[at-w]

Were cities less automobile centric in the '70s, when the obesity rate was far lower? According to the CDC, physical activity has actually risen significantly in recent decades (https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/data/index.html#:~:text....) People tend to blame fast food, "HFCS," walking, big pharma or whatever else, while largely ignoring the simply incredible amount of food Americans now eat.

Exercise is important, but walking can only do so much when the average American eats almost seven Big Macs worth of calories daily (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_ener...). You can have a Big Mac meal with fries and evil HFCS soda three times a day and still eat fewer calories than the average American. An extra mile a day of walking burns about 100 calories, or just over 1 Oreo.

[trgn]

The lever works the other way. A person who walks for their daily errands or for commuting, will not get overweight. Or otherwise they wouldn't be able to walk. So they won't eat as much. It's not the calories burned by walking that makes them thin, it's the integration of walking into daily life that provides the unconscious cues to eat healthier.

[Someone]

I don’t see your first link supporting the claim “physical activity has actually risen significantly in recent decades”. When I click through that first link, I eventually get at https://journals.humankinetics.com/downloadpdf/journals/jpah..., which is about self-reported physical activity and thus “subject to recall and social desirability biases.”

It also only is about leisure time physical activity. So, if a subject buys a robot lawn mower, stops mowing the garden every week, and starts driving to the gym to do half an hour of moderate exercise once a month, the number measured here goes up.

Ignoring those, it says

“The prevalence of insufficient activity was not significantly different in 2018 compared with 1998 for most subgroups (Table 3), with exceptions of increases among men, adults aged 65 years or older, adults of Hispanic origin, adults with less than a high school education, adults in the Midwest or South Census regions, and adults with obesity, and a decrease among adults with a college degree or higher.”

and

“recent increases in meeting or exceeding the guideline overall are primarily driven by more people reporting sufficient activity to meet the high guideline, not the minimal guideline.”

So, it seems any increase in exercise comes from those already doing it doing more of it.

[shusaku]

> An extra mile a day of walking burns about 100 calories, or just over 1 Oreo.

Google tells me an Oreo has 53 calories, so it’s not quite that bad