Is Boston Traffic Making You Fat?
Boston is notorious for having bad drivers and bad traffic, it’s something we’re not proud of but it’s a well known fact about us. People from all over the country say that we are the worst drivers and getting behind the wheel in Greater Boston is a nightmare.
What comes first, us being bad drivers or having bad traffic? Do we drive aggressively because there’s so much traffic congestion? Or is their so much traffic because we are bad drivers? I have to go with the former, we have too many cars on too few roads, leading to some of the worst traffic in the country.
Traffic is a terrible stressor for a lot of reasons
So now there is a new concern about being stuck in traffic every day, it’s not just getting high blood pressure spikes or racing heart rates. No, it’s your belly. That’s correct, Boston traffic could be making you fat.
It sounds crazy until you think about it. Say you leave work around 5 and dive into traffic on any of our major roadways. Chances are very likely that you will be sitting in your vehicle for a while, for some people who travel 15 or so miles out of the city, you can count on at least an hour or more to get home.
When that happens you start thinking about how getting home and cooking dinner is too much effort and start looking for an easier way out. That invariably means you’re probably going to stop somewhere to “pick up dinner”
A new study in the “Journal of Urban Economics” found heavy traffic makes us gain weight and it really comes down to what food choices we make for dinner while sitting in your car.
Researchers looked at three years’ worth of traffic and GPS data. And they found heavy traffic made people more likely to eat fast food, especially for dinner.
When stuck in traffic for a long period of time most people do not opt to go to a grocery to buy uncooked food to prepare when getting home. If they do stop by a grocery store on their way home, they opt for the store’s “take out” food options.
How to beat the bloat?
One way of staving off that nightly stop at a fast food restaurant is to prepare ahead of time and pre-plan your meals so that when you get home half the battle is already won. The other half is having the determination to actually cook the food.
The other hack is to keep some light snacks in the car, like crackers or something moderately healthy that can tie you over until you get home.
(NY Post)
