Wal Mart Helps Fight Obesity
From a Social Science Research Network Study:
We estimate the impacts of Wal-Mart and warehouse club retailers on height-adjusted body weight and overweight and obesity status, finding evidence that Wal-Mart Discount Stores reduce weight slightly while Wal-Mart Supercenters and warehouse clubs either reduce weight or have no effect. The effects appear strongest for women, minorities, urban residents, and the poor. We then examine the impacts of these retailers on food and alcohol consumption, exercise, smoking, and eating out at restaurants in order to explain the results for weight. Most notably, all three types of stores are associated with increased consumption of fruits and vegetables and reduced consumption of dietary fat. These results are surprising given the conventional wisdom that cheap food leads to more eating, and suggest that income effects and relative price changes are more important that absolute price changes in this case.
I’m a bit surprised it took a study of this magnitude to discover this, but it makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense to me is the attitude toward those who struggle from being over weight or obese and who also suffer fro financial difficulties:
“We associate Wal-Mart with large women in stretch pants, fat kids sucking down tubs of soda, and morbidly obese men inching down the snack-food aisle in motorized shopping carts.”
I don’t really understand that kind of thinking toward any fellow human being but I digress. The bottom line here is that significant reduction in obesity rates in communities with a Wal-Mart.
