It’s a well-documented phenomenon that Americans have a weight problem, with more than 70 percent of U.S. adults over the age of 20 categorized as either overweight or obese. However, when broken down by state (and the District of Columbia), it seems the crisis is bigger in certain states.
The “2017’s Fattest States in America” WalletHub ranking found Mississippi to be the heavyweight at No. 1, followed by West Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana. The least fat state was Colorado.
WalletHub ranked the states according to 19 metrics spanning three categories: obesity and overweight prevalence, health consequences and food and fitness. Obesity and overweight prevalence included metrics like the share of overweight adults and proportion of obese teenagers, while health consequences included measures such as the share of adults with type 2 diabetes, obesity-related death rate and obesity-related health care costs. Food and fitness included measures like healthy-food access and share of physically inactive adults.
In terms of obese adults, the highest percentage could be found in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia and Arkansas. The lowest percentages were in Massachusetts, Montana, Hawaii, the District of Columbia and Colorado.
Elsewhere, Mississippi nabbed the title of the state with the highest percentage of adults eating less than one serving of fruits/vegetables per day — the Dietary Guidelines for Americans states that higher consumption has been “consistently” labeled as a marker of a healthy diet — ahead of Louisiana, Arkansas, West Virginia and Alabama. On the healthier side of the scale, Colorado, Oregon, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire had the lowest percentage of adults eating less than one serving of fruits/vegetables per day.
Check out the 10 fattest states below. A complete list of the fattest states can be found here.
| Overall Rank | State | ‘Obesity and Overweight Prevalence’ Rank |
| 1 | Mississippi | 1 |
| 2 | West Virginia | 4 |
| 3 | Tennessee | 2 |
| 4 | Arkansas | 5 |
| 5 | Louisiana | 3 |
| 6 | Kentucky | 7 |
| 7 | Alabama | 8 |
| 8 | Oklahoma | 6 |
| 9 | South Carolina | 10 |
| 10 | Indiana | 15 |
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The 10 Fattest States in America originally appeared on usnews.com
