This Texas metro area tops the list of most obese cities in the US, new report finds

The fattest metropolitan area in America is in Texas, according to a new report.

McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, in southern Texas, ranked No. 1 when it comes to the “most overweight and obese” cities in the U.S., personal finance website WalletHub said when releasing its findings.

“Certain places are more responsible than others for tipping the scale in favor of bad health,” the March 14 report says. “To identify them, WalletHub compared 100 of the most populated U.S. metro areas across 19 key indicators of weight-related problems.”

Those 19 indicators fell into three categories: obesity and overweight, health consequences, and food and fitness.

The McAllen-Edinburg-Mission metropolitan area, home to about 870,000 people in the Rio Grande Valley region, was one of six areas in Texas examined by WalletHub. It was the only region in the state to make the top 20 list of fattest cities in the U.S.

The San Antonio-New Braunfels area ranked 25th, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington ranked 27th and El Paso ranked 30th.

These rankings come after the CDC added Texas to a list of 15 other states where adult obesity prevalence is at 35% or higher, McClatchy News reported in September.

As seen in the map below, a majority of the most overweight cities, per WalletHub, are in the southern region of the U.S. The smaller and darker the dot, the higher the metropolitan area ranked.

When examining the 100 cities against the 19 chosen indicators, WalletHub says it gave each city a metric on a 100-point scale. The higher the number, the ”fatter” the city based on that given category.

Indicators in the “obese and overweight” category included share of overweight adults, share of obese children and projected obesity rates by 2030. The “health consequences” section included the shares of adults with high cholesterol and heart disease. And the “food and fitness” category gave scores based on access to parks and recreational facilities, access to healthy foods, and the share of residents who say they eat healthy.

WalletHub then took each area’s weighted average across the metrics to rank the 100 cities from fattest to least-fat.

At No. 1, the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission metropolitan area received an 84.78 out of 100. Memphis and Knoxville in Tennessee took second and third, followed by Mobile, Alabama, and Jackson, Mississippi.

The least overweight area on the list is Boston-Cambridge-Newton at a 58.05, according to WalletHub.

The study also found that, out of the 100 areas WalletHub ranked, McAllen had the highest percentage of obese adults and the highest percentage of physically inactive adults.

“To change the current course of obesity will take a sustained, comprehensive effort from all parts of society,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in September. “We will need to acknowledge existing health disparities and health inequities and address the social determinants of health such as poverty and lack of health care access if we are to ensure health equity.”

States on the CDC’s list of states with high obesity include Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia.