Is It the Chicken or the Egg? Do Unhealthy Food Options Lead or Follow Obesity?

Steve Martin: I ordered a chicken and an egg from Amazon. I'll let you know.

In the last year or so I've made numerous trips to Boulder, CO. One thing I find remarkable is how easily I can get really healthy food in the vicinity of the hotel. There are a number of places that offer lots of vegan and vegetarian options, and even "traditional" fare is more likely to come with lots of healthy vegetables.

By contrast, once working with a client north of Indianapolis, every restaurant around made it easy to get plenty of fried foods but really hard to get vegetables other than iceberg lettuce.

Gallup has a listing of the metropolitan areas around the US, allowing you to sort them by factors like percentage of folks who are obese. Boulder, CO tops the list with only 12.4% who are obese. Indianapolis? It's more than halfway down the list with 27.4%. A friend who taught in a small town in Louisiana said that there were only two restaurants in the town and both served fried chicken; Louisiana is second only to Mississippi on the list of states with the highest rates of obesity.

It's hard to know whether restaurants and grocery stores lead or follow levels of obesity. Does obesity cause bad restaurants to spring up in an area or do bad restaurants cause obesity? Given the cost of obesity, it would be worth experimenting with various incentives and subsidies to determine how much a change in food offered could change waistlines. I'm convinced that I ate differently in Boulder than I did in northern Indianapolis; I suspect that I'm not the only one.

Airlines Do Their Bit to Fight Obesity

The seats are small - at least for Americans which, as near as I can tell are their target market. They no longer serve meals. And now, my dear wife tells me, the Airlines are planning to make the seats smaller still.

I can only conclude that the airlines have decided to do their bit to promote fitness. And of course, if they can lower the average weight of American passengers by even 5%, that has to translate into fuel savings enough that they might even turn a profit. As much as I resent their methods, I have to admit to grudging admiration.

Maybe if they set up pedals that we could use to generate electricity for fans and lights they could accelerate this process.

Does This Boring Food Make Me Look Fat?

This week, I ended up on the east side of Indianapolis, staying in hotel that is seemingly 100 miles from any interesting or healthy food options. Even when I was staying downtown, I used Yahoo Yellow Pages one day to find some interesting restaurant options, a service that I've seen retrieve addresses from as far away as 80+ miles. I noticed that among the "BBQ," "Chinese," and "American" style restaurants was a "Healthy Dining" option. I clicked on it. The response? "There are no 'Healthy Dining' Options near your hotel."

Now that I've been removed from mediocre dining options and plopped, (like a scoop of mash served to Oliver) into the midst of atrocious dining options (Arby's, McDonald's, and Bob Evans are among the most obvious choices within a two mile radius), I miss mediocre. (Dear reader: I am acutely aware of the fact that the ratio of parenthetical asides to actual message in this paragraph is unseemly, but this is, after all, a post about excess.)

For me, the food is uninspiring. Tonight I went for food at about 9:30 PM. And even then I left about half of it on my plate. Bland is not appetizing. They don't use spices here or fresh foods. Rather, they use fats and sugars for taste. It is not the same.

And I notice something else about the terribly boring food options. Everywhere I go, there are obese people. Lots of them. And I'm left with this question: how is it that such poor food inspires gluttony? Shouldn't these people be wasting away thin? Shouldn't they look up from Sudoku puzzles and knitting to say, "You know, I'm not really hungry. This food is simply not that interesting." Instead, it seems as though they cannot get enough. This I simply do not understand.

Pass Me Six Slices of Bacon, Kevin

My buddy Bernard is a nervous wreck. He's afraid he could be implicated in the obesity epidemic of the last two decades. His concern has been triggered by a new study arguing that obesity is contagious. It seems as though the notion of acceptable weight is heavily influenced by our friends and relatives who, in turn, influence their friends and relatives' notion of normal, an odd variation on the game of six slices of bacon, Kevin.

This from the San Jose Mercury News

The study found a person's chances of becoming obese went up 57 percent if a friend did, 40 percent if a sibling did and 37 percent if a spouse did. In the closest friendships, the risk almost tripled. Researchers think it's more than just people with similar eating and exercise habits hanging out together. Instead, it may be that having relatives and friends who become obese changes one's idea of what is an acceptable weight.

In 1988, for no particularly good reason, Bernard's weight spiked. He gained 43 pounds. Shortly after that, his brother gained weight. And his friend. Then his brother's friends. His friend's friends. Now, as he walks through the mall, Bernard can see that the ripple effect outwards has seemed to have hit everyone, like a slow-motion, silent video of a fat kid executing the perfect cannon ball at the public pool. Fearful that sociologists will soon trace this epidemic back to him, Bernard is seeking solace in comfort food. Pass the bacon, Kevin.