Mississippi has most obese kids; Oregon the least

Fat parents have fat kids.

The childhood obesity epidemic is hitting some states much harder than others, threatening to further worsen geographic disparities in health, new research shows.

Adults in the southeastern US-the so-called "Stroke Belt"-are known to be fatter and sicker than Americans living elsewhere. And at least in terms of overweight and obesity, the same pattern holds for kids, Dr. Gopal K. Singh of the US Health Resources and Services Administration in Rockville, Maryland, and his colleagues found.

Singh and his team compared state-by-state changes in rates of overweight and obesity between 2003 and 2007, using data from the National Survey of Children's Health. They report their findings in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

The percentage of children 10 to 17 years old across the US who were overweight rose from 31 percent in 2003 to 32 percent in 2004, while obesity rates went from 15 percent to 16 percent.

But within states, there were much sharper differences, with the states that already had the biggest problems often showing the biggest jumps. For example, in 2003, 37 percent of 10- to 17-year-olds in Mississippi were overweight and 18 percent were obese; by 2007, those numbers had jumped to 45 percent and 22 percent, respectively.

Kudos, Mississippians.