Working Out on the Way to Work

A little Monday-morning food for thought, America: this infographic from GOOD, showing the correlation of commuting via foot and bike with obesity around the world.

GOOD writes:

The average American is both overweight and spends more than 100 hours per year commuting, the vast majority of those hours being spent in a car. Are those numbers correlated? Could we help reduce our societal weight gain by encouraging more commutes by bike or foot?

Click for interactive graphic

The vertical bars represent 13 different nations, arranged left-to-right from most obese to least. Yes, of course the United States leads the fray. 66.7% of us are overweight, yay team!

Green represents the percentage of commuting trips by bike; orange represents foot trips.

Interestingly, Germany is the next fattest country at 66.5% overweight, yet they have much more active commutes. Must be all the Bier und Bratwurst, eh Deutschland?

Canada and Australia commute less actively than we do, but manage not to gorge themselves on cream and sugar coffee and cake muffins while driving; they both come in just under 50% overweight.

So where in the U.S. do the highest percentage of people commute by bike? That distinction goes to Portland, Oregon. This is even more impressive when you factor in the high prevalence of skinny jeans in the PDX: it’s hard to imagine how they even manage to get on their bikes, but they’re doin’ it! Keep fighting, Portland!