Maybe it really is time to let Bloomberg take away that 20 oz. soda; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a report on 2011's obesity rates in the United States, and found that more than one third of all adult Americans are obese, with New York State's 30+ BMI population weighing in at 24.5 percent.
The CDC study, which surveyed over 400,000 adults, shows a significant overall increase in obesity nationwide since 1985, when less than 10 percent of all New Yorkers were obese and no state in the country had a reported obesity rate of over 14 percent. Fast forward to 2001, and New York's statewide obesity rate was under 20 percent. In 2010 obesity prevalence climbed to 23.9 percent—now, nearly one in four Empire State residents are dangerously overweight.
The good news? While New Yorkers are fat, they're still not as fat as the Double-Down-downers in real America. The CDC study notes that more than one-third of all adults in the United States are obese (though a study from April shows that number might be even higher). The states with the most obese residents were Southern states like Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Mississippi, which had the highest obesity prevalence in the country of 34.9 percent. Western states like California and Nevada were leaner overall, and the slimmest state was Colorado, where it appears only 20.7 percent of the population spend their Sundays at IHOP.
