Article content

A new study shows that people who live in neighbourhoods where they can walk to grocery stores, schools and shops are less likely to be overweight or obese than those who live in places where the car is king.

Researchers at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) found that people who lived in Ontario’s most walkable neighbourhoods weighed seven pounds less, on average, than people who lived in places where they depended on cars for almost all of their errands.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Study finds link between obesity and neighbourhood walkability Back to video

Those in the most car-dependent neighbourhoods were 70 per cent more likely to be obese than people living in what researchers classified as a “walker’s paradise.”

A neighbourhood’s walkability had a direct relationship with body mass index: the more walkable the neighbourhood, the better the weight status of the people who lived there, the study said.

“It suggests that even small improvements in walkability could actually benefit obesity rates,” said ICES staff scientist Maria Chiu, lead author of the study published Tuesday in Health Reports, a Statistics Canada journal.