14 ms·

As the article states, once automation hits a rural area, people there spend less energy than in cities. Very much observable in the US, where rural and suburb

• human20190310 7y ago
  City dwellers are increasingly working from home and getting everything (including weed) delivered, so the "slob" characterization might not be as strongly associated with F150s as time wears on.
  • remarkEon 7y ago
    Yeah exactly this. I have cousins that still live in rural America and yes they drive F150s and yes they are considerably more active than the average city dweller. There’s just more (manual) work to do on a farm. Hence the pickup.
  • magashna 7y ago
    But you can just as easily have pretty good produce delivered. It's no excuse
• whatshisface 7y ago
  >You're the slob from the movie "Up". Which character are you talking about?
  • anchpop 7y ago
    I bet they mean Wall-E
    • shadowtree 7y ago
      Yes! Got my Pixar movies mixed up - thanks for the correction!
      • SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
        Was wondering why you were picking on poor Russell.
• privateSFacct 7y ago
  There is a tough spot especially in light suburban where it is very very hard to walk. Nothing is setup for it. So you'd have to be kinda crazy to walk (sidewalks nonexistent, road crossings not really available etc). Once you get really rural - you can go hiking more easily unless its hunting etc season
  • derefr 7y ago
    Cycling still works to commute between most suburbs and small town centres. (I should know; I used to live on unincorporated land half-way between two towns of ~12k people.) For really rural areas where there is no “town center”—perhaps just intentionally park your car a good distance from wherever you’re going so that you have to walk the last bit of the way? (Sort of like the campaign a number of MTAs have going where they encourage you to get off one subway stop early and walk from there to your destination.)
    • jcims 7y ago
      >Cycling still works to commute between most suburbs and small town centres. You'd be borderline suicidal to do that regularly in the US.
      • falcolas 7y ago
        Agreed. I have two main paths between my home in city A and work 11 miles away in city B. Neither has bicycle paths, and only the longer one (about 18 miles) has shoulders worth mentioning. I've almost hit bicyclists because I couldn't see them (their fault; black clothing with no reflectors) on both of those routes. You coudln't pay me enough to bike to work.
        • CalRobert 7y ago
          It is not their responsibility to ensure you drive at a pace such that you can stop before striking an obstacle that was hard to see. Should we require pedestrians using the road (like the one without shoulders) to dress in bright colors as well?
• kiba 7y ago
  Exercise is good, even necessary, but it doesn't really help you with weight loss since your body compensate for it in other ways. It's what and how much you eat that matters.
  • shadowtree 7y ago
    Not my experience, let me explain: I notice that I have a baseline of appetite, hunger. Going below that makes me deeply uncomfortable. At the same time, I know that I don't need too much exercise to come to a calorie neutrality or slight deficit - but I can't reach that energy expenditure with a sedentary lifestyle. If I do a 30min run every day, plus walk to work (another 30min), I spend enough calories so I can eat comfortably (still healthy). A tracker like the Apple Watch helps to see this in action. Closing your rings in the city? Easy. Closing your rings while car centric? Hard. People should not need to diet. They should spend enough calories to burn off excess food. Note I am talking about healthy BMI, not Instagram fitness model levels. Dad bod, etc. Not morbidly obese.
    • w0utert 7y ago
      >> People should not need to diet. They should spend enough calories to burn off excess food This is bad advice, it's been shown over and over again that in the long term people don't manage to lose weight by exercising. They give up, don't exercise enough, overestimate how many calories they burnt, over-compensate by eating more and/or unhealthier ('because I earned it after taking a run'), etc. You don't have to 'diet' to lose weight, just try to eat a little less each day, and watch what you are eating. Only 100 calories less than what you need each day, and you'll steadily lose maybe ~3KG a year.
      • zbobet2012 7y ago
        However, exercise is the largest driving factor in health _not_ weight https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/treadmill_performance_predicts_mortality https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/treadmil.... For weightloss _diet and exercise_ is the way to go: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4429709/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4429709/.
• jcims 7y ago
  Couple more factors: - much easier to access gyms or play pick up games in the city - poverty is higher in rural areas
• okmokmz 7y ago
  While this maybe true, many of the people I know that live in rural areas locally have jobs involving manual labor rather than sitting on their ass in an office all day (like myself). I'd be curious to learn how commuting and travelling in a city with a desk job compares to not being as active while travelling but working a job involving manual labor. I'd honestly be surprised if people living in the city did more exercise overall
  • beefalo 7y ago
    My family lives in rural areas and a lot of people there do manual labor jobs but are still overweight. I think it is more of a cultural thing around food. When I visit, I am always shocked by how much food people eat. The amount of exercise needed to overcome eating 4k calories per day is not going to be provided by any job.
• tosser0001 7y ago
  For whatever reason, I was struck watching the special on PBS, "Woodstock: 50 Years Later". Everybody was thin. It was sort of amazing when you stopped and really noticed it, then contrasted it to what you see on a day to day basis out on the streets. There just weren't any overweight people to be seen, at least nowhere near approaching the magnitude you see walking around today. There's got to be some cultural component to all this too. I'm not sure the built environment is really all that much different than from what it was when I was a kid in the suburbs. It's as if people just collectively stopped using their bodies and started consuming more calories.
  • okmokmz 7y ago
    I wonder if the industrialization of food and agriculture and the increase in processed foods is part of the reason
    • tosser0001 7y ago
      I can only speak from what I saw all around me growing up in the US, but people were eating some comically terrible stuff back then. People grew up on white Wonder bread and shoveling raw sugar out of the bowl onto their cornflakes, etc. I don't think it's the industrialization so much as the quantity.
      • SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
        I remember the 90's "part of this complete breakfast" was cereal, toast, and a glass of orange juice, and my parents thought they were eating healthy. I think people are just more aware now.
        • planteen 7y ago
          I mean a bowl of Cheerios, whole wheat toast, orange juice, and a banana is what I had every morning before school. I would consider it a pretty healthy breakfast, even by today's standards. I guarantee you most people eat much worse than that.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• mledu 7y ago
  I think you meant to say WALL-E, but your point still stands.
• bena 7y ago
  I've noticed this myself. I simply walk more when I'm on a trip for something. Because often, I'm either going to cities or I haven't taken my car. When I'm home, I'll drive to where I need to go. Then it's just whatever few steps I need to take around my place. Not even really trying, I walked over 6 miles total in a day while in a city for an event where the main activity is sitting down and playing cards.
• _bxg1 7y ago
  As someone who's visited rural Texas a large number of times throughout my life, another factor has to be food. There's little cultural emphasis on healthy eating. "Work hard, play hard" extends to food. Nobody would think twice about having barbecue with a Dr. Pepper every day. On top of that, a large portion of the available restaurants in small, remote towns are fast-food, which again, isn't stigmatized like it is in more urban areas. The handful of local restaurants will be barbecue and/or tex-mex. These factors combine to make unhealthy-eating a simple matter of habit for a large percentage of people in those areas. Even if you really do work physically hard every day, it's not enough to cancel all that out.
• dirtyid 7y ago
  NEAT seems like one of one of the more underappreciated determinant of weight. I remember when Google Fit ranked a user's pedometer activity along a histogram of the city average and being blown away at the variety in how much and how little people moved. Or the difference between big east vs west coast cities, or suburbs or cottage country. My friend went from fit highschool jock to borderline obese after quitting sports for school while retaining athlete diet, then promptly trimmed up after a summer working in the kitchen where his pedometer regularly passed 60k per day. Figetters burn dramatically more calories as well. On the other hand, there's also a surprising amount of high BMI postal workers and warehouse fulfillment workers. Whereas I rarely see large food delivery bikers or kitchen workers.
• WhompingWindows 7y ago
  Baseline energy expenditure may be changing, but weight loss/gain is 80-90% diet. Sure, rural folks aren't moving much, but let's address that they may live off fast food, drink too much alcohol/sugar, eat too many processed carbohydrates, and generally don't have access to healthy vegetarian-heavy cuisine and the education that many city-dwellers use improve their health. Case in point: I drove on a road trip through the southern USA recently. In rural areas, you had highways with truck stops and gas stations with tons and tons of very tempting fried, sugary, tasty treats. I saw barely anyone eating a vegetable-based dish that wasn't fried. Salads? Forget about it...There's a reason it's called The Stroke Belt, and why Southerners are known to eat poorly. Look at even Jim Gaffigan's routine on Southerners, he aptly characterizes their ridiculous diets, poking fun at biscuits and gravy, for instance. So, while exercise is important, really just look at the foods on offer in rural areas. It'll be less healthy by default.
• non-entity 7y ago
  I live in what most would consider a very suburban area in the deep south and am forced to walk as a primary mode of transport. There is a bit of walkable infrastructure where I am, in between an middle class and more run down neighborhood, and while it doesn't happen as much as it did when I lived in some worse areas, there's almost a stigma to walking as a mode of transport. I've had people shout at me, etc. or even offer me a ride at night even when I'm on a leisure walk, presumably because they don't expect a young white guy to be out walking at night.
  • megaremote 7y ago
    Sounds like you should cycle.
• tomjen3 7y ago
  I can so see that personally -- I live in what would be an urban area in the US, but I can park nearby and I have parking at work, so I mostly drive. When I was a student 10km on a bike was not much. Now? My parents live outside of town, but they get exercise because they have to walk their dog. Otherwise they probably wouldn't get any either. It is pretty scary, and while I know I could exercise I don't.