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Fattest State Weighs Its Options
July 1, 2009 -- It's official, again. For the fifth year in a row, Mississippi is still the nation's heaviest state -- ground zero for obesity in the U.S.
That's according to a new report, F as in Fat 2009, issued today by the nonprofit Trust for America's Health in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The report shows that 32.5% of Mississippi adults are obese and 44.4% of kids 10-17 are overweight or obese.
Topping the obesity charts is getting to be a habit for Mississippi. And that's prompting some navel-gazing in the state.
Here are eight steps two Mississippi mayors and a Mississippi endocrinologist say it will take for Mississippi to put the brakes on obesity.
1. Address the environment.
Yes, personal choices about diet and activity are important. But if there's no healthy food available at affordable prices, and no place to exercise or even take a walk, that's a problem.
"I am not here to tell you to be healthy or force you to be healthy. I'm just here to give you an opportunity for it," Chip Johnson, mayor of Hernando, Miss., tells WebMD. " I have to put that opportunity out there, and if the people don't take advantage of it, that's their choice."
Johnson says Hernando, which is located about 12 miles south of Memphis, Tenn., has a population of 15,000 people and is in Mississippi's Delta region.
"Mississippi is the fattest state in the fattest nation in the world at the fattest time in all of history, and the Delta is the fattest area of our state. So we're right here, smack-dab in the middle of the fattest thing going on," Johnson says.
2. Spring for sidewalks.
Gene McGee, mayor of Ridgeland, Miss., says his town (population: 23,000) mandates sidewalks for new subdivisions. "That, hopefully, encourages families or individuals to walk in the subdivisions," McGee tells WebMD.
In Hernando, Mayor Johnson says grants will pay for sidewalks to be installed in the city's poorest neighborhood, and crumbling sidewalks elsewhere have also been upgraded.
Johnson says he's seen more people walking on the new sidewalks. "It's like that movie -- if you build it, they will come," he says.
3. Spruce up parks.
"I think it's very important to encourage communities to have facilities such as multi-use trails or parks that encourage physical activity," says McGee, noting Ridgeland's system of multi-use trails for biking, jogging, or walking.
Johnson says in Hernando, volunteers rehabbed an overgrown football field and track at a burned-down high school, turning it into a site for youth football and soccer and a place for neighborhood residents to walk and jog.
4. Reframe obesity.
Obesity shouldn't be thought of as a personal failure or sheer gluttony, but as a "chronic medical condition," says Gabrial Uwaifo, MD, FACP, FACE, an endocrinologist at the University of Mississippi in Jackson, Miss. Uwaifo wants obesity to be covered by insurance, not paid for out of pocket.
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