Ronald McDonald is not a bad neighbor

The ubiquity of fast food restaurants is often blamed for the high incidence of obesity in the U.S. However, a study from Harvard Medical School has found that living close to your local McDonald s or Burger King does not mean that you re more likely to be overweight.

In the study just published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers used the large Framingham study database to examine data from over 3,000 people between 1971 and 2001. They found no significant increase in the body mass index (BMI) among those who lived closest to a fast food restaurant. The researchers propose that future investigations look at other variables besides the kinds of food vendors available in a person s neighborhood. Since food is widely available in most of our surroundings, a person s proximity to a given purveyor (be it of french fries or bean sprouts) might not make much of a difference in their overall consumption.

The finding is significant, according to ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, because it demonstrates the misguided assumptions at work in some cities initiatives to ban fast food restaurants within certain zip codes. There may be evidence-based initiatives that could help alleviate the problem, she says. But an absolute ban on fast food doesn t look like it, in itself, would have much of an impact on obesity.