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Cars Increase the Obesity Rate

Driving to work might be comfortable and fancy but when it comes to extra pounds, the matter becomes highly debatable. Certainly driving doesn't help anyone lose weight but finding out that cars make people fat is not a very promising sentence.

According to a recent study stumbled upon by wired.com, “Walking, cycling and obesity rates in Europe, North America and Australia” conducted by David Bassett of the University of Tennessee and John Pucher of Rutgers University shows a strong connection between “active transportation” and obesity rates in 17 industrialized nations.

Apparently, "Countries with the highest levels of active transportation generally had the lowest obesity rates," Bassett and Pucher announce in the study published in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health. Furthermore, the study points out that Europeans are more inclined to walking and bicycling than Americans, Australians or Canadians. Therefore, with only 12 percent of the population that walks, rides a bike or uses public transportation, United States is the land of fattest people as one in three people are obese.

The findings show significant differences between the Old Continent and the New World. In the United States, 9 percent of people walk, 2 percent use public transportation and only 1 percent ride a bike while Europeans walk three times more and cycle five times more than Americans. As far as mileage is concerned, Europeans walk about 237 miles every year and ride 116, while Americans manage only 24 miles of riding and 87 of walking.

If losing weight was done step by step, let's take a look on the number of steps made by people in different countries: it appears that the Swiss take an average of 9,700 steps every day, the Japanese about 7,200 and the Americans just 5,900.

Of course, obesity rates are linked to other factors as well which are not discussed in the study and the two researchers do not prove that “active transportation” makes us less obese. Yet, daily exercise definitely helps people lose weight, so walking and bicycling would be the first step in a long process.
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