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Message: “Obesity costs Mississippi millions” was one of the featured articles in the June 4th edition of The Clarion Ledger. The adult obesity rate for Mississippi in 1991 was more than 15 percent. Now it is 30.6 percent. That is the highest in America. The article suggested obesity cost Mississippi taxpayers $221 million per year. The national medical bill for obesity is approximately $93 billion annually. These figures are staggering and startling, but do not let them deceive you into believing that hunger and malnutrition are non existent, especially in Mississippi and the rest of the world. The United States Department of Agriculture estimates that 200,000 Mississippi households live with hunger or the threat of hunger on a regular basis. The leading cause of hunger is poverty and it is here that Mississippi leads all states. The Food Stamps Program, the first line of defense against hunger, was used by an… Read Full Article