Health care costs to bulge along with U.S. waistlines

America is getting fatter, according to a new report, and bulging waistlines will rack up big health care expenditures within the next two decades.

The report, from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, draws on previously published government data to make predictions about what consequences an upward obesity trend would have for individual states.

It also projects that the health of the country — and the dollars spent on the health care system — would benefit from even a 5% reduction in the average body mass index. The report is called “F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2012.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found, in data published in August, that Mississippi is the country’s leader in adult obesity, at 34.9%. That number could rise to 66.7% by 2030, the new report found.

The new analysis also projected that obesity rates in 13 states could rise above 60% among adults by 2030. By that year, every state in the nation may have adult obesity rates above 44%, including 39 states with rates higher than 50%, the report said.

This is consistent with a 2012 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, which concluded that by 2030, 42% of adults will be obese.

Read the full original article at http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/18/health/us-obesity/index.html

Source:  by Elizabeth Landau for CNN, September 18, 2012 at http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/18/health/us-obesity/index.html