PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Retail investment: A barometer for teen obesity?

Research suggests communities may want to look beyond fast food outlets to the greater retail environment

2013-09-23
(Press-News.org) When it comes to addressing the obesity epidemic, fast food restaurants are a favorite target, with some communities, such as the city of Los Angeles, going so far as to ban the construction of new, standalone fast food restaurants in neighborhoods with a high density of fast food restaurants that are also plagued by a high obesity rate.

But according to a new study coauthored by Michael Bader, an assistant professor of sociology at American University in Washington, D.C., communities contemplating such bans may want to look beyond the number of fast food outlets to the greater retail environment of each neighborhood.

"Fast food restaurants don't exist in a vacuum," Bader said. "Restaurants and stores open and close based on larger economic development patterns."

Bader's article, coauthored with colleagues at Columbia University and titled "More Neighborhood Retail Associated with Lower Obesity among New York City Public High School Students," was published in the September issue of the journal Health & Place.

The study, based on body mass index (BMI) data of 94,348 high school students in New York City public schools, found that the more banks in a student's neighborhood, the less likely the student was to be obese.

"We used banks to measure the influence of retail investment because we could reasonably assume that they don't cause adolescent obesity, but are related to investment patterns," Bader said. "When we found that having more banks in a neighborhood predicted a lower likelihood of obesity, we were reasonably confident that this association showed the beneficial influence of neighborhood retail investment."

A Surprising Discovery

But before they examined their sample for the relationship between banks and adolescent obesity, Bader and his colleagues analyzed their data to see if the density of fast food outlets had an impact on adolescent obesity.

They discovered something so unexpected, even they found it surprising—the same inverse relationship they found between banks and adolescent obesity existed between fast food outlets and adolescent obesity.

In other words, the students with more fast food outlets in their neighborhoods were less likely to be obese. However, the results differed for boys and girls. A boy who had three fewer fast-food outlets in his neighborhood than an otherwise comparable boy was 12 percent more likely to be obese. For girls, this changed to a 9 percent higher chance of being obese than an otherwise similar girl, but instead of three fewer fast food outlets in the girl's neighborhood, it was three fewer pizza places.

Retail Environment = Complex Ecosystem

"The location of fast food restaurants and banks were correlated, because they respond to similar economic conditions," Bader said. "A neighborhood's retail environment is a complex ecosystem, and we think that these findings show that is important to consider how the retail ecosystem might influence health."

Because of this complexity, Bader and his colleagues could not pinpoint exactly what factors created the more banks and fast food outlets/fewer obese teens relationship, but offered some hypotheses.

"A larger retail presence might provide what [the late urban activist] Jane Jacobs termed 'eyes on the street' to prevent crime, a political lobby to support neighborhood services, and, of course, employment for local residents," Bader said.

Other factors that were not accounted for in the study that could have impacted the students' BMI data include the density of parks and other spaces that encourage physical activity in students' neighborhoods or the number of supermarkets, which usually offer more healthful food options than do fast food outlets.

"We will continue to investigate the complexity of the urban economic ecosystem, including how the density and diversity of food options in neighborhoods might influence obesity outcomes," Bader said. "This paper provides a preliminary finding that we hope will encourage more research investigating how economic development might influence health."

### END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Breakthrough offers first direct measurement of spinal cord myelin in multiple sclerosis

2013-09-23
VIDEO: This shows representitative positron emission tomography images of the rat spinal cord.. Click here for more information. Researchers have made an exciting breakthrough – developing a first-of-its-kind imaging tool to examine myelin damage in multiple sclerosis (MS). An extremely difficult disease to diagnose, the tool will help physicians diagnose patients earlier, monitor the disease's progression, and evaluate therapy efficacy. Case Western Reserve University School ...

Infrared NASA image shows strength in Typhoon Pabuk's eastern side

2013-09-23
Typhoon Pabuk continued to strengthen as it moved north through the northwestern Pacific Ocean on Sept. 23, and NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of the storm. The NASA image showed powerful thunderstorms east of the storm's center. On Sept. 23 at 3:17 UTC/Sept. 22 at 11:17 p.m. EDT NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Typhoon Pabuk in the northwestern Pacific Ocean and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument captured an infrared image. The AIRS image showed very high, powerful storms with very cold cloud top temperatures wrapped around the eastern ...

Identifying trauma risk in small children early after an accident

2013-09-23
Accidents also traumatize small children. Around one in ten children still suffers from a post-traumatic stress disorder a year after a road accident or burn injury, reliving aspects of the traumatic experience in the form of flashbacks or nightmares. In doing so, young children keep replaying the stressful memories while avoiding anything that might remind them of the accident in any way. As a result of this constant alertness to threatening memories, the children can develop sleeping disorders, concentration problems or aggressive behavior. Assessing the risk of illness ...

Sensory illusion study provides new insight for body representation brain disorders

2013-09-23
People can be easily tricked into believing an artificial finger is their own, shows a study published today [23 September] in The Journal of Physiology. The results reveal that the brain does not require multiple signals to build a picture body ownership, as this is the first time the illusion has been created using sensory inputs from the muscle alone. The discovery provides new insight into clinical conditions where body representation in the brain is disrupted due to changes in the central or peripheral nervous systems e.g. stroke, schizophrenia and phantom limb syndrome ...

Targeting memory T-cells in Type 1 diabetes

2013-09-23
WA, Seattle (September 23, 2013) – Encouraging results from the T1DAL study (Targeting effector memory T cells with alefacept in new onset type 1 diabetes), led by Mark R. Rigby M.D., Ph.D. from Indiana University and Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis and sponsored by the Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) with additional support from JDRF, are published today in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. Alefacept, an engineered fusion protein targeting a surface molecule, CD2, found on T-lymphocytes, was the first biologic therapy approved for moderate to severe plaque ...

A boost for cellular profiling

2013-09-23
New York, NY and Stockholm, Sweden -- A team of researchers affiliated with Ludwig Cancer Research and the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden report in the current issue of Nature Methods a dramatically improved technique for analyzing the genes expressed within a single cell -- a capability of relevance to everything from basic research to future cancer diagnostics. "There are cells in tumors and in healthy tissues that are not present in sufficient numbers to permit analysis using anything but single-cell methods," explains senior author, Rickard Sandberg, PhD. "This method ...

Calming fear during sleep

2013-09-23
CHICAGO --- A fear memory was reduced in people by exposing them to the memory over and over again while they slept. It's the first time that emotional memory has been manipulated in humans during sleep, report Northwestern Medicine® scientists. The finding potentially offers a new way to enhance the typical daytime treatment of phobias through exposure therapy by adding a nighttime component. Exposure therapy is a common treatment for phobia and involves a gradual exposure to the feared object or situation until the fear is extinguished. "It's a novel finding," ...

UCLA scientists explain the formation of unusual ring of radiation in space

2013-09-23
Since the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts in 1958, space scientists have believed these belts encircling the Earth consist of two doughnut-shaped rings of highly charged particles — an inner ring of high-energy electrons and energetic positive ions and an outer ring of high-energy electrons. In February of this year, a team of scientists reported the surprising discovery of a previously unknown third radiation ring — a narrow one that briefly appeared between the inner and outer rings in September 2012 and persisted for a month. In new research, UCLA ...

USC scientists ID protein that regulates cellular trafficking, potential for anti-cancer therapy

2013-09-23
LOS ANGELES — Molecular microbiologists at the University of Southern California (USC) have uncovered intricate regulatory mechanisms within the cell that could lead to novel therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and other diseases. Their findings, which have long-standing significance in the basic understanding of cell biology, appear in the journal Nature Cell Biology. "Our research reveals a new regulatory mechanism that coordinates two distinct intracellular processes that are critical to cellular homeostasis and disease development," said Chengyu Liang, M.D., ...

Scientists closer to universal flu vaccine after pandemic 'natural experiment'

2013-09-23
Scientists have moved closer to developing a universal flu vaccine after using the 2009 pandemic as a natural experiment to study why some people seem to resist severe illness. Researchers at Imperial College London asked volunteers to donate blood samples just as the swine flu pandemic was getting underway and report any symptoms they experienced over the next two flu seasons. They found that those who avoided severe illness had more CD8 T cells, a type of virus-killing immune cell, in their blood at the start of the pandemic. They believe a vaccine that stimulates ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Being physically active, even just a couple of days a week, may be key to better health

High-fat diet promote breast cancer metastasis in animal models

A router for photons

Nurses and AI collaborate to save lives, reduce hospital stays

Multi-resistance in bacteria predicted by AI model

Tinker Tots: A citizen science project to explore ethical dilemmas in embryo selection

Sensing sickness

Cost to build multifamily housing in California more than twice as high as in Texas

Program takes aim at drinking, unsafe sex, and sexual assault on college campuses

Inability to pay for healthcare reaches record high in U.S.

Science ‘storytelling’ urgently needed amid climate and biodiversity crisis

KAIST Develops Retinal Therapy to Restore Lost Vision​

Adipocyte-hepatocyte signaling mechanism uncovered in endoplasmic reticulum stress response

Mammals were adapting from life in the trees to living on the ground before dinosaur-killing asteroid

Low LDL cholesterol levels linked to reduced risk of dementia

Thickening of the eye’s retina associated with greater risk and severity of postoperative delirium in older patients

Almost one in ten people surveyed report having been harmed by the NHS in the last three years

Enhancing light control with complex frequency excitations

New research finds novel drug target for acute myeloid leukemia, bringing hope for cancer patients

New insight into factors associated with a common disease among dogs and humans

Illuminating single atoms for sustainable propylene production

New study finds Rocky Mountain snow contamination

Study examines lactation in critically ill patients

UVA Engineering Dean Jennifer West earns AIMBE’s 2025 Pierre Galletti Award

Doubling down on metasurfaces

New Cedars-Sinai study shows how specialized diet can improve gut disorders

Making moves and hitting the breaks: Owl journeys surprise researchers in western Montana

PKU Scientists simulate the origin and evolution of the North Atlantic Oscillation

ICRAFT breakthrough: Unlocking A20’s dual role in cancer immunotherapy

How VR technology is changing the game for Alzheimer’s disease

[Press-News.org] Retail investment: A barometer for teen obesity?
Research suggests communities may want to look beyond fast food outlets to the greater retail environment