South is U.S. obesity heavyweight

LOS ANGELES -- Ready for this one? Americans are fat.

More accurately, Americans are still fat.

The federal government released its "obesity map" yesterday, outlining the rates of obesity and how rates compare by state. Colorado gets the svelte bragging rights, with 20.7 percent of its adults as obese. At the other end of the scale is Mississippi, at 34.9 percent. New York was the tied with Connecticut and Nevada for eighth-least obesity rate at 24.5 percent.

By region, the South was the heavyweight, at 29.5 percent, followed closely by the Midwest at 29 percent. The Northeast was 25.3 percent and the West was 24.3 percent.

The figures are based on data from what's called the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. The figures can't be compared with previous years because of changes in methodology. One of those changes was to include households without landline phones, only cellphones. The CDC says the changes were intended to make the figures more accurate.

But the agency says its measures are one of several ways rates of obesity are monitored in this country, and it notes that whichever is used, "the obesity epidemic is still a major public health problem." For example, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found that more than a third of adults and almost 17 percent of young people were obese in 2009-10.

"The good news is that we have a growing body of evidence and approaches that we know can help reduce obesity, improve nutrition and increase physical activity based on making healthier choices easier for Americans," Jeffrey Levi, executive director of the nonprofit Trust for America's Health, said in a statement. "The bad news is we're not investing anywhere near what we need to in order to bend the obesity curve and see the returns in terms of health and savings."

Later this summer, Lev's group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are expected to release a report analyzing the rates and the policy efforts to curb obesity.

In 2006, obesity-related medical costs totaled $147 billion a year, or nearly 10 percent of total medical spending, according to a 2011 study in Health Affairs.