Mississippi Still Porkiest, but Alabama Closing In

Mississippi leads way in rising obesity rates

(NEWSER) - Mississippi, take a bow, if you can manage it. You’re the most obese state in the union, with 34% of the population tipping the scales at an unhealthy weight, according to a new report. Alabama and West Virginia were right on Mississippi’s heels, and those three states also have the nation’s highest rates of diabetes and high blood pressure, according to Bloomberg . The South overall is in rough shape; the study refers to 644 counties across 15 Southern states as the “diabetes belt.” More»

(NEWSER) - The Trust for America's Health has come out with its fourth annual report on obesity. And the losers are:

1. Mississippi
2. West Virginia
3. Alabama

Alice Randall: 80% of black women 'seriously overweight'

(NEWSER) - Most Americans need discipline in order to battle today's obesity epidemic—but in black America, "what we need is a body-culture revolution," writes Alice Randall in the New York Times . Even experts "don’t understand something crucial about black women and fat: many black women are fat because we want to be." This goes way back, from the Lucille Clifton poem "Homage to My Hips" (which starts, "These hips are big hips") to fatness as a form of political resistance to "the fit black slave." More»

New research award asks companies for a way to generate 'good' brown fat

(NEWSER) - The Army thinks its troops are getting too fat, and it's hoping to solve that problem with science. In its latest round of small-business research awards, the Army has asked companies to find a way to slim down its soldiers by injecting them with fat. Confused? Well, as Wired explains, your body has two kinds of fat cells, or adipose tissue: white adipose tissue, which is what we normally think of as fat, and brown adipose tissue, which helps you lose weight. More»

U-S-A! U-S-A!

(NEWSER) - Hey, America, you're not even the best at being the fattest: The US does, however, make GlobalPost's top 10 list of fattest countries, according to 2010 WHO statistics. The breakdown, by percentage of population classified as overweight (more than 25% BMI):

1. Nauru (95%)
2. Micronesia (92%)
3. The Cook Islands (92%)
4. Tonga (92%)