Junk Science
I’ve heard the report multiple times, so apparently this is big news: Detroit is now the Fattest City. I even heard the Detroit mayor responding that “This is the motor city, and people drive a lot instead of walking.” Unfortunately, even if everyone gave up their cars and started walking, and became skin and bones, that would make little difference on the “fat” rating of Detroit, because the study is rather bogus. The study uses such factors as “number of health clubs and sporting goods stores and the number of fast food and ice cream and doughnut shops per capita, air quality, climate, television viewing trends and availability of health care” to determine how “fat” a city is. In fact, if everyone walked, they wouldn’t need health clubs, so it would probably have a negative effect. Starbucks is slowly wiping out Dunkin Donuts in the Detroit area, but there are still lots of Dunkin Donuts, and their sales per store are probably much lower than Krispy Kreme, which means the number of stores per capita is higher.Using thenumber of donut stores per capita as an indicator of how obese people are? Seems like there are much more reliable methods.
And lets not get started with things like air quality and health care. Having recently developed an addiction to “Aloha Plates” and “Bobby’s Hawaiian Restarant” (both recommended) in this area, I am very skeptical of the fact that Honolulu ranked #1 on fitness. The dishes nearly all contain foods high in fat with lots of sugar to encourage your insulin-production system to deposit the fat on your midriff. Hawaii haspretty much universalhealth care and obviously would have lots of sporting goods stores for the tourists, but I doubt this translates to skinnier citizens.