Pa. needs to go on a diet
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After 20 years of rising obesity rates, the Keystone State has become the 19th most obese state in the country.
The eighth annual "F as in Fat" report by the Trust for America's Health and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation shows that 28.5 percent of Pennsylvanian adults are obese. That's more than double the obesity rate for the state in the late 1980s, which was 13.7 percent.
There is a bright spot in "F as in Fat," however: The number of states showing what the study's authors called statistically significant increases in their obesity rates dropped to 16 this year from 28 in 2009. Pennsylvania's own obesity rate increased by half a percent over the past year, which the study authors did not consider statistically significant.
If obesity rates are slowing, it could be due in part to an outpouring of public interest in preventing obesity -- particularly in children, said Jim Marks, senior vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
"Policies at the state and local levels may be beginning to have an effect," Dr. Marks said. "But it is a small victory, and it does not mean we can ease off the gas pedal."
An obese individual, as defined in "F as in Fat," is a person whose body mass index -- the person's self-reported weight, in kilograms, divided by the square of that person's self-reported height, in meters -- exceeds 30. Obesity can cause a litany of health problems, including hypertension and diabetes.
Diabetes rates in Pennsylvania reached 9.4 percent last year, according to the study. Twenty years ago, that rate was 6.1 percent. The condition has grown so prevalent in some regions that researchers have been able to identify a "diabetes belt" composed of 644 counties in 15 states in Appalachia and the southern United States. Several Pennsylvania counties are included in the belt, which was first published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in March.
First Published July 8, 2011 12:00 am
