Can a city make you fat?

The possibility is posed by a new study that ranks the nation’s big cities by the weight of their residents. It attempts to draw conclusions on why fat flourishes more in some cities and less in others.

The 33-city study, issued by the Coalition for Excess Weight Risk Education, found overall that cities with high unemployment rates, low per capita income, high annual precipitation rates and a high number of food stores per capita and larger numbers of black residents tend to have higher rates of obesity.

Called The National Weight Report, the study found that restaurant-rich New Orleans has the nation’s highest obesity rate at 37.5 percent of adult residents while outdoor-living Denver has the lowest at 22.1 percent.

Besides New Orleans, the high-weight metropolises include Norfolk, Va., 33.9 percent; San Antonio, 32.9 percent; Kansas City, Mo., 31.6 percent; Cleveland, 31.5 percent; Detroit, 31 percent; and Cincinnati; 30.7 percent.

Easiest on the scales after Denver are Minneapolis, 22.6 percent; San Diego, 22.9 percent; Washington, D.C., 23.8 percent; Phoenix, 24.3 percent; St. Louis, 24.8 percent; and Tampa, Fla., 24.9 percent. Seattle, 25.87 percent, was 22nd on the list.

Why the differences?

The study said its research produced some ideas.

Many people in Atlanta, it said, reported eating fried foods, eating many of their meals away from home and having a deep loyalty to “Southern style comfort food,” high in fat and calories but reflecting a sense of family and regional heritage and tradition.

Ethnic food may be a fat builder in Cleveland, the survey said. And it said many people blamed the harsh winters for prompting them to eat meat and buttermilk and biscuits and french fries to help fuel up.

The report has a serious purpose: portraying obesity as a major public health problem.

“As the second leading preventable cause of death in the United States, it results in some 300,000 deaths annually and contributes to major diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, cancer and stroke,” the weight coalition said.