Density of Fast Food Joints Affects Obesity Rates
File under newsflash: University of Pennsylvania researchers have found that counties with a higher concentration of fast food joints also have higher obesity rates:
"We found that there was an association between the amount of full-service restaurants (with waiters) in the county one lives in and a lower risk of obesity,' said Neil Mehta of the University of Pennsylvania.
"Conversely, we found that the increase in the number and the amount of fast food restaurants was associated with an increase in obesity,' he added in an interview."
[via Word of Mouth]
Add a comment:
Previewing your comment:
HTML Hints
Some HTML is OK: <a href="URL">link</a>, <strong>strong</strong>, <em>em</em>
Comment Guidelines
Post whatever you want, just keep it seriously about eats, seriously. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. Learn more at our Comment Policy page.
If you see something not so nice, please, report an inappropriate comment.
9 Comments:
file under DUH.
seyo at 6:38PM on 01/14/08
Yes, but I have to say one feeds the other (no pun intended). The law of economics tells us that the demand for fast food is what has caused all of the supply. While I feel we would have been better off if McDonalds had never come onto the scene, I can't deny that it is us who has made that corporation (and all of the others like it) so profitable.
foodette at 11:07PM on 01/14/08
Wouldn't areas with more fast food restaurants be both poorer and less walkable? Nothing in the article leads me to believe that the correlation has anything to do with fast food itself.
mamster at 11:20PM on 01/14/08
This isn't news, it's common sense.
RichardCrystal at 9:28AM on 01/15/08
@Seyo and RichardCrystal: I know. I should note that when I typed "file under 'newsflash'," it was with sarcastic fingers. I should have used "duh" instead.
Adam Kuban at 10:22AM on 01/15/08
no worries Adam, I was just being snarky. I did sense your sarcasm, without even the need for using the [sarcasm]...[/sarcasm] tags.
seyo at 11:00AM on 01/15/08
I think this article doesn't come close to supporting the argument that more fast food restaurants causes higher rates of obesity, rather than high rates of obesity causes large numbers of fast food restaurants to open.
I wrote a longer post on why these statistics don't support this over at my blog:
Another poor causality argument
OneEyedMan at 6:04PM on 01/15/08
The article specifically states that they do not yet know what the relationship is.
seyo at 11:28AM on 01/16/08
This style of journal article is pointless. Why is it interesting that the location of fast food is correlated with resident obesity when the actual causal relationship could be positive, negative or zero?
OneEyedMan at 1:53PM on 01/17/08