Lafayette Ranked As 9th Fattest City In U. S.
Acadiana loves to eat. That's no surprise considering the region's overabundance of great restaurants and cuisines.
What's not surprising to some is that the Lafayette metro area ranks as one of the nation's fattest cities.
According to a survey by WalletHub.com, Lafayette is the ninth-fattest city in the United States. McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas was number one. Memphis, Tennessee, finished in second place. Baton Rouge was third. Shreveport also cracked the top five, landing at number five.
The survey also found Lafayette has the third-highest percentage of obese adults in the country, the second-highest percentage of physically inactive adults, and the highest percentage of adults with low fruit-and-vegetable consumption. Despite this, the Lafayette metro area ranked much lower in terms of percentage of adults with high cholesterol (33rd), percentage of adults with high blood pressure (29th), and percentage of adults with diabetes (22nd).
WalletHub used this methodology to conduct the survey:
In order to determine the fattest cities in America, WalletHub compared 100 of the most populated U.S. metro areas across three key dimensions: 1) Obesity & Overweight, 2) Health Consequences and 3) Food & Fitness.
We evaluated those dimensions using 19 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the “fattest.”
We then determined each city’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order our sample.
Lafayette ranked 16th in the obesity and overweight category, 13th in the health consequences category, and 11th in the food and fitness category.
To view the full survey, click here.