Tuesday, April 29, 2008

PWNED

See now, you just thought we had free will.

According to this study, we are pwned by our environments:

Obesity rates were 20% higher in neighborhoods with five or more times as many fast-food outlets as produce vendors, compared with those with three or fewer, the study found. Diabetes rates were 23% higher.

So if you live near vendors of crappy junk food, you eat it -- whereas, conversely, if you live near a cool grocery that sells lovely fresh fruit and nice salads (as we now do, yay, hurray!) you find yourself buying that instead: which, yes, we do -- hmm! How is this possible? If the food is there, you will buy it? If it's not, you won't? What kind of crazy talk is that?

(Via Ezra)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, I have noticed that if I have a bag of potato chips in the house, I'll eat them. If I can stop myself from buying them, I don't eat potato chips at all. Having something in your face makes a huge difference. So I say to that study: DUH! --Livia

zelda1 said...

Unfortuantely, the price of those fruits and vegetables just keep right on soaring, which makes the buying of such difficult.

Anonymous said...

I agree with anon. Duh.

It won't surprise me at all if we see a significant rise in heat disease, stroke, diabetes, etc. because of the rising food costs. It's potentially cheaper to eat crap out than it is to eat a healthful, balanced meal at home.