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Which States are Fattest, and Why

And the winner is….Mississippi, where 34.4 percent of the adult population is obese, according to numbers released by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and cited in the Wall Street Journal. The journal also reports that the CDC found that 26.7 percent of adults nationwide are obese, up from 25.6 percent in a 2007 survey. The thinnest state, once again, is Colorado, where obesity afflicts only 18.6 percent of the adult population. What does it all mean? For one thing, Richard Florida reports in The Atlantic that states with higher levels of obesity have significantly higher rates of
death from cancer, heart disease, and cerebrovascular diseases like
hypertension. Florida also found that obesity is lower in states with higher concentrations of artists,
musicians, and entertainers, those with
larger concentrations of gays and lesbians, and immigrants. Florida reminds us that these numbers may reflect broader structural characteristics of those
states, as more highly educated states also tend to be more tolerant
and open to diversity. The Atlantic includes a link to a paper written by Florida on the the factors associated with both obesity and smoking across U.S. states.

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