Obesity In California: How Healthy Is Your City?

CALIFORNIA —Recent findings from a data compilation website show that while Californians have a lower rate of obesity than residents in many other states, there are some Golden State regions more afflicted by the complex disease.

In its “2021’s Most Overweight and Obese Cities in the U.S.,” WalletHub compared 100 of the most populated U.S. metro areas across 19 key indicators of weight-related problems. The 100 regions were ranked in order of obesity prevalence, with 1 being the highest rate (heaviest) and 100 being the lowest (healthiest weight).

The Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metro area suffers from a higher rate of obesity than any other California region, according to the WalletHub findings. The region ranked 37th nationwide.

The San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad area scored much better, coming in at 78th, followed by the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim region at 79th, the data show.

In Northern California, the Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom area ranked 88th, while the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley region was at 90th, and leading the pack in healthy weight was San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara at 96th, according to the findings.

No other California metro areas were ranked.

The percentage of California adults identified as obese is over 26 percent, and that figure does not include people who are simply overweight, according to 2019 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which defines obesity as a body mass index of 30 or higher

The WalletHub data also focused on other health findings. For example, the San Diego region had the lowest percentage of physically inactive adults statewide, while the Sacramento area had the lowest percentage of adults with high cholesterol in the state. The San Jose region had the lowest percentage of adults with high blood pressure in California.

The Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario region was the fifth-worst out of the 100 U.S. areas when it comes to the percentage of adults with low fruit/vegetable consumption, according to the findings.

The most obese areas across the country were found in the U.S. South, according to the WalletHub data, with regions in Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Alabama filling out the Top 10 most obese slots. See the complete list here.

COVID-19 brings attention to obesity

Obesity is a pandemic in its own right, but the disease got a lot of attention over the last year due to COVID-19 deaths and comorbidities.

Obesity increases the risk of severe illness from the virus and triples the risk of hospitalization, the CDC has warned. As BMI rises, the risk of death from COVID-19 also increases, according to the agency.

While obesity can afflict anyone, a spotlight has been placed on health-care and other socio-economic disparities.

"Generally, it is the poorest Californians who experience the highest rates of obesity, as well as groups of color, particularly Latino and African American adults and Latino, African American, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Alaska Native children," according to the California Department of Public Health.

Nearly half of all COVID-19 deaths in California are Latino, according to the CDPH.

Obesity doesn't just present a high cost to individuals.

"It also challenges the state’s finances due to lost productivity, as well as direct medical costs," according to the CDPH. "Addressing the main drivers of obesity by making it easier for people to eat well and be physically active, could improve quality of life, enhance worker productivity, and save the state money."

A 2012 Robert Wood Johnson study found that if average adult BMI were reduced by as little as 5 percent, California could potentially save $81.7 billion in obesity-related health care costs by 2030.

It's not clear yet how California's obesity-related health care costs are being impacted by COVID-19.

Editor's note: Patch reached out to the CDPH for figures on the state's COVID-19 deaths where obesity was a contributing factor. The data were not yet available at publication time.