Report: US obesity rates increased in just six states in 2013.

One major television network news program, major newspapers and numerous Internet media outlets cover a report on obesity rates in the US. The report found that obesity rates increased in just six states last year, but the overall obesity rate in the US now exceeds 35% in Mississippi and West Virginia.

      NBC Nightly News (9/4, story 8, 0:20, Williams) reported, “The US appears to be backsliding on obesity despite the concerted nationwide public effort to reverse it.” In 2013, “rates of obesity went up in six states...and now in 20 states in all, almost half our country, the obesity rate is close to a third of all adults.”

      The Los Angeles Times (9/5, Kaplan) “Science Now” blog reports that “obesity rates...held steady in the other 44 plus the District of Columbia,” the report found, a “showing...good enough to prompt the authors of the report to change its name from ‘F as in Fat’ to ‘The State of Obesity: Better Policies for a Healthier America.’” One “heartening trend was that childhood obesity rates stabilized nationwide.”

      The Washington Post (9/4, Ferdman) “Wonkblog” reported that “nowhere in the US are Americans more overweight than in Mississippi and West Virginia, where more than 35 percent of the adult population is now obese,” the report from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reveals. Meanwhile, “another 18 US states, including just about all of the U.S. south, have obesity rates at or above 30 percent.” The report also breaks obesity rates down into racial demographics. For example, “obesity rates for blacks exceed 40 percent in 11 states, and 30 percent in 41 states; for Latinos, they are greater than 30 percent in 23 states; but for whites, they are higher than 30 percent in only 10 states.”

      McClatchy (9/5, Salazar, Subscription Publication) reports, “Colorado had the lowest rate of adult obesity at 21.3 percent, with Hawaii and Massachusetts close behind.” Meanwhile, “Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, New Jersey, Tennessee and Wyoming saw statistically significant increases in their rates from last year, ranging from 1.7 percentage points to 4.2 percentage points.” McClatchy also points out, “Obesity is defined as having a body mass index of 30 or more, while a BMI of 25 to 29.9 is classified as overweight, according to the CDC, whose data was used for the report.”

      Also covering the story are Reuters (9/5), the Huffington Post (9/4, Chan), TIME (9/5, Oaklander), the US News & World Report (9/4, Cook) “Data Mine” blog, and HealthDay (9/5, Steele). Sources focusing on specific obesity rates in particular states include the Washington Post (9/4, Chokshi) “GovBeat” blog, the Appleton (WI) Post-Crescent (9/4, Slack), the Boston Globe (9/5, Kotz) “Daily Dose” blog, the Charleston (WV) Daily Mail (9/4, Constantino), the Columbia (SC) State (9/5, Holleman), the Connecticut Post (9/5, Cuda), the Dallas Morning News (9/5, Landers), the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (9/5, Herzog), the Montgomery (AL) Advertiser (9/5, Griffin), the Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger (9/5, O'Brien), the Oklahoman (9/5, Cosgrove), the Salem (OR) Statesman Journal (9/5, Yoo), the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (9/5, Goldstein) and the Shreveport (LA) Times (9/5, Berry).