behavior, and gaining or losing weight right along with friends and relatives may be one of those activities.
To reach this conclusion, Christakis and Fowler analyzed more than 30 years’ worth of information for more than 12,000 volunteers in the famed Framingham Heart Study, the project that has tracked the incidence and causes of heart disease in a Massachusetts city since 1948.
The Framingham people were weighed during checkups every two to four years. When Christakis and Fowler toted up the results, they discovered that the risk of becoming obese rose nearly 60 percent for someone with an obese friend, 40 percent for someone with an obese brother or sister, and 37 percent for someone whose husband or wife is obese. And these people didn’t even have to live close to each other for the risk to rise: The coincidence of obesity existed even when the subjects lived in different cities, which leads right to the next section, stats showing the cities and states where overweight Americans are most likely to be found.
Observing the Obesity Map
How many people are fat and how many leans varies from state to state and city to city depending on a whole list of variables ranging from genetics to physical activity and, of course, the local diet. Table 4-1 shows the ten leanest and fattest states. Table 4-2 does the same for the top ten fattest and leanest cities. In both cases, the information is solidly reliable drawn from such eminent statistics sources as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Census, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
What do the fattest cities and states have in common? According to Michael Wimberly of the Geographic Information Science Center of Excellence at South Dakota State University, the people living there are
Less likely to engage in physical activity
Less likely to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day
More likely to eat the “wrong” foods
More likely to be living somewhere pretty far away from a really good supermarket
TABLE 4-1 The Ten Fattest and Leanest U.S. States
| Fattest States (Fattest First) | Leanest States (Leanest First) |
|---|---|
| Mississippi | Utah |
| Kentucky | Colorado |
| Oklahoma | Connecticut |
| West Virginia | Idaho |
| Tennessee | Oregon |
| Alabama | Minnesota |
| Arkansas | Montana |
| Louisiana | Massachusetts |
| Michigan | Alaska |
| Ohio | Washington |
From “Fattest States in the U.S.” https://wallethub.com/edu/fattest-states/16585/
TABLE 4-2 The Ten Fattest and Leanest American Cities
| Fattest Cities (Fattest First) | Leanest Cities (Leanest First) |
|---|---|
| McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX | San Francisco-Oakland, CA |
| Shreveport-Bossier City, LA | Honolulu, HI |
| Memphis, TN | Minneapolis-St Paul, MN |
| Jackson, MS | Seattle-Tacoma-Belleville, WA |
| Knoxville, TN | Portland, OR |
| Tulsa, OK | Boston, MA |
| Mobile, AL | Denver, CO |
| Nashville, TN | Alexandria-D.C., VA |
| Columbia, SC | Colorado Springs, CO |
| Lafayette, LA | Salt Lake City, UT |
From https://walletyhub.com/edu/fattest-cities-in-america/10532
Wimberly calls this an obesogenic environment, a situation that encourages weight gain.
Determining How Much You Should Weigh
Over the years, many health organizations ranging from insurance companies to the U.S. federal government have created charts and tables purporting to establish healthy weight standards for adult Americans. Some of these efforts set the figures so low that you can hardly get there without severely restricting your diet — or being born again with a different body, preferably with light bones and no curves. Others are more reasonable.
Weight charts and tables
In 1959, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company published the first set of standard weight charts. The weights were drawn from insurance statistics showing what the healthiest, longest-living people weighed — with clothes on and (for the women) wearing shoes with one-inch heels. The problem? At the time, the class of people with insurance was so small and so narrow that it was hard to say with certainty that their weight could predict healthy poundage for the rest of the population.
Thirty-one years later, the government published the weight chart shown in Table 4-3. This moderate, eminently usable set appeared in the 1990 edition of Dietary Guidelines for Americans (more about the Dietary Guidelines in Chapter 16). The weights in this table are listed in ranges for both men and women of specific heights. Height is measured without shoes, and weight is measured without clothes. Because most people gain some weight as they grow older, the people who compiled these recommendations did a really sensible thing: They divided the ranges into two broad categories, one for people age 19 to 34, the other for those age 35 and older.
TABLE 4-3 How Much Should You Weigh?
|
Height
|
|---|
