Things that make you say "well, duh!"

A new study links juvenile obesity to produce prices. Seems kids who live where fresh fruits andd vegetables are more expensive are less likely to eat it. No kidding?

The results showed that young children who live in communities where fruits and vegetables are expensive are more likely to gain excessive amounts of weight than kids who live in areas where produce costs less. That connection was stronger than the proximity to fast-food restaurants.

On average, children in the study gained 29 pounds. But for the region with the highest relative price for produce _ Mobile, Ala. _ children gained about 50 percent more excess weight as measured by body-mass index (a ratio of height to weight) than children nationally.

Among kids in the area with the lowest relative cost for fruits and vegetables _ Visalia, Calif. _ excess weight gain was about half the national average.

The study also found that many children who live in poverty have just as much access to grocery stores as kids in higher-income neighborhoods.

Access, yes. Do they use it? Maybe, maybe not. Kids do tend toward the path of least resistance, as do low-income parents, often working long hours and too damn tired to cook. There's access to fast-food all but the smallest towns; I don't think whether there's ten or twenty grease-joints in town makes that much difference. Then, too, the current trend in fast food is toward healthier, less-fattening meals. Of course, kids will always go for the grease; I don't know too many who say, "Hey dad, can we get a salad at McDonald's?"

Something that's missing is the lifestyle differences between, say, Visalia and Mobile. Visalia is a sizeable city, true, but it's also farm country, and low-income people in an ag commmunity are a lot more likely to be farm workers than in a city like Mobile. Farm work is hard, dirty, and lots of exercise. I wonder if that was any kind of a factor.