If you have a car, you may feel sorry for the other commuters who have to sweat it out on a bike or stand for 20 minutes on a crowded train, but according to a new Australian study, when it comes to wellness, non-car commuters may have the last laugh. The study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, found that people who drive to work every day are packing on more pounds than their colleagues on trains, buses and bikes.
According to lead author Takemi Sugiyama, of the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, ‘Even if you are efficiently active during leisure time, if you use a car for commuting daily then that has an impact on weight gain.’ Of the study participants who got at least two and a half hours of exercise a week, car commuters gained an average of four pounds over four years, which was a full pound more than other commuters or people who work from home.
822 people participated in the research, and the only people who managed to stave off any weight gain over the course of the study were those who got enough weekly exercise and never drove to work. The study also found, unsurprisingly, weight gain occurred in people who didn’t get enough weekly exercise, but how much they gained wasn’t tied to their mode of getting to work.
Lawrence Frank of the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, who was not involved in the study, commented, ‘Simply achieving the amount of moderate physical activity otherwise recommended won’t provide enough compensation to overcome the effect of commuting for a long period of time,’ but the study did not consider certain other factors at work in your weight gain. ‘People who have longer commutes tend to purchase a lot of their food and run a lot of errands on their way to and from work,’ he said, and this could influence weight gain.
He added that ‘commuting is a truly important predictor of obesity’ but also pointed out that 80% of car trips are non-commuting. Sugiyama noted that, ‘the message is, if possible try to avoid cars, but for many people that sort of choice isn’t available. It’s the responsibility of government to provide public transport to and from work, and design neighbourhoods where short walks are accessible to people, but that’s a long term solution.’
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