Seventy-five percent of Americans are now overweight or obese, according to an annual report released on Wednesday. In the past year, nearly half of the 50 U.S. states saw obesity rates rise and no state saw a fall in the number of people who were obese, according to the sixth annual “F as in Fat” report by the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Obesity is defined as having a body mass index—calculated by dividing a person's weight in kilograms by his or her height squared in meters—greater than 30. “The country will never be able to contain rates of chronic diseases and health care costs until we find ways to keep Americans healthier,” the report says, pinning more than a quarter of health care costs in the United States on problems linked to obesity. According to the report, health care costs attributable to Americans' weight gain are projected to more than double every 10 years, possibly reaching $956 billion a year by the year 2030. That would mean obesity would account for one in six dollars spent on health care. The report also cited other research, which found that obese workers had more than 10 times the number of lost workdays than normal-weight workers—nearly 184 lost workdays per 100 full-time obese employees over a one-year period, in comparison with the 14 lost workdays per 100 full-time normal-weight employees. The southern state of Mississippi held onto the title of being the fattest state for the fifth year in a row, with nearly one in three adults and 44 percent of children aged 10 to 17 suffering from obesity, the report showed.
