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Tennessee ranks high in obesity

By: Emily Bregel
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John Bilderback

The South still leads the nation in obesity rates, with Tennessee ranking in the top three for the heaviest population, according to the most recent government data.

Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee head up the list of the nation’s most obese states, with more than 30 percent of adults in each state reporting body mass index — a ratio of weight to height — greater than or equal to 30.

In Tennessee, 30.1 percent of the population surveyed was obese, compared to 28.1 percent in 2006, the data shows.

“Basically, it’s getting worse,” said John Bilderback, program manager for Step ONE, a Hamilton County effort to fight obesity. The report is “concerning, and some might see it as discouraging, but honestly what’s happening is there’s kind of a rallying of the troops.”

The obesity epidemic has led more community organizations — from the local United Way to Girls Inc. — to allocate funds to fight obesity, Mr. Bilderback said. Developers in rural counties also are focusing on environmental factors that affect weight, such as the presence of sidewalks, that can facilitate healthy lifestyle changes in areas outside pedestrian-friendly regions.

In the CDC report, Colorado was the slimmest state with just 19 percent of its population reporting a body mass index that is considered obese. For the report, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed data from a 2007 random telephone survey, relying on self-reported information on height and weight to determine obesity rankings.

Nearly 26 percent of all respondents were obese, according to the study, published this week in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. That’s compared to a 2005 study that found 23.9 percent of adults in the United States were obese.

Even more disturbing, Mr. Bilderback said, is the declining number of healthy weight people.

The CDC survey found in 1999 that 45.6 percent of Tennessee’s population had a healthy weight. That figure dropped to 32.6 percent in 2007, he said.

Southern culture plays a role in the rising obesity rates in the region. Traditional Southern foods — even vegetables such as fried green tomatoes and fried okra — can be land mines for the weight-conscious, health experts said.

“We add sugar to a lot of our Southern recipes. We’re generous with our butter, too,” said Dee Harwell, dietitian with Dynamic Dietetics in Cleveland, Tenn.

She also pointed out that the increasingly sedentary lifestyles in the South have been accompanied by larger portions and more consumption of fast food.

“In the South, we used to eat so much more because we were farmers, but we were so much more active then,” she said. “Now we’re not as active, but we continue to eat.”

Sugar-laden drinks such as sweet tea can contribute to a “creeping obesity” that can hit adults later in life, said Holly Dieken, director of the dietetics program at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. An extra 200 calories a day can add 10 pounds over the course of a year, she said.

“People don’t think about things that they drink as being caloric,” she said. “For children, it’s one of the biggest contributors (to weight gain.)”

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