Does Sprawl Make Us Fat? 659
Ant writes "A Science News article talks about the relationship between city design and health. New cross-disciplinary research is exploring whether urban sprawl makes us soft, or whether people who don't like to exercise move to the sprawling suburbs, or some combination of both." From the article: "So far, the dozen strong studies that have probed the relationships among the urban environment, people's activity, and obesity have all agreed, says Ewing. 'Sprawling places have heavier people... There is evidence of an association between the built environment and obesity.' ... However, University of Toronto economist Matthew Turner charges that 'a lot of people out there don't like urban sprawl, and those people are trying to hijack the obesity epidemic to further the smart-growth agenda [and] change how cities look.' ... 'We're the only ones that have tried to distinguish between causation and sorting... and we find that it's sorting,' [says Turner]. 'The available facts do not support the conclusion that sprawling neighborhoods cause weight gain.'"
Christopher Alexander (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry. I got snotty ther efor a moment. One of the points of his books is that modern bureaucracy specifies building codes that demand the end results this study sees. It's been out there for decades at this point. How sad.
Re:Sprawl DOES makes you fatter (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sprawl? No. (Score:4, Informative)
Now, I live in the Northern Kentucky/Greater Cincinnati area. Talk about sprawl. There's no riding out my driveway and out into the countryside without a trunk rack and a minimum 10-minute drive away from the 'burbs. I'm just off KY18, a freeway of certain death for a cyclist. I'd sooner enter a competitive eating contest than venture out onto KY18 and get aced. I'm 10 lbs. overweight now: a 20 lbs. swing in the last nine months.
Point is, in the 'burbs, everyday life no longer suits a fit lifestyle.
Re:Sprawl DOES makes you fatter (Score:3, Informative)
The town where I grew up in the Peninsula area just south of San Francisco is a little of both. The lower area of the town, which is older, has a higher latino population, and more commercial/industrial zoning (though it is still essentially a bedroom community), is fairly friendly to pedestrians in that there are sidewalks and crosswalks and things. That said, the town is a nightmare to traverse on foot. The grocer down the street was turned into a conveniance store, meaning to get non-ethnic groceries you have to go about two miles in any direction. There is no place you'd want to go to hang out within about two miles, just some dive bars and fish restaurants.
Outside of these old neighborhoods are a few hilly communities which are part of the city at large but are not really accessible by foot. I'm not even sure HOW you'd get to them on foot - there are no sidewalks bridging them, you'd basically have to j-walk or go into the woods.
Where I live in Oakland, there are 5 coffee shops, 2 small grocers, 2 supermarkets, a hardware store, a theater, a post office, sushi, chinese, korean, mexican, fried chicken, two breakfast cafes, two bakeries, and bunches of specialty stores all within about a ten minute walk. There are two major shopping districts within a 30 minute walk and downtown is about an hour's walk. And it's not even what I'd call a "city" atmosphere - most of buildings in my immediate vicinity are either single-unit family residences or 8-unit apartment buildings. It's just been built up naturally, rather than artificially fenced into miles and miles of purile tract housing.
Re:Sprawl DOES makes you fatter (Score:4, Informative)
Kind of like how back in the day infantrymen were sometimes ordered to "fire at will" - this means they could choose their own targets and choose when to fire, not that the guns didn't have stiff triggers.
Tsk.
Re:Putting food in you mouth makes you fat. (Score:3, Informative)
Not necessarily; your basal metabolic rate (BMR) depends on your age, sex, weight, etc. and for a lot of people, a BMR of 2000 kcal a day is on the high side. Calculate your BMR here [exrx.net].
Re:Sprawl DOES makes you fatter (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not trying to be argumentative, but just saying that I tried to choose what I said as carefully as possible. No matter how fast, or slow your metabolism is if you are gaining weight it's because you are eating to much. just because there's a guy out there that can eat 4,500 calories a day sit on his but and not gain an ounce, doesn't mean that a 310lb. and climbing guy that consumes 2,200 calories a day isn't over eating. Yes they obviously have different metabolisms, yes one guy can eat more than the other without gaining weight, but that doesn't mean that the guy that's consuming fewer calories isn't over eating, he's just consuming fewer calories than someone with a different "body chemistry" than himself.
I kept talk of metabolism out of my post because the simple fact is regardless of your metabolism if you're overweight, genuinely overweight you are consuming too many calories. It's a simple proven fact:
If you want to loose weight cut calories.
Call it whatever you want use what ever excuses you wish to justify some one gaining weight, but the simple fact is if they're gaining weight they're over eating. Regardless of how much they eat in comparison to someone else.
All of that isn't even taking into account that a lot of the CO(chronically obese of which I am still one of) do things like hide their eating from other people they consume less in public, and then eat more in secret. So while they say they eat X the really ate X+whatever they ate after they got home, and locked the door. There are few people with hyper-metabolisms out there just like there are few people with hypo-metabolisms. by definition the average person has an average metabolism. This included myself even when I was close to 400lbs. My problem wasn't a slow metabolism it was overeating. I could have sat on my ass and said "woe is me I eat as much as Bob and I gain weight while he stays thin." Or I could come to grips with the fact that the amount of food Bob ate, and the amount of food I needed were totally unrelated.
Stop worrying about the quantity of the food you consume comparatively and worry more about how much you need to consume actually. Like I said most people with a healthy weight aren't so because they exercise, hell most people with a healthy weight aren't so because they have faster metabolisms. They're of a healthy weight because they consume as many calories as they need and no more. A good portion of the population bulks-up around the holiday season regardless of how they look the rest of the year, because they consume a lot more calories during the holiday season. Again regardless of how fast their metabolism is. It happens to fat, and thin people alike.
"There are differences in metabolisms which can impact the effectiveness of weight loss attempts"
To the extent that one person will need to consume fewer calories than another to loose weight yes of course. But if you're not losing weight at a fast enough pace for you satisfaction then consume fewer calories(within reason). We all know that if your body needs extra energy, and it's not getting it from food it will have to get it from its own stores.
Read labels add it up figure out how many calories you consume a day let's say you consume 3000 calories/day and weigh 300 lbs.
Week one cut that down to 2500 what happened gain/lose/constant? Gained 302
Week two cut that down to 2200 what happened gain/lose/constant? Gained 303
Week two cut that down to 2000 what happened gain/lose/constant? Constant 303
Week two cut that down to 1800 what happened gain/lose/constant? Lost 302
So now you have a baseline for where you are in terms of intake. If you're not losing weight fast enough cut calories(within reason) I've done a lot of personal experimentation on myself I've go
Turning Fire Engines (Score:2, Informative)
Does a fire engine have to be able to make a U-turn on a residential street? Do note that there are different lengths of fire engines. Some residential streets seem to be designed so that a hook and ladder fire engine could make a turn. Of course, the odds of that vehicle being needed in a suburban neighborhood with single story houses are slim. This is where rules can be senseless when they are applied to ALL areas.
There is also some problems with the wide roads when it comes to public safety. A narrow street with lots of cars parked on it tends to slow people down. Slower vehicles reduce the damage that occurs when accidents happen. I've seen statistics that say a pedestrian has a good chance of surviving an car accident when the car is moving at 20 MPH. When the speeds are 35MPH or higher, the pedestrian is as good as dead.
Then there is a cost that many people ignore. Streets eventually need repaving. Wider streets will cost more to repave.