Is Your Zip Code Making You Fat?

The answer could be yes. Newsweek reporter Karen Springen looked into the subject in her article Are There ‘Fat’ and ‘Skinny’ Zip Codes? when she interviewed Dr. Adam Drewnowski whose recently published study in the Journal of Social Science and Medicine has brought new meaning to the term location, location, location.

Dr. Drewnowski is the Director of the Nutritional Sciences Program at the University of Washington. Already a world-renowned leader in innovative research approaches for the prevention and treatment of obesity, it seems he’s hit the jackpot again with this research mapping a relationship between ZIP codes and weight.

The idea originated from a U.S. Centers for Disease Control survey, sent to adults in King County, Washington. Previous geographical research samples had been possible only on a county level but because this survey was mailed, it was capable of providing data on a finer scale, at the neighborhood level through the use of ZIP codes.

Obesity was once seen as mainly a genetic problem. No more. Today’s researchers are finding that socioeconomic factors like education, income, and even occupation all play a pronounced role in whether we will be fat or slim.

It’s hard to eat right without first being taught what foods provide needed vitamins, minerals and calories. If one’s income does not stretch to buy quality foods or even the transportation to get to a grocery store, the only choice for dinner becomes the local gas station or the fast food place on the corner. Quality grocery stores go where the education and money are. Springen’s article talked specifically about three Whole Foods locations in the Seattle area, one by the University (education), one close to Microsoft (income and education), and the third downtown, all areas where income and education provided ‘buying power’.

Of the 8,803 adults surveyed in the 74 different Seattle area ZIP codes, those living in areas with the highest property values were the thinnest, and those living in areas with the lowest property values were the fattest.

The researchers were able to create a ‘poverty to wealth’ scale by assigning property values, based on the median home asking price in each ZIP code. As Dr. Drewnowski commented, “For most Americans, their biggest single asset is their house.”

In the worst areas of south King County, where the median home asking price ranged from a low of $10,000 to a high of $270,000, obesity ran 28-30 percent. They found that for every $100,000 of property value that was added, the obesity rate decreased by 2 percent. At the upper end of the scale, in affluent Mercer Island where the median house price averaged $1.5 million, the obesity rate dropped to a low 5 percent.

The patterns are becoming quite predictable. When the New York Department of Health conducted a survey of 10,000 people living in the city’s five boroughs, the obesity rates ran from a low of 7 percent in the affluent Upper East Side, to a high of 28 percent in East Harlem, the city’s poorest borough. It comes as no surprise that those people on TV, who were left behind in New Orleans’ poor Ninth Ward, were “not just poor but obese.”

The importance of being able to predict obesity and disease by geographic location is that Public Health officials can better identify vulnerable neighborhoods where intervention is needed and allocate resources appropriately.

“Will everyone now want to move to rich, thin ZIP codes like Beverly Hills 90210?” asked Ms. Springen.

“That is probably the best way of losing weight!” replied Dr. Drewnowski.