New England’s Most Obese Metro Area? Providence-Warwick, According to New Ranking
GoLocalProv Lifestyle Team
New England’s Most Obese Metro Area? Providence-Warwick, According to New Ranking
The list of “2022’s Most Overweight and Obese Cities in the U.S.” by WalletHub released on Monday has the Providence-Warwick metro area at #57 in the country — and tops in the region.
“Americans are some of the most overweight people in the world, not just stereotypically but statistically too. In fact, over 40 percent of U.S. adults are obese. Such a finding should come as no surprise, though, considering the huge availability of fast-food and increasingly cheaper grocery items that have negatively altered our diets,” writes WalletHub. “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.”
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThey continue:
“Being obese is bad for a person’s health in general, but it’s especially dangerous during the COVID-19 pandemic, as it increases the risk of serious symptoms and may even triple the risk of hospitalization, according to the CDC.
Certain places are more responsible than others for tipping the scale in favor of bad 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.”
New England in Focus
According to the ranking, the Rhode Island cities did just beat out Connecticut’s Hartford-East Hartford region, who came in at #58.
New Haven-Milford ranked #62 followed by Manchester-Nashua New Hampshire at #69.
And Boston-Cambridge? Well, that was the least obese in all of the metro areas ranked.