Source #2

Summary:        In the article “Do Fast Food Restaurants Contribute to Obesity?” the study that Janet Currie, Stefano DellaVigna, Enrico Moretti, and Vikram Pathania conducted is discussed. This group of people decided to conduct a study to see the effect of fast food restaurants on obesity of the 3 million children and 1 million pregnant women. The researchers of this study kept an eye on 9^th grade students in the year of 1999 and through the years 2001-2007 and looked to see if having a fast food restaurant located within 0.50 miles from the school had any effect on the obesity of the children. After conducting the study authors found that having a fast-food establishment within 0.5 miles of the school resulted in a 5.2% increase in the probability of obesity. The same study was ran on pregnant women and the results showed that the probability of them gaining 20 kilos during their pregnancy was 2.5% higher in women who lived 0.10 miles away from a fast-food restaurant. Overall, the study found that living in a close proximity to a fast-food establishment increases the risk for that person to be obese.

Evaluation:      After being on Google for a short period of time, I stumbled upon a website founded by the National Bureau of Economic Research. One of the articles on the website was called “Do Fast Food Restaurants Contribute to Obesity.” The article relied on the observations a group of four people had made during the year of 1999, and between the years of 2001-2007, and was intended for parents to read. Throughout the article, the topic of whether the geographic location of a restaurant has any effect on a person and if they are more likely to eat unhealthy amounts of their food and become obese. The article discussed how the researchers found the children who had fast-food establishments within 0.5 miles away from their school had a 5.5% increase in the probability of becoming obese, and pregnant women were 2.2% more likely to gain 22 kilos by living within 0.10 miles away from a fast food establishment. The author also added in that polices restricting access to fast food near schools could be significant in the effects of decreasing obesity among school children. The article never brought up the statistics of average men and women living near fast-food restaurants. After reading the article, I question if the students were walking to these restaurants and eating the unhealthy food, or were their parents taking them there?

"Do Fast Food Restaurants Contribute to Obesity." NBER. National Bureau of Economic Research., n.d.        Web. 07 Jun. 2012