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Car Use Drives Up Weight, Study Finds



 
 
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Old May 31st, 2004, 06:59 PM
Earl
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Default Car Use Drives Up Weight, Study Finds

One of the things I advise our friends visiting Paris from the
US is that they can eat what they want, walking will burn it
off. In spite of the Metro and Bus system, one does walk
a lot in cities, and Paris in particular. One rarely sees
really overweight people in Paris. I don't know about NY
but my impression is that they are less large than the
suburbians.

Anyway, come to Europe and walk.

Earl

******

Car Use Drives Up Weight, Study Finds
Obesity Called More Likely in Sprawling Areas Than Mixed-Use
Neighborhoods

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 31, 2004; Page A02

People who live in neighborhoods where they must drive to get
anywhere are significantly more likely to be obese than those who can
easily walk to their destinations, according to the first study to
directly demonstrate that long-suspected link.

The study of nearly 11,000 people in the Atlanta area found that
people living in highly residential areas tend to weigh significantly
more than those in places where homes and businesses are close
together.

The effect appeared to be largely the result of the amount of time
people spend driving or walking. Each hour spent in a car was
associated with a 6 percent increase in the likelihood of obesity and
each half-mile walked per day reduced those odds by nearly 5 percent,
the researchers found.

"The kind of neighborhood where a person lives clearly has an
effect on their health," said Lawrence D. Frank, an associate
professor of community and regional planning at the University of
British Columbia, who led the study.

The findings have national implications because the neighborhoods
studied are representative of those across the country, Frank said.

"These findings are clearly the strongest evidence to date that
there's a link between the built environment and obesity," Frank said.
The findings will be published in the June issue of the American
Journal of Preventive Medicine but were released yesterday in advance
of a conference on obesity later this week in Williamsburg.


As the number of people who are overweight and obese has reached
epidemic proportions in the United States, evidence has mounted that
one of the main causes may be suburban sprawl. Such neighborhoods make
walking or other exercise more difficult because they often lack
sidewalks, road patterns that encourage travel on foot, or shopping
areas that are accessible without cars.

Researchers showed last year for the first time that people who
live in the most sprawling counties are more likely to be overweight
and obese. The new study is the first to examine the issue on a
neighborhood level and link the specific characteristics of where
people live to the amount of physical activity they get and how much
they weigh.

Other researchers said the findings provide strong new evidence
linking sprawl to obesity.

"Where you live clearly matters," said Reid Ewing of the National
Center for Smart Growth at the University of Maryland, who conducted
last year's county study. "If you live in a more sprawling place . . .
where the automobile is the only way to get around, that seems to have
this negative effect on people's health."

Skeptics, however, questioned the relationship, saying that more
sprawling neighborhoods may simply attract less physically active
people and vice versa.

"It may well be that people who are in slimmer shape are the kind
of people who enjoy living in those neighborhoods and naturally
gravitate to those neighborhoods," said Samuel R. Staley, president of
the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, a think tank in
Columbus, Ohio. "It's not at all clear if you take those people and
put them into a sprawling neighborhood that they will become fat."

More important, even if the link between sprawl and obesity were
proved, that would not justify restricting growth, Staley said.

"People should have the choice to live somewhere where they can be
fat," Staley said. "That's one of the consequences of a free society."

For the study, Frank and his colleagues in 2001 and 2002 gathered
detailed information from 10,898 people, including their heights and
weights, and asked them to keep a diary for two days that recorded
exactly how and where they traveled, specifically how much time they
spent walking and driving.

The researchers also conducted a detailed analysis of the
neighborhoods throughout the Atlanta region where the participants
lived, including how densely populated they were, whether they had
sidewalks, whether the street patterns were conducive to walking and
whether commercial buildings were located close to housing.

The researchers divided the communities into four categories based
on how residential they were, and found that the odds of being obese
from one to the next increased by 12.2 percent.

"Having shops and services near to where you live was the best
predictor of not being obese," Frank said.

Put another way, for residents, this meant that the relative risk
of being obese increased by 35 percent between the most mixed and
least mixed areas.

Being overweight is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) -- a
measurement based on height and weight -- of 25 to 29. Anyone with a
BMI above 30 is considered obese.

An average 5-foot-10 white male living in the most residential
neighborhood, for example, weighed about 10 pounds more than a similar
white male in the least residential neighborhood, the researchers
found. The proportion of obese people in the least mixed neighborhoods
was about 20 percent, while in the most mixed neighborhoods it was
about 15 percent.

The findings held true even when the researchers took age, income
and education into consideration.

But Frank said the amount of activity that people got did not
completely explain the findings. He speculated that in some
neighborhoods it is easier for people to eat a more healthful diet
because there are grocery stores instead of convenience stores and
good-quality restaurants instead of fast-food outlets.

"I think the food environment also plays an important role," Frank
said.

Based on the findings, the researchers calculated that tripling the
number of shops and other businesses near homes could reduce the rate
of obesity by an amount equivalent to what it would be if the
population were five years younger. (Age is the leading cause of
weight gain.)

People were less likely to drive and more likely to walk if they
lived close to businesses, but most of the people in the study walked
very little, regardless of where they lived. More than 90 percent said
they did not walk at all, and the average respondent spent more than
one hour per day in a car.
 




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