Have you ever noticed how much more tempting is collecting fast food for dinner after being trapped in traffic? You are not just you. New research at the University of Illinois Urbano-Champaign shows that traffic delays significantly increase visits to fast food restaurants, leading to a healthier diet for millions each year.
“In our analysis focused on Los Angeles Count Fast food visits per year in the county.
Taylor and his co -authors had access to daily road traffic patterns for more than two years in Los Angeles, along with data showing how many cell phone users entered fast food restaurants in the same period of time. With these data, the team created a computational model that shows a causal link between the unexpected deceleration of traffic and fast food visits.
This pattern remained in several time scales, including 24 -hour cycles and during the time for a given day. When analyzing for the day, delays in traffic of only 30 seconds per mile were enough to increase fast food visits by 1%.
“It may not be intuitive to imagine how a 30 -second delay is felt per mile,” Taylor said. “I think about it as the difference between the 10 am traffic and the 5 pm traffic.”
When the researchers broke the day in one -hour segments, they found a significantly higher number of fast food visits when traffic delays reach during the afternoon peak time. At the same time, visits to the grocery store decreased slightly.
“If there is traffic between 5 and 7 pm, which turns out to be the time of dinner, we see an increase in fast food visits,” Taylor said. “The drivers have to make a decision on whether to go home and cook something, stop first in the grocery store or simply get fast food.”
Taking into account that each important city has traffic and fast food restaurants that border road feed roads, it is not difficult to extrapolate the pattern beyond angels. Taylor and his co -authors say that the link between traffic and unhealthy food options is just one more reason for the reason why political leaders from all over the country and the world should prioritize infrastructure reforms to relieve congestion.
“Our results contribute to literature that suggests that time limitations are really important for food choices that people do. Any policy aimed at loosening time limitations, and traffic is essentially wasting time, it could help fight The unhealthy food, “Taylor said. “That could mean improvements in the infrastructure to mitigate traffic congestion, expand the availability of public transport and increase the work of home opportunities.”