NPR

Study Shatters Preconceived Notions About Urban Vs. Rural Obesity

The conventional wisdom is that city life makes you fat and rural life keeps you trim. A new study looks at the numbers to see if that holds true.

The city slicker and the country cousin: Who is fatter?

With stereotypes firmly in place, the scientific community has been assuming that the three-decades-long rise in obesity levels around the world has been the result of more people moving to cities and adopting the sedentary, gluttonous lifestyle of urban dwellers.

But they've been wrong.

A in the May 8 journal has shattered the preconceived notions of urban versus rural body types. More than 1,000 researchers representing the Non-Communicable Disease Coalition of more than 112 million

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