
America’s Great Fitness Divide - bootload
http://www.citylab.com/politics/2016/01/americas-great-fitness-divide/414558
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marcus_holmes
Years ago, I used to work as a labourer on building sites, before getting a
'proper' job as a programmer.

When I physically worked hard all day, I ate a ton of crap. Burger King for
lunch, a loaf of bread a day, hardly any veggies but massive amounts of cheap
carbs and meat. I was technically overweight, because I put on so much muscle
and I'm not a tall guy. Obviously I did no gym-type exercise. No-one, looking
at my diet, body-mass, or lifestyle data would think I was fit, but I was all
muscle and in the best shape I've ever been.

The older guys I worked with could lift more than me, for longer, with less
visible effort. You'd never look at them and think they were fit, and they ate
like pigs too. Again, if you looked at their data they'd be a huge diabetes
risk. But they were fitter in their 40's than I was in my 20's, and I was
pretty fit back then.

Now, 20 years later, after spending most of those 20 years sitting on my arse
pushing little buttons, I'm going to the gym and eating well (diabetes is an
effective motivator!). Look at my data now and I'm a bit overweight, but with
a good diet and exercise regime.

But compare me with my good diet and exercise regime to those older guys who
spent their working lives doing physical labour and eating like crap, and I'm
a weak, blubbery mess.

Either the "fitness" they're measuring isn't what we understand to mean by the
word "fitness", or they're not measuring actual fitness.

~~~
weeksie
Keep in mind that a lifetime of manual labor often leads to chronic injuries
and pain. How many of those old timers had back problems? I grew up working on
fishing boats in Alaska, I know the drill pretty well. I don't have a vise-
like grip anymore, but I also don't have tendonitis.

Not to say that manual labor won't get you fit, just that if you have the
opportunity to sit at a desk and go to the gym and eat a proper diet, it's not
really comparable to that kind of fitness (and it's generally far healthier
for you).

~~~
jqm
"but I also don't have tendonitis"

How about carpal tunnels? :)

~~~
weeksie
Good point! Though I am quite good at resting my hands and haven't developed
RSI over the last fifteen years or so. I would still place a heavy bet that
workplace injuries are more common amongst labor-heavy jobs ;)

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coderdude
90% of the world's in-shape bodies are concentrated among the top 1% of people
who exercise. It's fitness inequality, and I won't stand up for it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's mass media messing with your availability heuristic. Stop
reading/watching that crap, you'll feel better!

(Seriously though, the longer I live the more I think our "free media" is a
hugely negative force in society. It's not information junk-food, it's
information asbestos dipped in benzene, with nuclear waste as a side dish.)

~~~
coderdude
I agree. I think morning news shows might be some of the worst of it. I try to
stay away from most media as much as possible. It just rots your brain.

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fallous
Amusingly, they did not bother to measure the actual results of fitness in
these populations. Do these areas demonstrate a marked reduction in
cardiovascular disease, type-2 diabetes rates, etc?

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dexwiz
Any sane medical professional will tell you exercise is good for you. This has
been proven time and time again, and could be treated almost as an axiom of
health research.

~~~
fallous
No doubt, but that is not what is measured in this study. It is the
environmental influences that may result in exercise, but not the actual
adoption and expected resulting health improvements.

It is important to measure the actual results rather than the intentions of
policies or the accidents of environment.

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repsilat
The article presents a lot of correlations, but it'd be good to see a little
more investigation into which are actually explanatory.

Fitness is associated both with income per capita and the share of adults
holding a college degree, but income is strongly related to education already.
If you control for education, does increased wealth still correlate with
fitness? From reading TFA, it doesn't look like the study author tried to
figure that out.

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ageek123
Yes, exactly. The article seems to want you to believe that fitness is caused
by high education levels and high income, but all they've done is point out a
correlation. In fact I suspect that all three share some of the same
underlying causes.

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secstate
Interestingly, what I see is a divide between North and South, more than East
and West. The exceptions being Detroit and Columbus in the North and Atlanta
and San Diego in the South.

Perhaps this has more to do with urban planning? I just got back from Dallas
(Plano, actually) and I've never experienced such relatively dense development
be so actively hostile to pedestrians ... sidewalks would just stop for a
quarter mile and then start again for no apparent reason.

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niels_olson
They may need a new index. I've lived all over the country. I'm pretty sure
San Diego is healthier than any place else I've lived or even visited.

~~~
jacobolus
Here’s their list:

    
    
       1  Minneapolis, MN     77.2
       2  Washington, DC      76.8
       3  Boston, MA          69.1
       4  Portland, OR        67.7
       5  Denver, CO          67.6
       6  San Francisco, CA   66.8
       7  Hartford, CT        66.8
       8  Seattle, WA         66.5
       9  Virginia Beach, VA  65.8
      10  Sacramento, CA      65.3
      11  San Jose, CA        65.2
      12  Richmond, VA        64.2
      13  San Diego, CA       63.3
      ...
      50  Oklahoma City, OK   24.6
    

_“The AFI reflects a composite of preventive health behaviors, levels of
chronic disease conditions, health care access, as well as community resources
and policies that support physical activity. In addition, demographic
diversity, economic diversity and violent crime levels are included for each
metropolitan area to illustrate the unique attributes of each city.
Communities with the highest AFI scores are considered to have strong
community fitness, a concept analogous to individuals having strong personal
fitness.”_

[http://www.americanfitnessindex.org/docs/reports/2011_afi_re...](http://www.americanfitnessindex.org/docs/reports/2011_afi_report_final.pdf)

