Americans Are Becoming Morbidly Obese

See the interactive feature on CNN website .

The red states average a Body Mass Index of 30 or higher. This level of obesity has been found to affect health and life adversely.

Perhaps it is useful to think of obesity as carrying a long-term supply of food on one's body full-time. Making some assumptions, a sedentary adult needs about 60,000 calories to live one month. For an obese person, this translates to 17 pounds of body fat. So, if someone has a body-mass index of 30 and is 34 pounds overweight, that person is carrying an unneeded two-month food supply full time. One hundred pounds overweight translates to 6 month food supply.

Considering the wide availability of food, what's the point of carrying all that excess food supply on one's body and risking illness and death?