Suburban sprawl may create heavier kids
By Amy Norton
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - U.S. children who
live in expansive suburbs may start to pay for it with expansive
waistlines, new research suggests.
Using data from a national
health survey, researchers found that teenagers living in sprawling
suburbs were more than twice as likely to be overweight as teens in
more compact urban areas.
The findings echo those of a 2003 study
by the same researchers that focused on U.S. adults. The researchers
believe the same factors may be driving the link between suburban
living and teenagers' weight -- the major one being reliance on cars.
n a sprawling suburb, you can do very little on foot," said lead
study author Dr. Reid Ewing of the University of Maryland's National
Center for Smart Growth Education and Research.
By contrast, he
noted in an interview, people in cities are often forced to be active
in their daily lives -- walking to stores and public transportation,
carrying groceries up the stairs to their fifth-floor walk-up apartment.
And
while suburban dwellers may be able to go to the gym for some exercise,
research suggests many lack the time. This is again, in part, due to
spending so much time in cars, commuting to work or driving to far-away
stores and schools.
What's more, Ewing said, those cars have
become "de facto snack shops" for many adults and kids, with the food
often being fast food. In many spread-out suburbs in the U.S., fast
food is the predominant dining option, Ewing noted.
All of this, however, is still speculation, the researcher said. The
current findings, published in the American Journal of Preventive
Medicine, can only point to a correlation between suburban sprawl and
teenagers' weight.
But since Ewing's 2003 study, others have
found a similar pattern. Even when accounting for other factors that
influence weight -- such as race, family income and education -- the
degree of sprawl seems to matter.
For the current study, which
was funded by the U.S. National Cancer Institute, Ewing's team used
data from a government survey that began following 8,984 12- to
17-year-olds in 1997.
They also used a county-by-county "sprawl
index" that considers population density and street accessibility. The
most compact, "walkable" county was New York County, which encompasses
Manhattan; the most spread-out area was Jackson County, near Topeka,
Kansas.
In general, the study found, more sprawl meant a greater risk of kids being overweight.
In
communities where it's not possible for children to walk to school, or
where they don't even have sidewalks to use, parents may need to make
an effort to help their kids get active, according to Ewing.
"Get them away from the TV and get them into sports or some organized activity," he suggested.
A more drastic alternative is to move.
Ewing
said a growing number of U.S. communities are recognizing the pitfalls
of sprawl and devising "new urbanist" designs -- creating
old-fashioned, pedestrian-friendly Main Streets, better public
transportation and "mixed-use" zoning that places residential and
commercial buildings near each other.
SOURCE: American Journal of Preventive Medicine, December 2006.
