The federal government released its “obesity map” Monday, outlining the rates of obesity and how rates in the states compare.

Colorado gets the svelte bragging rights, with 20.7 percent of its adults obese. 

Hawaii was second at 21.8 percent, according to an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

At the other end of the scale is Mississippi, with a rate of 34.9 percent.

Overall, the rate for the South was 29.5 percent, followed by the Midwest at

29 percent, the Northeast at 25.3 percent and the West at 24.3 percent.

The figures are based on data from what’s called the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. The figures can’t be compared with previous years because of changes in methodology. One change was to include households without land-line phones, only cellphones. The CDC says the changes were meant to make the figures more accurate.

But the agency says its measures are one of several ways rates of obesity are monitored in this country, and it notes that whichever is used, “the obesity epidemic is still a major public health problem."

For example, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found that more than a third of adults and almost 17 percent of young people were obese in 2009-10.

Later this summer the nonprofit Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are expected to release a report analyzing the rates and the policy efforts to curb obesity.

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On the Net:

>> CDC study: www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html