COULD the street where you live be making you fat? That’s what a study of 450,000 Americans suggests.
Ken Smith and colleagues at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City gleaned the height, weight and address details of people living in the Salt Lake City area from a database of drivers’ licences. They then used census and map data to score neighbourhoods on various measures of “walkability”. People with a lower body mass index – indicating they are thinner rather than fatter – tended to live in areas with older buildings and where a higher proportion of…
