For the third year in a row, Mississippi is the fattest state in the country and Colorado the leanest, but the obesity rate is increasing in all states, according to a report released Monday.
Mississippi this year became the first state to have more than 30 percent of its residents classified as obese, and West Virginia and Alabama were just behind, according to the Trust for America’s Health, a research group that focuses on disease prevention.
Colorado continued its reign as the leanest state in the nation with an obesity rate projected at 17.6 percent.
But 47 states are above 20 percent. Just 15 years ago, no state was above 15 percent, according to the research group.
For the first time, the annual report included state-by-state figures on childhood obesity, showing that Washington, D.C., was first with 22.8 percent of its children overweight and Utah was last with 8.5 percent.
“Unfortunately, we’re treating (obesity) like a mere inconvenience instead of the emergency that it is,” said Dr. James Marks, senior vice president at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a philanthropy devoted to improving health care.
Marks found the data for youth particularly discouraging.
“These children could be the first generation to live sicker and die younger than their parents,” he said.
The report categorized subjects using body mass index, or BMI, which is a ratio of weight and height. It defined overweight as having a BMI between 25 and 30, and obese as a BMI over 30. An individual who is 6 feet tall and weighs 230 pounds, for example, has a BMI of 31.
The incidence of obesity increased in 31 states in 2006 and no state experienced a decrease, said Jeff Levi, executive director of the trust.
Ten of the 15 states with the highest rates of obesity among adults were in the South, as were eight of the 10 states with the highest rates of overweight youth.
That is crucial, Levi said, because the region also has the highest rates of Type 2 diabetes and hypertension, both of which are linked to obesity.
Obesity costs $117 billion per year in preventable health-care expenditures and “is pushing the health-care system to the breaking point,” Marks said.
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