A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that over 26.7 percent of Americans are now obese. The south of the country is at the highest risk. Alabama, West Virginia, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri and Oklahoma and Tennessee all have obesity rates of 30 percent or higher. Mississippi has the heaviest population, at 34.4 percent. Only Colorado and Washington, D.C., have rates under 20 percent.
Higher levels of eduction, use of public transportation, higher rates of breast-feeding all are linked to lower incidents of obesity. Not surprisingly, so is above-average consumption of fresh produce.
In recent decades, obesity rates have doubled among adults and tripled among children. “Over the past several decades, obesity has increased faster than anyone could have imagined it would,” said the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Thomas Frieden. Furthermore, the report is probably an underestimate, because the data was gathered over the telephone, not from records where participants would be weighted by someone else. It has been shown that people are more likely to say they are taller and lighter than they really are when self-reporting.
Via The New York Times.
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