True for suburban dwellers. City dwellers tend to do much more walking though. There is a big difference.

Well, yeah. Where could I possibly walk to? There's no destinations within 3/4 mile other than other people's homes and a complex of doctor's offices. Lots of things 1-5 miles out, but that's a little further than I would want to be walking for routine things.

So walking, for me, is usually going to have to be a specific choice for the purpose of exercise, or, on a rare occasion, like yesterday, I will drop my car off to get repaired and walk back a home mile, and walk back to the shop to pick up the car when it is ready.

But when I was working in town, I was walking all over the place. My parents live in town. In their 80's, they still walk around a lot, though my mother needs to use a cane and can't walk that far anymore. They've got just about everything one could want within 4-5 blocks.

Yes, it is always better to have an actual destination when out walking.
Even when I'm walking my dogs, we go someplace...then come home.

Yeah, having dogs would be another reason to walk, but I have a cat and no dogs.

Sentence does not match sn/avatar. LOL

A memoir from a great-great Aunt of mine reminisced about when she was a young girl in Iowa, late 1800's. She liked to stay overnight at her best-friend's house, who was Amish, because they would often have pie for breakfast... pure-lard crust with unadulterated wheat, and home-grown berries I'm sure!

Maybe this is a good reason for you to adopt a homeless dog!! There sure are enough of them around!
I've had a cat with my dogs and all was peaceful.

I agree w/ so much that was posted above, especially how filled w/ junk and stripped of any nutritional value our food has become. I just want to add: My mom is 66 and she always told me that when she was a kid, snacking between meals was unheard of. She and her friends ate 3 meals a day, maybe a small snack after school, but nothing else. On Sundays, my Grandma made a big meal, but that was their only meal of the day, except sometimes they'd eat a bowl of popcorn in the evenings. Our society is used to eating all of the time. We're continuously bombarded by food commercials, the food network, and places like Taco Bell advertising "the 4th meal."

In the future, perhaps. My cat is 16 and enjoys his only-pet status (he is the last of 4 cats we have had) and all the attention he can glom.

Yuh. All that junk really messes with blood sugar, too, so it's probably more culturally acceptable to snack now because everybody gets hungry and irritable between meals.

A lot of great theories on this thread so let me throw mine into the mix.

My grandmother lived to the ripe old age of 98. She grew up on a farm and didn't move herself and the family to the "big city" until she was in her 40's.

On the farm, my grandmother ate the following pretty much everyday:

1. fresh eggs
2. Homemade bread/biscuits
3. Meat (beef, chicken and pork) at least two meals
4. Fresh and canned vegetables
5. fresh milk
6. homemade butter and lard for cooking

What she didn't eat:
1. Refined sugar (except for the occasional treat)
2. Fruit - It just wasn't readily available unless you bought it canned.

She also didn't drink alcohol. She did start smoking when she moved off the farm into the city but quit after about 10 years.

When she moved to the city she did become overweight (about 50lbs) and she did become more of a sweet eater..she loved cookies!

But even with city life she ate meat and vegetables and bread at the two meals she had each day.

I never saw my grandmother eating "packaged" foods (except for her cookies) and seldom did she eat things like rice and pasta.

So my theory is, even though she ate carbs, they were never the bulk of her diet day in and day out. She ate mostly meat, fat and veggies. She became very sedentary after she retired which I think was one of the biggest reasons she put on the 50lbs. She went from being on her feet all day to sitting in her recliner and watching soap operas.

She never had any major health problems and basically died from old age. She still had about 30 extra pounds on her when she passed away.

So I tend to think the fact that she ate a pretty much natural diet for almost half her life is part of the reason for her longevity but I also do believe genetics play a role also.

I think not living on fast food and packaged food is also a big factor. There are so many chemicals that go into the processing and packaging of the food we eat today that it can't possibly be healthy.

Anyway, great thread and good discussion and insight. Thanks for posting it!

Tom Naughton mentions this in Fat Head. IIRC, he attributes it to our lack of energy stemming from poor diet. I would have to agree. I used to just about want to die if I had to exert myself and would definitely try to find the closest parking spot when shopping. These days I park as far away as possible, just to stay out of the traffic jam.

The other day I was trying out my new Jawbone UP (sort of a glorified pedometer) and wanted to test the function that lets you know if you've been immobile for awhile. I had set it to vibrate after fifteen minutes of not moving and just wanted to see if it worked properly. I had the hardest time sitting still for that long. I kept thinking of things I wanted to do and jumping up. That never would have happened before lowcarbing.

I've been reading Wheat Belly by Dr William Davis, a cardiologist who considered this question and his thought had a lot to do with wheat hybridization which took off in the post WW2 era.

Of course there is a lot more chemical disruptors in our environment and in our food from plastics like BPA to residual organophosphates all from the post war era on. The decades of "better living thru chemistry, and Wonderbread"!

Then the 80's when the anti low carb movement joined forces with the low fat movement, and created the "healthy low fat diet" disaster.

Lots of things contribute. Did I even mention the flood tide of soy related thyroid disease?

Anyway, Gary Taubes book Why We Get Fat and Wheat Belly are really interesting, and I think scientifically reasonable.

If you're going to blame cars, you should also blame the computer/ internet you used to create the post. Oh and TV... also books, because most people I know sit while reading.

Ok, I didn't notice this thread a few months ago when it was first posted. But I just wanted to comment that I know absolutely no one who gets on a train to do grocery shopping in the UK, or has ever done their grocery shopping by travelling on a train. Why on earth would you think that? The only reason people go on trains is to get to another town or city. It is often faster than sitting in traffic and then trying to park in a city centre. Gnerally when someone gets on a train to go 'shopping' they mean clothes shopping (for instance I might go to oxford street in London), or to go a destination specialist shop for some reason.

Unless a person lives in a really, really isolated area (in which case they wouldn't be close to a train station, anyway), there are nearly always shops selling groceries within walking distance - certainly in towns and cities, and most villages would have a small shop. Since most train stations are in towns and cities, why would smeone who lived in an isolated area drive to a town, bypass the supermarket in that town, get on a train, to go to a supermarket in a different town. Beyond belief.

Lee