Obesity Rates Are Actually Down in 4 States

There’s finally some good news  about obesity in America: Several states have experienced a drop in  obesity rates—the first time that any state has seen a decrease in the  past decade.
For the majority of states, obesity rates for U.S. adults remained stable from 2014-2015, according to the new report from  the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  But rates went down in four states during that time period: Minnesota,  Montana, New York and Ohio. This is the first time that any state,  besides Washington, D.C. in 2010, has actually seen a decline, the  report authors point out. Kansas and Kentucky were the only states that  experienced an increase. Though some of trends are positive, “obesity remains one of the  biggest and costliest health threats to the country,” costing $147  billion in health spending each year, said Richard Hamburg, interim  president and CEO of Trust for America’s Health, in a conference call  with reporters. “In 1980, no state had an obesity rate above 15%,”  Hamburg said. “This year, every state is above 20%.”