By TOM TOPOUSIS, AP
Posted: 3:33 am
July 18, 2008
Belt-tightening in the Empire State has gotten harder than ever.
But that's not because of a slumping economy. New Yorkers are simply getting fatter, a federal government study revealed yesterday.
Over the past decade, the number of New Yorkers considered to be obese has ballooned 59 percent, the study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.
The CDC survey reported that 25.5 percent of the state's residents were obese last year, compared with 16 percent in 1997 - mirroring a national trend toward expanding waistlines.
Overall, about 26 percent of the respondents were obese, according to the study in this week's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
The national survey placed New York as the 19th most obese, falling well behind the blubber belt stretching across the Deep South where Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee lead the nation with obesity rates of over 30 percent.
New York also led the tristate region, outsizing New Jersey, which had an obesity percentage of 24.1, and Connecticut, 21.7 percent.
Colorado was the least obese in the nation, with about 19 percent fitting that category.
The 2007 findings are similar to results from the same survey the three previous years. Mississippi has had the highest obesity rate every year since 2004. But Alabama, Tennessee, West Virginia and Louisiana have also clustered near the top of the list.
Why is the South so heavy? The traditional Southern diet - high in fat and fried food - may be part of the answer, said Dr. William Dietz, who heads CDC's nutrition, physical activity and obesity division.
The South also has a large concentration of rural residents and black women - two groups that tend to have higher obesity rates, he said.
Colorado, meanwhile, is a state with a reputation for exercise. It has plentiful biking and hiking trails, and an elevation that causes the body to labor a bit more, Dietz said.
Obesity is based on the body mass index, a calculation using height and weight. A 5-foot, 9-inch, 203-pound adult would have a BMI of 30, the threshold for obesity.
CDC officials believe the telephone survey of 350,000 adults offers conservative estimates of obesity rates, because it's based on what respondents said about their height and weight. Men commonly overstate their height and women often lowball their weight.
A different CDC survey - in which researchers actually weigh and measure survey respondents - put the adult obesity rate at 34 percent in 2005 and 2006, the most recent years for which there are data.
