This Is America’s Least Obese County

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Sep 28, 10:01AM EDT · Published Sep 28, 8:30AM EDT

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This Is America’s Least Obese County — © Thinkstock / Getty Images

Obesity has become an epidemic in America. A new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study shows that 35% or more had obesity in 16 states. Most of these were in the South and Midwest. The cost to human life is extraordinary. Obesity can cause several diseases, depression and early death. On a purely financial level, obesity triggered medical costs of $147 billion a year, according to another CDC study.
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Obesity status is determined by body mass index (BMI), which is a ratio of height to body weight. Americans with a BMI of 30 or higher are considered obese. As such, they are at greater risk of several serious diseases and conditions, according to the CDC. These include diabetes, stroke, hypertension, heart disease, breathing problems and certain cancers. Obesity also can detract from overall quality of life and contribute to depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses.

While the United States has one of the highest obesity rates in the world, there are parts of the country where obesity remains relatively uncommon. A 24/7 Wall St. analysis has identified the least obese county in the United States.
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Most counties with low obesity levels are located in the West, including 15 counties in Colorado and 10 in California.

The county with the lowest obesity level in America is Teton County, Wyoming. Here are the details:

Adult obesity rate: 11.0%
Adults who do not exercise: 10.8% (fifth lowest)
Adults with diabetes: 2.4% (the lowest)
Adults reporting poor or fair health: 11.4% (36th lowest)

Methodology: To determine America’s least obese county, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed adult obesity rates from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute joint program’s 2021 County Health Rankings & Roadmaps (CHR) report.

The adult obesity rate is defined as the share of adults 20 years and older who report a body mass index of 30 kg/m² or higher. While the CHR report is from 2021, obesity rate figures published in the report are from 2017.

Of the 3,220 counties or county-equivalents considered, 3,142 had boundaries that fell within one of the 50 states or the District of Columbia. Counties with a 2019 five-year population estimate from the U.S. Census Bureau of less than 1,000 were excluded.

The remaining 3,106 places were ranked based on the adult obesity rate. Additional information on the share of adults who report no leisure-time physical activity, who are diagnosed with diabetes and who report fair or poor health also came from the 2021 CHR.

Click here to see all of America’s least obese counties.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.