08.23.05:Obesity in America
Tuesday, August 23, 2005 at 16:02 compete article at Forbes:
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Health
Obesity in America Continues to Expand
TUESDAY, Aug. 23 (HealthDayNews) -- Obesity rates continue to climb in every state except Oregon, and government policies and actions offer little hope of reversing the trend, according to a new report Tuesday from the Trust for America's Health.
The report, F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America, 2005, found that Mississippi is the heaviest state, while Colorado is the least heavy.
More than 25 percent of adults in 10 states are obese -- Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas, Michigan, Kentucky, Indiana and South Carolina.
"Across the board, we have every state failing to meet the national goal of 15 percent or less of the population being obese," Shelley Hearne, executive director of the Trust for America's Health, told a press conference.
"Bulging waistlines are growing, and they are going to cost taxpayers more dollars, and it's going to cost us in years of life and quality of life, regardless of where you live," Hearne added. "We can, and must, do better to start to turn around this obesity epidemic."
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