Do the Math

Fast food + nearby schools = fat kids

We can wring our hands about WHY this is true — whether it’s the loss of recess or addition of too many video games, but the bottom line is this: youth who study just a short walk from a fast-food outlet eat fewer fruit and vegetables, drink more soda and are more likely to be obese than students at other schools.

This is from research published on Tuesday, and includes a whopping 500,000 middle and high school adolescents.

There are many factors that impact the health status of our kids. It would be a mistake to say, “Oh, you can’t blame the restaurants, it’s a problem with the home, it’s a problem with exercise, it’s a problem with peer pressure, blah blah blah.”

In fact, it’s a problem with all of those, and each should be dealt with, including the tendency of fast food franchises to perch in proximity to our schools.

“We’ve basically discovered that kids who are going to a school that is near a fast-food restaurant have a higher chance of being overweight and obese than kids who are at a school that is not near a fast-food restaurant,” said Brennan Davis of Azusa Pacific University in California, whose study appears in the American Journal of Public Health.

U.S. youth obesity rates have tripled since 1980. The government says 32 percent of U.S. children are overweight and 16 percent are obese.

Consumer groups have pushed for laws such as July’s moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in certain Los Angeles neighborhoods, while the food industry often maintains that a lack of exercise is more to blame.

The researchers said it is not yet clear whether their results apply to other parts of the United States, and this should be studied further.

But their study adds to prior research showing that fast-food restaurants tend to be clustered near schools.

“Students who were exposed to nearby fast food have a higher level of body mass index — they weigh more. They are more likely to be overweight and obese,” he said.

They also found that students whose schools were located near-fast food restaurants eat fewer servings of vegetables and fruits, and drink far more soda than students at schools not located near fast-food restaurants.