Poor San Jose doesn’t know if should do a few extra crunches or just give up and have another Twinkie. A recent Men’s Fitness article listed San Jose as one of America’s fattest cities ... 15th fattest city in the nation. But then Women’s Health ranked San Jose number one for health and number two for fitness. And wait. Just last month, Men’s Health ranked us sixth best city in the United States—first for health and fourth for fitness.
So who is right?
Well all three magazines swear that they sifted through mountains of data, analyzed every little decimal and remembered to carry the one. All three took in factors like number of gyms, recreational sports, parks, TV watching and more.
None go into great detail about how they graded each category. But The Fly thinks this just goes to show you that statistics can be made to prove anything.
Or perhaps San Jose is both fit and fat. Or maybe it’s just big-boned.
There does not seem to be any moderation of this board any longer. Look at the Happy Holidays trhead.
San Jose is fat.
The fatness comes from low-density must-drive-to-get-anywhere neighborhoods.
Populations will be fat if fitness and exercise are something that you go somewhere to do. Populations will be fit if the design of neighborhoods allow for most errands to be done under one’s own power, either bicycling or walking.
The city should do more to make walking and especially bicycling safer and easier. The city is flat and we have nice weather all year. We should be taking advantage of it.