November is National Diabetes Awareness Month and obesity is often a contributing factor in the disease. And Georgia comes in as one of the fattest states in the nation.
Americans spend about $200 billion dollars a year on obesity-related health costs.
The personal-finance website, WalletHub, released its report on 2017’s Fattest States in America. Georgia was number 17 on the list. Analyst Jill Gonzalez says they studied all 50 states plus the District of Columbia.
“Georgia has quite honestly just a high number of obese or overweight adults as well as children. And that really is hurting in terms of health consequences from high cholesterol, high blood sugar, diabetes prevalence,” according to Gonzalez. “So there really is a correlation between just the sheer number of people that are affected by this and their health consequences.”
Analysts studied nearly 20 factors including the number of sugary drinks consumed, food deserts and living near fast food restaurants instead of grocery stores. That means many people don’t have access to fresh produce.
"So food waste is still a huge problem. And getting that food out to certain areas where there are food deserts seems to not be something that a lot of areas in the South know how to manage yet, or maybe know how to invest in," said Gonzalez.
Mississippi was the fattest state on the list compared to Colorado which came in at the bottom.
For complete list:
https://wallethub.com/edu/fattest-states/16585/
