fuzz2050

Why does everyone accuse the author of the paper of bad statistics. I blame the LA times.

I follow a general rule, if I see a scientific paper reviewed in a non-scientific context (newspaper, or the like) It's wrong. Flat out, wrong.

https://www.phdcomics.com/comics/arch...p?comicid=1174

NuVinciBoy

And when they leave!

pubb

Perhaps if, after weighing in at restaurants, we should send both fatty and restauranteur to re-education camps...Oh wait, nations have tried legislating things thought to be in the public interest...and have wound up killing millions of 'the public' in the process.

kmcrawford111

First of all, shouldn't the title of the article be something along the lines of "Getting Healthy Food May Require Travelling A Distance"? And what is it with the endline: "Car Ownership is the New Atkins"? Talk about nonsense. Even if this is supposed to be a joke, it's not funny. Here's a thought: instead of continuing to so heavily subsidize the Corn 'N Beef agribusiness - in other words, doing the same thing that makes in possible to get unhealthy calories cheap, why don't we talk more about limiting fast food establishments and encouraging local, organic food production instead of paving over the hinterlands required for that to build more Wal-Marts?

This reminds me of the old article claiming that driving a Prius uses less energy than walking (at least I believe that's what it was).

Really? After visiting Paris (AMAZING city), I was suprised to find that the people in Ireland weren't much skinnier than folks here. Their diets seemed to be almost as bad, too - I saw a lot of Burger King etc., even one with a drive-thru. And outside of the cities, I can't remember seeing ANYONE walking or biking (this was just 3 weeks ago). Ireland seemed to be about halfway between the US and Paris in obesity.

I was suprised to see that the roads outside of the cities seemed worse for cycling than ours. What's up with that? People talk about narrow roads here, but there, there's barely enough room for two-way auto traffic. And I mean barely. Not that the narrowness of a road is the only consideration, but my overall impression of cycling outside the cities there wasn't favorable.

Of course, the folks outside of the cities there also seemed to be living much more rural lifestyles than the cartoon of a country we have here in our suburbs.

Then again, we toured Ireland vs. staying only in Paris in France.

Dublin seemed more than a little neglected to me. Killarney, on the other hand? That was a nice city. My kind of place. Lively, walkable, and just the right amount of density.

hairnet

Slowest nightmare you'll ever have

pedalpedalpedal

Why eating healthy costs more: https://agonist.org/ian_welsh/2007110...ng_unhealthily



It's all based in government subsidies - it's more profitable for people to grow corn for feed and to be used for high-fructose corn syrup and such because it's more subsidized.
Not to mention that all this "organic" nonsense has inflated prices and accordingly located within wealthy neighborhoods.

Luddite

Ayep. I can bake for a fraction of the cost of buying baked goods, if I had more time I'd NEVER buy a baked good anywhere! I don't have anywhere to grow veg though, which sucks. Making and freezing my own pasta sauce is way cheaper than buying it in jars.

aley

Eating out, even at very nice restaurants, is WAY, WAY cheaper than cooking. Seriously.

You see, I can either be cooking, or I can be doing consulting work. When I'm consulting, I bill at $125/hr (see what y'all are getting for free?), but when I'm cooking I bill nothing.

If I go to a nice-ish restaurant, I spend half an hour waiting for my food ($62.50 worth of time), eat it, and spend no time cleaning the kitchen or doing the dishes. I pay $30 for the whole thing. Total cost (neglecting time I spend actually eating, which is essentially equal whether I cook my food or dine out): $92.50.

If I cook my food, I spend an hour cooking my food and cleaning up afterwards ($125 worth of time), and use $5 worth of ingredients. Total cost: $130, and this doesn't even include the extra time spent at the grocery store.

So, by eating out, I save $37.50 and keep my clients happy.

Now, if my time is worthless, I could save some money - maybe. I doubt that many who cook keep track of all of their expenses. How much do your utensils, pots and pans, gas or electricity for the stove, spices, hot water and soap for the cleanup, and a myriad of other things that I probably haven't considered really cost? Probably more than you realize. Just like I don't save money by biking to work (once I count the cost of tubes, tires, jerseys, shoes, lights, water bottles, and the other myriad stuff that I find makes cycling more enjoyable), I don't save money by cooking.

If I enjoyed cooking, I might view the numbers differently - this post has cost me at least $20, but hanging out on BF is recreation so I do it anyway. Cycling to work costs me $60 a day more than driving, but I do it because I enjoy it. I don't like to cook, so I lump it in with work.

MNBiker

I notice that the author, Frank Filipponio, writes for Autoblog, a blog obsessing about all things having to do with cars.

Naturally he is going to make connections between driving a car and almost anything else. That is what he is paid to do.

I also agree with most posters here that his logic connecting having a car and body weight is way too tenuous.

TurbineBlade

They use correlational data....simple as that. People from poverty tend to be heavier than the rest of the population - old news (like you said already ). Correlation data can be used to "find" all sorts of stupid scenarios.

"Homicidal maniacs tend to wear brown shoes"

Huh? I keep staring at this trying to tease-out some kind of logic, but it fails me.

BTW- Thanks for taking time from your busy consulting schedule (and at 1 in the morning....you drink much coffee?) to contribute to our online community. Many folks who make $125/hour (and who apparently work around the clock) are not as generous with their time.

DataJunkie

Our country seems to be obsessed with an inordinate amount of silly studies.

trekker pete

Really dumb studies and the even dumber conclusions don't bother me as much as the fact that many of them are funded on our dime.

It's really simple.

Lazy folks tend to be poor. This means they are more likely to be unable to afford a car. it also means they are likely to live in a crappy area. Crappy areas tend to have lots of fast food joints.

Did I mention they were lazy?

Lazy people tend to be fat.

I know the PC version about the poor over worked minimum wage person that has to walk barefooted uphill bothways through the snow to their oppressive low paying gig, so they are too tired/poor to eat properly sounds nice, but, it's BS. As has already been said, you can eat healthy and cheap (rice and beans). It just takes a bit of self discipline which gets us back to that lazy thing again.

So, some dweeb spent a lot of time on a study to figure out that lazy people are fat.

Brilliant.

noglider 

There is huge variation in how vigorously people ride bikes. There is less variation in how vigorously people walk. So if you don't take a broad sample of cyclists, you can take Joe Average off the street, and he may pedal at 6 mph for a half mile and conclude that cycling is a very mild form of exercise.

I honestly don't know how you can accurately compare cycling with walking, since it's possible to cycle at so many different levels but you can't walk in as many levels.

aley

You're quite welcome. As for posting at 1 AM, if a good night's sleep cost you $1000, you'd stay up late, too. :-) (Actually, I was up rebooting a Web server after updating an SSL site certificate, which is usually best done at odd hours. But I also rarely sleep more than 5-6 hours a night anyway.)

fredgarvin7

Very interesting. Couldja pass the deep-fried Twinkies?