Study on Obesity: Do You Live Near a Fast Food Joint?

Jesse | Aug 24, 2009

Christopher Carpenter's and Brennan Davis' findings suggest a link between student obesity and their exposure to fast food restauarants. Pictured above: the breakfast of champions.

In another step towards unveiling the reasons for prevalent obesity in America, Doctors Brennan Davis of Azusa Pacific University and Christopher Carpenter of the University of California at Irvine have conducted a new study focusing on teenage obesity.  Davis and Carpenter used specific 2002 – 2005 data from the California Healthy Kids Survey on more than 500,000 students from middle and high schools.  The purpose was to examine if school proximity to fast food restaurants had any link to students’ eating habits or body weight.  The study found that students who went to schools that are within a half-mile of a fast-food restaurant are more likely to be overweight or obese than adolescents whose schools are farther away.

Just over 28 percent of the study participants were overweight, 12 percent being obese.  About 55 percent of the participants were enrolled in schools that sat within a half mile of a fast-food restaurant.  According to Davis’s and Carpenter’s findings, students who attended schools near a fast-food chain were heavier in weight than their peers of the same age, ethnicity, and even activity level.  The effect did not seem to be any different whether there was one or more fast food chains nearby the school.

The researchers also found that kids going to such schools were also less likely to report eating any vegetables, any fruit, or drinking any juice the day before they were surveyed; on the contrary, they were more likely to admit drinking soda on the previous day.

“Students exposed to nearby fast food around their schools consume fewer servings of fruits and vegetables, consume more servings of soda, and are more likely to be overweight,” Davis answered in a series of questions.  “The result is unique to fast food (as compared to nearby motels) and is not observed for other risky outcomes (such as smoking).  The exposure to poor-quality food environments has important effects on youth eating patterns and overweight.”

Davis expressed his belief that direct intervention might have a significant impact.  “Policy interventions limiting geographic proximity of fast food around schools could have an important role in reducing youth obesity,” he said.

Davis and Carpenter offer several remedies in their study for dealing with the unsettling prevalence of young obesity.  Their strategies for helping overweight adolescents eat healthier food range from the tried-and-tired offering them healthier alternatives to the “more drastic” measure of restricting the number of fast food restaurants allowed within walking distance of schools.  Such a tactic would take much more work, however, though the results would be more definite.

“…this is one factor that may contribute to the ‘obesity crisis’ in America,” Davis stated.   “Of course, there are many more [factors].”

Several other studies have posed that a lot of fast food restaurants are often clustered within walking distance of schools, such as the University Center across the street from UCI’s campus, but studies looking at whether this affects students’ weight or eating habits have not found a link.

Asked why he believes this trend between obesity and fast food chain proximity exists, Davis mentioned that he has “investigated why this trend exists. There are numerous possibilities.  The first is that it is simply a convenient option.  The second is that…when events are close, we process them differently.  We think about them more concretely and may have less self-control, as a result…  Third, fast food may act as a place for prosocial activity.  Students may choose to go to fast food because it hosts social gathering.”

“Fast-food sales in the U.S. have increased more than tenfold over the last thirty years, from $16.1 billion in 1975 to a projected $172.5 billion in 2006,” Davis explained when asked if the study’s findings were worth worrying about.  “Adjusting for inflation, fast-food revenues have almost tripled since the seventies (Austin et al. 2005)… Fast-food consumption by youths age 2 – 18 increased fivefold from 1977 to 9% of eating occasions and 12% of daily caloric intake by 1995 (Wiecha et al. 2006).  Now, almost a third of all youths eat at fast-food restaurants on any given day (Bowman et al. 2004).”

“It may be easier to consume unhealthy food when in a social setting,” Davis warned in advice.  “Be aware of this and of healthier menu items at a fast-food restaurant.”

~Tinct