.
Why is Southern food so unhealthy?
The Southern diet is typically high in processed meats, which are high in salt and in nitrates, which are in turn linked to heart risk.
The high sugar content of the diet may also lead to negative effects, like insulin resistance and inflammation.
A traditional Southern meal is pan-fried chicken, field peas (such as black-eyed peas), greens (such as collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, or poke sallet), mashed potatoes, cornbread or corn pone, sweet tea, and dessert—typically a pie (sweet potato, chess, shoofly, pecan, and peach are the most common).
From the 17th to 19th Centuries, conventional wisdom designated the American South as fried chicken's native habitat.
Southerners made it a centerpiece of their regional cuisine and boasted that only African Americans, mostly enslaved, could make “authentic” fried chicken.