America’s most obese cities for 2017 have a Southern bias

In the annual ranking of American metros by obesity (and some other factors, but mostly, it’s about the waistlines of residents), Southern cities punch above their weight and that’s a bad thing.

Big circles along the southern tier of the U.S. map (see interactive below) mean those metro areas have more obese and overweight residents, more weight-related health problems and less healthy environments, according to the website WalletHub.com, which generates these particular rankings.

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. And it is diet more than anything else that adds to that pant size.

More ominously, 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.

WalletHub’s index crunches values of 17 factors for the 100 largest metro areas. This chart defaults to just S.C. places, but you can click the “See all cities” button to see the whole list, or enter search terms to find specific places of interest to you. The search is case-sensitive. Below the chart is an interactive map. Choose which metrics you want to see, and the metro markers will adjust to show you how they stack up relative to each other. Hover or tap/click a marker to see more details for each place.

And if you’re really into that sort of thing, scroll below the map to see exactly what factors WalletHub’s team used to calculate their index.

Methodology

In order to determine the fattest places in America, WalletHub’s analysts compared 100 of the most populated U.S. metro areas across three key dimensions:

• Obesity & Overweight
• Weight-Related Health Problems
• Healthy Environment.

They evaluated those dimensions using 17 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the “fattest.” Data for metrics marked with an asterisk (*) were available only at the state level.

The team then calculated the overall score for each city based on its weighted average across all metrics and used the resulting scores to construct its final ranking.

Obesity & Overweight – Total Points: 50

• Share of Overweight Adults: Full Weight (~11.11 Points)
• Share of Obese Adults: Full Weight (~11.11 Points)
• Share of Overweight Teenagers: Half*Weight (~5.56 Points) (Note: “Teenagers” includes persons aged 14 to 18.)
• Share of Obese Teenagers: Half* Weight (~5.56 Points) (Note: “Teenagers” includes persons aged 14 to 18.)
• Share of Overweight Children: Half* Weight (~5.56 Points) (Note: “Children” includes persons aged 10 to 17.)
• Share of Obese Children: Half* Weight (~5.56 Points) (Note: “Children” includes persons aged 10 to 17. )
• Projected Obesity Rates by 2030: Half* Weight (~5.56 Points)

Weight-Related Health Problems – Total Points: 30

• Share of Physically Inactive Adults: Full Weight (~4.62 Points)
• Share of Adults Eating Fewer than One Serving of Fruits/Vegetables per Day: Full Weight (~4.62 Points)
• Share of Adults with High Cholesterol: Full Weight (~4.62 Points)
• Share of Diabetic Adults: Full Weight (~4.62 Points)
• Share of Adults with High Blood Pressure: Full Weight (~4.62 Points)
• Heart-Disease Rate: Full Weight (~4.62 Points)
• Obesity-Related Death Rate: Half* Weight (~2.31 Points)

Healthy Environment – Total Points: 20

• Active Lifestyle: Quadruple Weight (~13.33 Points) (Note: This metric is based on data from WalletHub’s Best & Worst Cities for an Active Lifestyle ranking.)
• Access to Parks & Recreational Facilities: Full Weight (~3.33 Points)
• Access to Healthy Food: Full Weight (~3.33 Points) (Note: This metric measures the percentage of urban-area residents who earn a low income and live more than 1 mile from a grocery store or supermarket.)

Sources: Data used to create this ranking were collected from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, County Health Rankings, United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative, Trust for America's Health and WalletHub research.

This story was originally published March 22, 2017 at 5:22 PM with the headline "America’s most obese cities for 2017 have a Southern bias."