Most Overweight and Obese Cities in the U.S. in 2025
Certain places are more responsible than others for tipping the scale in favor of poor health.
One reason why many people in McAllen are overweight is because they don’t exercise very much, as the city has the highest share of physically inactive adults. That may not be entirely their fault, considering McAllen has the second-lowest percentage of residents who live close to parks or recreational facilities.
Obesity is becoming more and more prevalent in the U.S., and it’s costing us big time. In the most overweight and obese cities, residents often lack easy access to healthy food and recreation opportunities, so investing in those areas should help improve people’s diets and exercise regimens, and reduce the financial burden overall.Americans are some of the most overweight people in the world, not just stereotypically but statistically too. In fact, nearly 42% of U.S. adults are obese. Such a finding should come as no surprise, though, considering the huge availability of fast-food and cheap unhealthy grocery items that have negatively altered our diets. Unfortunately, the extra pounds have inflated 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.
Certain places are more responsible than others for tipping the scale in favor of poor health, though. To identify them, WalletHub compared 100 of the most populated U.S. metro areas across 19 key indicators of weight-related problems. Our data set ranges from the share of physically inactive adults to projected obesity rates by 2030 to healthy-food access.
“Obesity is becoming more and more prevalent in the U.S., and it’s costing us big time. In the most overweight and obese cities, residents often lack easy access to healthy food and recreation opportunities, so investing in those areas should help improve people’s diets and exercise regimens, and reduce the financial burden overall.”
Main Findings
Fattest Cities in the U.S.
Note: With the exception of “Total Score,” all of the columns in the table above depict the relative rank of that metro area, where a rank of 1 represents the worst conditions for that metric category.
Courtesy WalletHub
