Visiting the Most Obese City in the World (76% are overweight)

This city is designed to fatten people until they are so heavy that they can’t leave their beds.
People in McAllen order fast-food as often as three times a day and the trend isn’t slowing down. Locals here have a strong appetite for deep-fried, oily, creamy dishes. They eat almost three times more than their body needs every day.

Many people drink hundreds of liters of coke a year instead of water. As demand is so high, Coca Cola operates a massive distribution center here.

We’ve been out here for twenty minutes, and I haven’t seen a single person walking, jogging or biking. Sidewalks, crossings, and bike lanes hardly exist.

I’ve been to malls all around the world but I’ve never seen this before. Local’s level of inactivity has reached a point where even walking through a store feels exhausting. And this is the case all across McAllen.

McAllen is a small, low-income Texas city near the Mexican border. With over 500 fast-food establishments for a population of 150,000, the fast-food density here is nearly six times the U.S. average. Even traditional dishes have also been turned into high-calorie meals loaded with cheese and fried ingredients.

America is known for its supersized portions, and in McAllen, many people try to finish their huge meals even when they’re full. Because of the influence of Mexican culture, wasting food is unacceptable here.

Alongside these cultural habits, obesity here is also driven by urban planning that discourages movement. This city is built for cars.
Most parks lie in the southern and western parts of the city, often 20 minutes by car or nearly two hours on foot from residential neighborhoods.

With year-round heat and humidity near 32 °C, outdoor exercise is even harder. Staying active usually means paying for a gym.

Today 3 out of 10 children in the United States are overweight or obese and nearly 60% are projected to develop obesity by age 35. Once fat cells form, they rarely disappear. They may shrink with weight loss, but they remain alive, constantly signaling the brain to feed them.

To understand why obesity is all around the city, I also spent a day eating like a typical local does in McAllen. In the video, I conducted an interview with one of the most obese people in the world as well.