Obesity Rates Still Rising.
Our family is trying to eat better....exercise more. Although I find it hard to stick to. I think food is tasting better but worse for us now than it was when I was younger.
In 1995, no state had an obesity rate above 20 percent. Now, all but one does.
An annual obesity report by two public health groups looked for the first time at state-by-state statistics over the last two decades. The state that has the lowest obesity rate now -- Colorado, with 19.8 percent of adults considered obese -- would have had the highest rate in 1995.
"When you look at it year by year, the changes are incremental," says Jeffrey Levi, executive director of the Trust for America's Health, which writes the annual report with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "When you look at it by a generation you see how we got into this problem."
The study, based on 2010 data, says a dozen states top 30 percent obesity, most of them in the South. Mississippi topped the list for the seventh year in a row, with Alabama, West Virginia, Tennessee and Louisiana close behind. Just five years ago, in 2006, Mississippi was the only state above 30 percent.
No state decreased its level of obesity, which is defined as a body mass index of 30 or more. The body mass index is a measurement based on weight and height.
There was a bit of good news in the report: Sixteen states reported increases in their obesity rates, down from 28 states that reported increases last year. Levi says those increases have been gradually slowing, most likely due to greater public awareness of health issues and government attempts to give schools and shoppers better access to healthier foods.
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