This U.S. state eats the most fast food—and yes, even we were surprised

It's not a gross generalization to say that Americans love fast food restaurants, from regional favorites like California-born In-N-Out and New York's own Shake Shack to global grub juggernauts like McDonald's and Taco Bell. The United States is, unsurprisingly, the world's largest consumer of fast food—according to a study by the National Center for Health Statistics, 36.6%-percent of American adults consume fast food daily. But which state in the U.S. is most taken with the stuff? Well, the answer just might surprise you. 

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A recent study by the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts determined that Maryland, home to a little over six million people, is the nation's fast food-loving capital, beating out far bigger locales like California and New York. The school looked at three categories to determine our rankings: fast food restaurants as a percentage of total restaurants in each state; the number of fast-food restaurants per capita in each state; and spending on fast food restaurants as a percentage of total food spending in each state. After ranking states in each category individually and combining their scores, the report then ranked all 50 states on a scale of zero to 100.

Maryland's high marks (a perfect 100 score) largely owe to the fact that the Mid-Atlantic state easily has the highest share of fast-food restaurants as a percentage of total restaurants—nearly half (46.76-percent) of all restaurants in Maryland are fast food restaurants, 31-percent higher than the national average of 35.7-percent.

Elsewhere, Hawaii had the most fast-food restaurants per capita, while Nevada placed first for fast food spending as a percentage of total food spending. At the other end of the spectrum, Idaho ranked lowest on the list, placing last in two of the three categories examined.

You can check out the top ten fast food states in America, as well as their overall scores from the Escoffier study, below: