Prevention Matters

Living without a car in an area populated by fast food restaurants may make your weight climb, according to a study cited by the Los Angeles Times' Jeannine Stein. The study, which appears in the September issue of the Journal of Urban Health, Using information on 2,156 adults from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Study database, researchers looked at connections between body mass index, the concentration of restaurants in a neighborhood, and whether or not someone owned a car.

"Car owners on average weighed 8.5 pounds more than those who didn't own cars," Stein writes. "But non-car owners who lived in neighborhoods with a high concentration of fast food restaurants weighed 12 pounds more than non-car owners in areas without fast food restaurants, and 2.7 pounds more than those who owned cars and lived in areas with many fast food restaurants.

"Those who weighed the least didn't own a car and lived in areas without any fast food restaurants," she concludes.