Lafayette Ranks in Top 15 of Most Obese Cities in the U.S.

This isn't good, but neither is it that much of a surprise. Lafayette and two other Louisiana cities have made a list of the most overweight cities in America.

According to WalletHub, Lafayette ranks as the 11th fattest city in the United States.

Statistics show that over 40% of U.S. adults are obese and Americans are some of the most overweight people in the world.

Unfortunately, those extra pounds have resulted in the costs of obesity-related medical treatment to approximately $190.2 billion a year and annual productivity losses due to work absenteeism to around $4.3 billion.

How did WalletHub come up with its rankings?

To identify the most overweight and obese cities in the United States, WalletHub compared 100 of the most populated U.S. metro areas across 19 key indicators of weight-related problems.

The data set ranges from the share of physically inactive adults to projected obesity rates by 2030 to healthy-food access.

Here are the top 20 most overweight cities (metros) in the U.S. according to the findings:

1. Mcallen-Edinburg-Mission, TX
2. Memphis, TN-MS-AR
3. Mobile, AL
4. Knoxville, TN
5. Jackson, MS
6. Chattanooga, TN-GA
7. Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway, AR
8. Shreveport-Bossier, LA
9. Birmingham-Hoover, AL
10. Columbia, SC
11. Lafayette, LA
12. Baton Rouge, LA
13. August-Richmond County, GA-SC
14. Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR
15. Greenville-Anderson, SC
16. Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, TN
17. Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach, SC-NC
18. Huntsville, AL
19. Tulsa, OK
20. Oklahoma City, OK

As you can see, Louisiana has three cities within the top 12 of this list. And no surprise that most of this list is cities from the South.

Three key dimensions were looked at across the top 100 U.S. metros to help determine the list: 1) Obesity & Overweight, 2) Health Consequences and 3) Food & Fitness.

Lafayette as follows in the above three key dimensions:

• 15th worst in Obesity & Overweight
• 25th worst in Health Consequences
• 16th worst in Food & Fitness

To see the complete findings and rankings from WalletHub, see their report here.