San Antonio dethrones Houston

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have named San Antonio as America's Fattest City:

In 2001, the most recent year for which national data on obesity are available, 31.1 percent of adults in San Antonio were considered obese -- the highest rate in the nation. Gary, Ind., had the second-highest obesity rate -- 28.8 percent.

San Antonio's ranking comes as the numbers of Americans who are overweight and obese are hitting all-time highs. In 2001, 21 percent of U.S. adults were obese and 37.2 percent were overweight, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

[...]

In addition to having the highest rate of obesity, San Antonio also had a high rate of people who are overweight -- 65 percent of the city's adults were considered overweight in 2001, second only to Charleston, W.Va., where 67.8 percent of adults were overweight, according to the new numbers.

This of course is in direct contradiction to the conclusions of the noted research journal Men's Fitness, which ranked Houston as the fattest. Let's do hope this little disagreement doesn't degenerate into name calling or hair pulling.

It would have been nice if I could have found the CDC's full list of cities from this study, which is apparently on their web site, but I couldn't. Here's what they do have on obesity and overweight - maybe it's just buried in there and I don't have enough search fu to find it.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on March 03, 2003 to The great state of Texas | TrackBack