March 9th, 2009
The United States of Obesity
It’s really horrifying the number of obese people in many parts of the States — it’s time to get organized and go on a diet, America.
Also, notice that 10 of the top 10 fat States are a who’s who of the Confederacy — any ideas why that is?
You can get this poster at the miscellanea store.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
DC?
March 9th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Listed Under Washington. 25%. It’s funny how the Dept. of Disease control is in charge of fat people.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
I am highly skeptical of these figures. They state home state is roughly 25% obese- Which would mean that I should see 1 obese person for every three “normal” person. Unfortunately for these figures, I simply don’t see THAT many obese people when walking around my city. Although, the dry humor section of my brain responds, perhaps that’s because they’re all inside instead.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
Uh, Tim…there’s a *state* named Washington too. That’d be the state. Note that there are only 50 items on the chart, not 51.
Anyway, according to http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/544597 as of 2005:
35. New Mexico: 21.2%
36. Washington, D.C.: 21.1%
37. Arizona: 20.9%
Can’t find the reference used for this comic though (those stats obviously don’t fit this).
March 9th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
Maybe it’s time to start minding your own business and leaving people alone?
March 10th, 2009 at 12:44 am
@dirkson-
Actually, having a BMI of thirty isn’t THAT high. For example, I’m 6′0″ (male). If I weighed 220 lbs, I’d have a BMI of 30 (obese), but to most passerby, I would hardly LOOK obese, just a 20-30lbs overweight.
What most people think of as “Obese” is actually “morbidly obese”, obesity starts at much lower weights.
March 10th, 2009 at 12:57 am
Intriguing.
Also “Illustration” rather than “Illistration” in the credits. Though arguably it could be intentional
March 10th, 2009 at 1:50 am
Seems to be a correlation w/ red states and obesity as well. and another correlation w/ religious states and obesity too. Explains alot
March 10th, 2009 at 1:55 am
If DC is listed as “Washington”, then where is the state of Washington listed?
March 10th, 2009 at 3:15 am
I like your charts and comics.
The characterization of West Virginia as a confederate state is manifestly incorrect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia#Separation_from_Virginia
Also, Oklahoma was not a state at the time of the civil war.
March 10th, 2009 at 4:06 am
washington is washington state. dc isn’t listed.
March 10th, 2009 at 4:58 am
@Ben Cherry-
Excellent! Good to know.!
March 10th, 2009 at 5:11 am
@ Dirkson & Mackenzie : The exact page these figures come from is here: http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/maps/ I also emailed the CDC to ask some additional questions.
@ scott : I’ll mind my own business and leave people alone when they stop sucking up disproportional amounts of health care services. Obesity is a public health problem like smoking.
@ Christopher : Thanks for the correction. I seem to always have at least one typo per comic : (
@ nolandda : My apologies to West Virginia. Because it’s such a rednecky, poor state today, I always falsely assume that it succeeded from Virgina to *join* the confederacy, not to leave it.
March 10th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
BMI is really a terrible measure of obesity, body fat percentage is a better choice for that kind of thing. Most large athletes (think American football, hockey, etc) fall pretty deep under obese, as BMI only covers height and weight.
March 10th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
@Malakalam-
I was thinking that myself, but after being wrong the first time, I was hesitant to say anything. Don’t get me wrong, I fall WELL within the “Ugh, man, lay off the sweets” category of fat, but BMI has always struck me as fishy- It doesn’t make any attempt to figure out the relative amounts of muscle or bone in a person, just assumes that all weight is unhealthy.
I remember when I actually DID exercise, I dropped down to 180, then BACK up to 190 as I gained muscle mass. I knew I wasn’t gaining fat as I didn’t get any rounder.
Dammit, now I want to go swimming. I wonder if there’s a pool I could go to.
March 10th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
I enjoy your website, but I can’t say I agree with your stance on this. I’ve never said anything on here before, but I feel there are some things that need to be said. Brace yourself. This will be long.
First, I will acknowledge my bias. I’m obese. Clinically “morbidly” obese. This doesn’t mean that I think obesity is all fine and great, but it isn’t this major evil or “disease” that the medical industry is trying to classify it as. I also vehemently disagree with any obese person who receives disability benefits or tries to blame McDonald’s for their “condition.” That being said . . .
1) The CDC admitted to inflating their numbers on obesity in 2002, I think it was. I find it difficult to trust them now. You can easily Google that and read about it.
2) Smoking and obesity are not comparable. Smoking is a chemical addiction to a drug; obesity is a body type, unhealthy or not. Food addiction is more comparable to smoking, but not all obese people are addicted to food. Regardless, there are no chemicals involved that cause second-hand fat no matter how hard I try to force you to take some of my pounds.
3) Health insurance companies charge the obese additional premiums. It is an exaggeration that the obese are driving up the cost of health care and health insurance. It is, in fact, the uninsured that are causing that. Health insurance companies have something called “obesity riders” in which any person over a certain weight has to pay more.
3) You assume the obese are so unhealthy as to offset health care costs for supposedly thin, healthy people. While this is one example, it is representative of many other situations that demonstrate that healthy weight does not necessarily equal healthy person: My former roommate was as skinny as a beanpole, and he ate frozen pizza or mac and cheese every single day. He never exercised. I watched what I ate (still do), and I work in a job that is slightly more physically demanding than his. Unfortunately, heavy body types run in my family. He simply has a higher metabolism. But I guarantee you he gets less exercise than me and eats more calories than I do.
4) The obese are treated like garbage and receive more rude comments from people who think that other people’s bodies are everyone else’s business. Most of us fat folks often feel bad enough about how we look with the bombardment of uncommonly thin models and celebrities. We don’t need the medical industry telling us we’re “diseased” or random people on the street pointing and laughing. It’s immature. Personally, the American media’s focus on obesity is nothing more than an adolescent need to point out people who are considered different or socially “ugly.” To be honest, I have received more hurtful and rude comments from strangers about my size than about my dark skin or my gender.
It’s very simple. This is my body, and I can do with it what I please. Personally, I’m making daily efforts to change my lifestyle because I, personally, don’t like the way I look. But this is what I look like right now; therefore, this is my body type. It is important for people to accept my body type as much as I accept theirs. It most certainly isn’t any of my business what you do with your body, so the reverse should be true as well.
March 11th, 2009 at 12:57 am
I have to agree with those skeptical of the BMI, it basically condemns anyone who doesn’t fit a certain build, including anyone with a lot of muscle or generally well-built. Not to say that this problem isn’t huge, and as happy as I was to see california near the bottom, it’s kind of astounding when that bottom is 1/5 of the population. Egad/
March 11th, 2009 at 8:23 am
> 10 of the top 10 fat States are a who’s who of the Confederacy — any ideas why that is?
Yes, fried food, BBQ and poverty… absolutely deadly combination.
Perhaps we should coin a term… I’ll call it the Obesity Tipping Point (when the percentage of the state population is equal to or greater than the percentage of body weight over which one is considered obese.
Perhaps we could link farm subsidies to it or something creative like that…
March 11th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
It might be more interesting to view this as a sort of “large person acceptance chart” (I’d say fat person, but see my BMI post). I’m willing to bet that you’ll get treated better in the top 10 states over the bottom 10 states if you’re overweight.
March 11th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
theGrit- I enjoyed your very thoughtful response to this comic. Thank you for sharing that with us.
On the other hand, is it possible to do this on an international scale? Or has that been done already? (I vaguely recall seeing something like it)
March 11th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
@Nick – Done on here before actually – http://miscellanea.wellingtongrey.net/2007/05/06/global-obesity-fatness-by-country/
March 11th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Woo, Colorado!
Not that living there makes me any better of a person, or any less fat, but woooo anyway.
March 11th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Thanks, Nick. There’s a game on a website that had players guess the the most overweight countries by percentage of the population. I’m not sure Mr. Grey would be keen on my promoting another website on his, so I’ll refrain, but it was fascinating to see what country held the highest percentage: Nauru.
March 12th, 2009 at 5:07 am
@ theGrit : By all means, post the link : )
March 13th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Thanks for the OK! Of course, you all already have the top answer, but it’s still pretty interesting: http://www.sporcle.com/games/fattest_countries.php
March 13th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Yay for New England (CT bitch)
March 14th, 2009 at 5:06 am
Well, I’m from the south (luckily not part of that sad statistic). However, fat back, hog jowl, fried pork rinds, & grits with gobs of butter & redeye gravy might be just a few the culprits. And how could I forget…all those Cokes and Mountain Dews!
March 15th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
> 10 of the top 10 fat States are a who’s who of the Confederacy — any ideas why that is?
Actually, assuming I’m reading the chart correctly, only 8 out of 10 are. Neither West Virginia nor Oklahoma was even a separate state at the time of succession. Admittedly, West Virginia was part of Virginia at that time, but West Virginia did not exist until it succeeded from the confederacy and rejoined the Union in 1863. Oklahoma, however, still had 44 years until it’s statehood.
March 18th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Regarding the effectiveness of the BMI measure:
I’m a college student involved with ROTC, and part of my position on staff is gathering height and weight data. The Army uses a table for height-to-weight ration, and if you fail that ration, you do a body fat taping, which involves measuring certain parts of your body (depending on gender) and calculating a “Body Fat Percentage” (BFP). If you are above 26% for males and 33% for females, you fail and get put on weight control.
Most of the people in my unit pass with no problems, but there are a couple of people who, despite rigorous dieting and exercise, consistently fail their tapings. This is, quite simply, because their body type plays against them in the taping, whether through skeletal structure or just the way their body distributes it’s weight.
My point is this: out of 350 cadets, 3 have this problem (I know, because they are always red flagged and it’s a pain to sort out their situation). That’s less than 1%. Now I know a cadet population isn’t really representative of America, so let’s, say, quadruple it. So, 4-5%, give or take, get screwed by their body type. Not 15%, certainly not 30%. There are simply not that many people who get screwed by the BMI system.
You can also see this in the trend on the CDC website: the number of people who have a high BMI cannot possibly be increasing at the rate seen in the slides. The only explanation is that America really is as fat as it is being said to be, and more importantly, it is, in all probability, a health problem at it’s core. Nothing else can explain such a rapid increase in obesity except for declining personal health care (that’s taking care of yourself, not the health care industry).
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:04 pm
WOW and 6 of the lowest 10 states have medical marijuana laws.
Clearly, correlation is causation!
RE: Obesity as public health problem, neither I nor anyone I have ever heard of was ever asked if they wanted to pay for other people’s medical expenses. Using the prior ‘not minding their own business’ of creating ‘public health services’ is no excuse to further invade other people’s business.
March 26th, 2009 at 2:34 am
Wellington, just curious what your BMI is these days. I’ll share mine if you do.
March 26th, 2009 at 4:54 am
The only societal reasons to give a crap about obesity are because 1) much of the rest of the world views us as wasteful gluttons, and 2) like it or not, obese people almost always require more medical spending, which includes health insurance benefits from employers (one of the reasons health insurance benefits are declining, even dying out).
March 26th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Charismatic Enigma: Health insurance benefits are declining because the economy is tanking, because baby boomers are aging and retiring thus increasing the strain on health care, because pharmaceuticals are overpriced (due to a drastic increase in demand, mostly because of the recent increase of pharmaceutical advertisements), because of . . . . .
I could keep listing reasons, but it’s not even remotely accurate to blame one source (obesity) for the decrease in health insurance benefits.
April 7th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Wellington, Abrasive assholes are more likely to be murdered! Stop driving up my life insurance premiums!
April 23rd, 2009 at 10:01 am
These numbers are worthless because they’re based on BMI which doesn’t accurately show obesity. I’m a large-framed person and when I was in the Army I ran 10 miles every day. Yet at 5′9″ and 215lbs I had a BMI of 31.7 (Apparently a fat person can run 10 miles. Additionally, I also ran a marathon at this weight.)
April 23rd, 2009 at 11:32 am
No, do not go on diet! Going on diet means that for a while you are not going to eat normally but eat in a certain way… and then go back to your old habits. All nutritionists know it doesn’t work on the long term. You shouldn’t need to go on diet if you had descent food habits in the first place. Drinking pop three times a day is insane. Eating chips every day is a nonsense. Nobody need to eat meat at every meal. Stopping doing that is not going on diet, it’s quitting a diet that makes you fat. Obese people are actually following a very specific diet that makes them obese. They should just quit that morbid diet and start eating normally.
April 23rd, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Lard is why the Confederacy rules the numbers.
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Bundabar: If you’re 5′9″ and 215 lbs, you’re fat.
I’m 6′5″ and 200 lbs, fairly muscular (used to cycle competitively and still play intense team sports several times a week), with a “large frame”, and I’m starting to put on a belly these days. No matter how large your frame is, there’s no way that at 8 inches shorter and 15 pounds heavier than me, you’re not tipping the scales. That doesn’t mean you can’t run a marathon – I have a teammate who is unquestionably fat and yet he’s got endurance to put most of us to shame.
These days, people who used to be considered fat, and would still be considered fat in most parts of the world, are considered normal in the USA simply because of the high level of ambient pudge there.
May 8th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Those top states are also in the south – too darn hot to exercise. Historically, they’re also rural and poor leading to low education levels. And for whatever reason, the food is fried, greasy and covered in gravy.
May 9th, 2009 at 2:47 am
You don’t (presuming you still live in Britain) live in the US, and you seem to actively dislike the US. So why are you still a US citizen?
May 9th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Ron, go fuck yourself, idiot
June 28th, 2009 at 5:04 am
@theGrit
You blame your obesity on your genes. So, from birth, you had a greater chance of being obese when you grew up than most people. Autism is a disease. Sickle-cell is a disease. Degenerate genetic diseases are diseases as well. You could possibly define a very slow metabolism coupled with a large build as a disease. Those are both in your genes. Soooo, obesity can be considered a disease.
And everybody is addicted to food. They feel weird when they haven’t had it for a while, they are subject to many symptoms when they don’t eat it, they feel better when they do. I’ll go ahead and call that an addiction.
March 24th, 2010 at 10:02 am
WOW… this is enlightening. I’m from San Diego and moved to Texas about 3 years ago. Texas is a very unhealthy state. There are more fast food restaurants per capita than what I’m used to. I live in Dallas and there are only 3 Whole Food restaurants where I am, one being the closest for maybe 4-5 districts. That’s unheard of. A regular meal for people in my neighborhood, if you don’t feel like cooking is Whataburger. Gross! I eat at home, spinache smoothies, chicken, rice, fruit, lots of water. I can’t wait to go back to San Diego in a few weeks.