Regional
(2010-02-08)
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GREELEY, CO
(KUNC) -
It turns out that green grass may actually have more to do with weight loss and curbing obesity than adding more green produce to a person's diet. KUNC commentator Dr. Marc Ringel has more.
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It seems that whenever I'm trying to watch my weight I get inundated by TV ads for high-calorie snacks and coupons for two-for-one pizzas. At least I always can turn to my refrigerator, which we keep well-stocked with fresh fruit and vegetables. Having healthy choices at my fingertips helps me (some of the time) to muster the self-control I need to stay out of the candy basket, which is, unfortunately, also at my fingertips.
I sometimes wonder how fat I'd be if I didn't have those fruits and veggies to rely on in moments of temptation. Many people in our country don't have the choices I do because they haven't the money to purchase healthier foods. And, even if they do have the bucks, if folks live in a poor neighborhood there may not be a decent supermarket nearby, leaving them no local choice but fast food joints and the sorts of low-grade, high-calorie fare sold at little markets that are attached to gas stations and liquor stores.
Which goes a long way to explain why it is that obesity is so much more prevalent in people of color in our far-from-fully-stirred melting pot. Non-whites are, on average, poorer and live in neighborhoods with fewer amenities, including access to a healthy food selections.
Another disadvantage of living in a poor neighborhood is lack of green space. A study published last year in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that access to parks and playing fields helps to protect against obesity. If you've ever even driven through an urban slum it should come as no surprise that the poor have a lot less access to outdoor amenities than the privileged do.
The authors of this study, entitled "Neighborhood Greenness and 2-year Changes of Body Mass Index in Children and Youth," measured the height and weigh of mostly black kids from inner-city Indianapolis and then calculated body-mass index, a gauge of leanness, for each subject. The researchers also obtained a measure of neighborhood vegetation, estimated by satellite image. Vegetation index was correlated statistically with subjects' body mass index. Not surprisingly, the greener the neighborhood, the leaner the children living there. When checked again two years later, the kids from greener neighborhoods were 13 percent less likely to be obese than their cohorts from areas that featured more pavement and fewer parks and lawns.
The simplest explanation for the green-lean connection is that more parks and fields mean greater opportunities to be outdoors, leading to more exercise and thinner kids. There is another, less direct explanation of these data that is based on the culture of poverty, and the loss of community that is a tragic fact of life in so many American ghettos.
The argument goes that lack of lawns, trees, shrubs, flowers and fields in public space are tangible manifestations of the breakdown of public life under the thumb of poverty. For lack of a cohesive culture, these neighborhoods are likely to be unsafe, violent places, where parents may be reluctant to let their kids out to play, neither in the alley nor in the park.
It all fits together into an unhappy whole lack of green space, sedentary ways, poor nutrition, violence. And I, a white professional guy with a refrigerator-full fresh produce, and a big yard that, in season, overflows with flowers, vegetables and lots and lots of green, don't pretend to know how to fix it. Nice safe green parks might be a good place to start.
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