Guess what Manhattan-ites! There’s a reason you don’t get that there’s an obesity crisis in the good ‘ol USA …According to The New York Times’ “Where Thin People Roam, and Sometimes Even Eat,” you’re living in the thinnest of all the boroughs in New York — thinner than even the rest of the country. (That’s why you’re shocked when you travel outside the city.)
“Manhattan is far thinner than the nation (where 67% of the population is overweight), the state (nearly 60%) or the city’s other boroughs (58 – 62%), according to the study released Tuesday by Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand that relied on federal data on body-mass index, a calculation based on height and weight.”
What’s our skinny on staying thin? The article points to many things, including that if you live in Manhattan, you walk … a lot. Whether it be in parks, from neighborhood to neighborhood, up the stairs in the subway, or around the corner to grab a bite, walking is a way of life and an effortless way to keep trim.
But, don’t start patting one other on the back just yet. Being skinny is just as much a product of our being healthy as it is with our (sometimes unhealthy) obsession with being skinny. “Manhattan is the national capital of disparate subcultures of the skinny,” the article says, “Aspiring models. Nightclubbing hipsters. Gay men with the time and money to chisel their physiques at the gym. Park Avenue society matrons who remain preternaturally slender into their 70s, the ‘social X-rays’ satirized by Tom Wolfe.”
With quotes like, “The smaller the dress size, the larger the apartment,” how can Manhattan-ites not be thin?
Bon App©tit!
To read the entire article, continue here.
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The New York Times, “Where Thin People Roam, and Sometimes Even Eat,” Anne Barnard, July 22, 2009
