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HEALTH SOURCE
Alabama passes W.Va. as second-fattest state
WASHINGTON — Mississippi’s still king of cellulite, but an ominous tide is rolling toward the Medicare doctors in neighboring Alabama: Obese baby boomers.
It’s time for the nation’s annual obesity rankings and, outside of fairly lean Colorado, there’s little good news. In 31 states, more than one in four adults are obese, says a new report from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
And obesity rates among adults rose in 23 states over the past year, and no state experienced a significant decline.
“The obesity epidemic clearly goes beyond being an individual problem,” said Jeff Levi, executive director of the Trust, a nonprofit public health group.
It’s a national crisis that “calls for a national strategy to combat obesity,” added Robert Wood Johnson vice president Dr. James Marks. “The crest of the wave of obesity is still to crash.”
Read more in the July 2, 2009, print edition of The Herald-Dispatch.
