Americans are the fattest people in the world. By one measure, more than 70 percent of the U.S. population aged 15 and older is overweight or obese. But such a finding should come as no surprise, considering the proliferation of fast-food establishments and increasingly cheaper grocery items that have negatively altered our diets.
Unfortunately, the extra pounds have inflated the costs of obesity-related medical treatment to nearly $316 billion a year and annual productivity losses due to work absenteeism to more than $8.6 billion.
But certain places are more responsible than others for tipping the scale in favor of bad health. To identify them, WalletHub’s analysts compared 100 of the most populated U.S. metro areas across 17 key indicators of weight-related problems. According to the most recent data, adult obesity rates in North Carolina rank 22nd with 31 percent obesity.
Louisiana has the highest adult obesity rate at 36.2 percent and Colorado has the lowest at 20.2 percent.