Pure Pedantry cites this interesting article, showing that access to restaurants is statistically unrelated to the obesity epidemic.

The whole experiment can pretty much be summed up in these two graphs:

Though it has been suggested in the past, that eating at restaurant promotes a larger calorie intake, this study seems to show that this is unrelated to obesity at large.

Its interesting work, but I think there are too many assumptions that we are expected to take at their word.  For example, what type of restaurants are these? Perhaps people who live near the restaurants are mostly eating at a health food vegan sandwhich place, while the other group is eating fast food.

The other issue, is that they assume that living near a restaurant indicates a higher likelyhood of eating out.  While, it takes no imaginative leap to assume that, I think a study which claims statistical relavence needs to prove these sort of assumptions.  For example, could we also not assume, that people who live near restaurants are sick and tired of seeing them all the time, and therefore would rather eat at home?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 at 12:33 pm and is filed under link out, musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.