Washington D.C. has topped a ranking of America’s 50 largest cities, arranged from fittest to flabbiest.
The new study, released on Wednesday by the American College of Sports Medicine, ranked the cities by two broad measures of public health: Personal health indicators such as prevalence of smoking and diabetes and the average city-dweller’s intake of fruits and vegetables, and environmental health, which included measures such as access to public parks, bike lanes and farmer’s markets. A panel of 26 health experts weighted the measures by importance, and voila, a health index was formed, allowing whole metropolises to size one another up like competitive weightlifters.
Washington D.C. topped the list, knocking Minneapolis-St. Paul’s off of its three-year winning streak (though the Twin cities came in a close second). Oklahoma City, Louisville, and Memphis rounded out the bottom of the list.
The authors stress that some of the rankings capture marginal differences between cities and that they all have areas of strength worth emulating and weaknesses worth addressing.
“We have issued the American Fitness Index each year since 2008 to help health advocates and community leader advocates improve the quality of life in their hometowns,” said Walter Thompson, chair of the AFI Advisory Board.
In other words, they’re all beautiful in their own way, and they all could use some work.
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