Report: California is 41st fattest state

August 19, 2008
by Steven E.F. Brown
San Francisco Business Times

Though Michael Phelps may consume 10,000 calories per day, he exercises so much it doesn’t matter. But the average American now eats 300 more calories per day than in 1985. So says a report issued today by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America’s Health, adding that adult obesity rates rose in 37 states in the last year. They did not decline in any state. California, which saw its obesity rate rise 0.4 percent, ranks 41st on the list, with 23.1 percent of its adults obese. The state’s combined overweight and obesity rate is 59.4 percent, the report said, and 17 percent of the state’s poor children are obese. The report, now in its fifth year, is titled F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies Are Failing In America 2008, and castigates federal, state and local governments for poor or patchwork policies aimed at curbing obesity.

View the full story (some sites require registration)