Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently released the report F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America 2009, which highlights the unabated growth (pun intended) of obesity in the United States. Adult obesity rates have increased in 23 states and have not decreased in any of the remaining states over the past year.

The report also ranks the fattest states. Mississippi leads the nation for the fifth year in a row with a 32.5% rate of adult obesity. The runners-up include Alabama (31.2%), West Virginia (31.1%), and Tennessee (30.2%). For comparison with the past, in 1991, there were no states that exceeded an adult obesity rate of 20%. Today, there are 49 states and Washington, D.C. that do.

The obesity epidemic is also beginning at an early age. About 44.4% of children in Mississippi are either overweight or obese. The numbers are similarly high in Arkansas at 37.5% and Georgia at 37.3%. The rate of childhood obesity has also tripled over the past 2 decades.

The report calls for action to address our currently failing anti-obesity strategies and provides recommendations to ameliorate the situation. With the innumerable morbid complications of obesity — not to mention cardiovascular disease as the leading cause of death in the United States — this is an issue that could save billions of health care dollars if resolved. But, it is easier said that done: As I was once asked, “Why do hamburgers taste sooo good?”