Amazing Correlation

Here's a real mind-bender of a conclusion. A health economics professor has reached the startling conclusion that obesity is linked to fast-food accessibility. Now we know, and we can surely get a handle on the problem of obesity in the general population. Simple and easy: shut down all the fast-food parlours. They're an eyesore anyway.

Sean Cash, the brilliant scientist who has revealed this pithy fact tells us that for every "extra" fast-food restaurant per ten thousand people, a city's obesity rate rises 3%. No kidding. One can only wonder who funded his research. Most certainly not the fast-food industry. They're likely quaking in their friendly basement-located guest washrooms.

Or not. Since, after all, any casual onlooker might have made the very same observation. Fast food equates with fat-laden comestibles. They give pleasure to human taste-buds. And fast itself, production-wise, is a real plus in today's world where everyone is so inordinately busy and cannot find time, imagination, let alone the inclination to prepare nutritional meals for themselves at home.

Hordes of people either make quick stops at fast-food restaurants to take home the swill, or they stop and consume there, at their leisure. It's a life-style choice. Tastes good, it's filling and satisfying to the quality-uninitiated appetite, and generally it's affordable as well. "The strong relationship really suggests that access to fast food may indeed be one of the issues that may explain increasing obesity rates", said Mr. Cash.

Genius, pure genius.