The Suburbs Made Us Fat

[Londonee]

I think one's culture is the biggest influencer of obesity. Cultural influences are broadly defined and can include friends/piers/lifestyles/world views.

If you go to Philadelphia's posh Main Line (very wealthy strip of suburban towns) - it is quintessentially very suburban: car centric, lawn-ville. However, fat people simply don't exist here. Stepford looking Wives walking dogs, physically fit dads coming home from work, beautifully skinny children jumping rope. It's absurd. If you are fat, you are a freak in these towns--so, simply put, you can't be fat.

I eat salads for lunch. My wife eats salads for lunch. My parents eat salads for lunch. My co-workers at our small company eat salads for lunch. My entire pier support structure in my world eats well, works out, and lives in the city. That's my culture--when I even joke (okay sometimes it's not a joke) that I'm craving Taco Bell--the looks on their collective faces is shock and horror. Like, i feel shamed for wanting a grilled stuffed burrito once in a while. But that shame (or affect, or whatever you want to call it) is a powerful influencer, and ostensibly, motivator. In different cultures, a Taco Bell reference evokes high fives and an immediate run for the border for FourthMeal (wtf is that anyways).

If your friends eat like shit, your wife eats like shit, your parents eat like shit, chances are--you'll eat like shit--regardless of where you live.

As one last anecdotal aside, my 63 year old mother who lives in Phoenix and is victim to that city's overbearing car culture--loses exactly 5 pounds every time she visits me in Philly for more than 2 days--simply as a byproduct of walking everywhere.

[10023]

^ What you are describing is called affluence. The upper middle class and upper classes, generally, are not fat.

[Chase Unperson]

Originally Posted by Londonee

As one last anecdotal aside, my 63 year old mother who lives in Phoenix and is victim to that city's overbearing car culture--loses exactly 5 pounds every time she visits me in Philly for more than 2 days--simply as a byproduct of walking everywhere.

I don't know about that weight loss claim. To lose 5 pounds you would have to burn 17,500 calories. She would have to walk 145 miles in her visit without eating any extra food.

[Londonee]

Originally Posted by Chase Unperson

I don't know about that weight loss claim. To lose 5 pounds you would have to burn 17,500 calories. She would have to walk 145 miles in her visit without eating any extra food.

Eh, a good BM, burnt calories from muscle burn, and some natural water weightloss from actually exercising can get you an easy 5 pounds. 5 pounds is practically nothing, but since she's consistently noticed it (after 20 or so visits) it's not hard to single out the variable and attribute it accordingly. FWIW I hope you spent at least 6 minutes on that math.

[dave8721]

(tongue in cheek post, yes I know obesity increased before incomes starting decreasing)
We know poverty is linked strongly to obesity so maybe it was the outsourcing and destruction of the middle class that made us fat?

http://wallstreetflaneur.com/obesity...opportunities/

http://www.shadowstats.com/article/n...al-report-2012

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by Londonee

Eh, a good BM, burnt calories from muscle burn, and some natural water weightloss from actually exercising can get you an easy 5 pounds. 5 pounds is practically nothing, but since she's consistently noticed it (after 20 or so visits) it's not hard to single out the variable and attribute it accordingly. FWIW I hope you spent at least 6 minutes on that math.

The general rule of thumb I've used is that a 400 calorie daily surplus leads to a 1 pound increase per week, with the opposite being true for a 400 calorie deficit. This is based on your maintenence weight though, with all else being equal. You definitely don't need to burn 17500 to lose 5 pounds immediately as you said. I tend to lose 3-5 pounds overnight if I'm training heavily.

[Dale]

Thought this was interesting. UK study has country-dwellers living longer than city-dwellers:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/m...ife-expectancy

[JManc]

Originally Posted by 10023

^ What you are describing is called affluence. The upper middle class and upper classes, generally, are not fat.

yup. class and upbringing have a lot to do with how you live out your lifestyle.

[10023]

Originally Posted by Dale

Thought this was interesting. UK study has country-dwellers living longer than city-dwellers:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/m...ife-expectancy

That's exactly what I would expect. But I don't think you understand what the British countryside is like.

Basically that article tells you nothing about the rural US or American suburbia.

[mhays]

Walking plays a much larger role in the UK countryside and small towns/cities. It's closer to the typical urban lifestyle in the US in that regard. Some people drive everywhere, but it's pretty common to walk to the train station for the daily commute, walk to the town center to shop or work, and so on.

I bet the longevity thing is very different when you control for poverty and so on.

[KevinFromTexas]

Bike riding is much more popular there. I met an English woman today who looked to be in her mid 60s and she was riding her electric powered bike. She was complaining about the battery being dead and that she was slogging around on it saying she usually zips along faster on her more lightweight bike. My grandfather, too, didn't own a car in Germany and instead rode a bicycle many miles sometimes to where he needed to go. They lived in the suburbs of Hamburg.

[chris08876]

Originally Posted by mhays

Walking plays a much larger role in the UK countryside and small towns/cities. It's closer to the typical urban lifestyle in the US in that regard. Some people drive everywhere, but it's pretty common to walk to the train station for the daily commute, walk to the town center to shop or work, and so on.

I bet the longevity thing is very different when you control for poverty and so on.

Low stress is the real reason that those in the countryside or small villages live so long. You can be fat and still live long if you have low stress. Now, take somebody thats overweight, and a stressful lifestyle, and thats just a heart attack or stroke waiting to happen.

[mhays]

You could have picked five other factors as "the real reason." With weight problems, longevity, and other topics, the truth is a combination of things.

[10023]

To elaborate a bit on my reply to Dale... the UK, or at least England, is a very densely populated country. To live in the country means to live in or near a village, which probably has some kind of high street with shops. One goes for walks with the dog, walks to the pub, etc. Villages are close enough to one another to be walkable (or at least within easy biking distance).

The country is also, because of England's population density and transport network, much "closer" to the city than rural America (at least outside of the Northeast). One can live in a village in Hampshire and be in London (or at least Southampton, which together with Portsmouth has a metro population of 1.5 million) faster than many people in American suburbia can reach the core city by car or train. Most places are just a lot better connected and more cosmopolitan than rural parts of America (again, unless you're talking about places like eastern Connecticut, north of SF Bay, etc, which are "the country" but very close to urban centers).

The demographics are also different. Traditionally the gentry have lived in the country (or at least had a country house, which may be listed as their primary address and affect this type of study). There are generally few immigrants or minorities, and fewer poor, all of which would be expected to shorten life expectancies in the cities. Granted it's not all the Cotswolds, but you are not talking about the same kind of place as most rural parts of the US. Personally if I had to live in England, but couldn't live in London, I would live in a country village before any other town or city in England.

[mhays]

Much of "greater greater London" is exactly that...small cities, towns, and villages, with train stations that allow people to commute to the center.

[10023]

Originally Posted by mhays

Much of "greater greater London" is exactly that...small cities, towns, and villages, with train stations that allow people to commute to the center.

There are some villages inside the M25 loop, yes, but what I mean is broader than that. You can get from Wiltshire to London in a reasonable amount of time (an hour by train from Swindon to London Paddington, but you wouldn't want to be in Swindon itself so call it 90 minutes). And that's actually the countryside... but countryside where you'll see people driving nice cars.

Back to the point... rural England may be more walkable than suburban America. Living in "the country" generally means being within several miles of a market town that looks like this:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.63...ZPnezcxNjA!2e0

Or this:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.69...Xb-3rlWSvA!2e0

Or this:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.58...iXLXjqg_CA!2e0


Combined with the demographic point, I don't think you can draw any conclusions about the impact of suburban development on American waistlines from looking at the English countryside.

[Xelebes]

Originally Posted by mhays

Walking plays a much larger role in the UK countryside and small towns/cities. It's closer to the typical urban lifestyle in the US in that regard. Some people drive everywhere, but it's pretty common to walk to the train station for the daily commute, walk to the town center to shop or work, and so on.

I bet the longevity thing is very different when you control for poverty and so on.

The English countryside is rather crowded. You can walk from town to town. In the Midwest and Great Plains, you wouldn't walk from town to town.

[montréaliste]

Originally Posted by 10023

There are some villages inside the M25 loop, yes, but what I mean is broader than that. You can get from Wiltshire to London in a reasonable amount of time (an hour by train from Swindon to London Paddington, but you wouldn't want to be in Swindon itself so call it 90 minutes). And that's actually the countryside... but countryside where you'll see people driving nice cars.

Back to the point... rural England may be more walkable than suburban America. Living in "the country" generally means being within several miles of a market town that looks like this:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.63...ZPnezcxNjA!2e0

Or this:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.69...Xb-3rlWSvA!2e0

Or this:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.58...iXLXjqg_CA!2e0


Combined with the demographic point, I don't think you can draw any conclusions about the impact of suburban development on American waistlines from looking at the English countryside.

Which one of them little towns is "Nottoosh Abbey"?

[Chicago103]

Check the obesity rates in 1950 (when older urban cities where at their peak populations) vs. today. The idea that people were fat first and then suburbs emerged is as nonsensical as Fox News conservatives believing that evil mustache twisting liberals woke up one day and decided to ruin the urban public school system, increased crime, raised taxes for crumbling services and forced businesses to leave while laughing maniacally AND THEN the real Americans moved to the suburbs.