Several cities, including Austin, Texas, and New York, have considered banning fast food restaurants near schools, but Can we know if this strategy would be effective?
This studio investigates the effect of fast food availability on childhood weight outcomes by gender, race, and location.
No observable effects
The researchers used the body mass index of the Arkansas students, collected from 2004 to 2010, and compared it to home and school addresses through annual school records. The home address was used to geocode the location of the student residences.
Fast food restaurants were identified in the route between the children's homes and their schools. Fast food restaurants included major hamburger chains and drive-through restaurants (e.g. McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy's), dairy stores with large fast food menus (e.g. Dairy Queen), take-out pizza establishments , taco places (e.g. Taco Bell), sandwich places (e.g. Subway, Quiznos), and fried chicken restaurants (e.g. KFC, Chick-Fil-A). The researchers excluded specialty stores such as ice cream shops that do not sell other fast foods (e.g., Baskin-Robbins), coffee shops (e.g., Starbucks), and donut shops (e.g., Krispy Kream).
Using a mean radius of 1.6 km to define exposure near home and school, the mean total exposure level was 3.34 restaurants. He 45.2% of children have at least one fast food restaurant located 800 meters from their school.
But the researchers concluded that changes in exposure had no effect on BMI score.
For example, increasing exposure to fast food at three restaurants moving from fourth to tenth grade increased the mean change in BMI by 0.003, less than one percent (0.7%) of the standard deviation.
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The news
The availability of fast food restaurants between children's homes and their schools does not affect children's weight
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.