New Forbes List: The 20 Most Sedentary Cities
Without a doubt, we would rather be on the Forbes 400 than this particular Forbes 20:
We set out to discover which cities were the worst offenders when it came to leading a sedentary lifestyle. Our list is 20 cities long and is topped by Memphis and New Orleans. It also includes surprising entries like Miami and San Diego.
Behind The Numbers
We created our list by collecting data on body mass index (BMI), physical inactivity and TV watching habits for the country’s 50 largest metropolitan statistical areas. For information on BMI and physical inactivity, we turned to 2006 data from the Centers for Disease Control and its comprehensive Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which surveys metropolitan areas annually on a range of health issues. For BMI, we added the percentage of obese or overweight people and ranked cities based on the combined number. When measuring frequency of exercise we looked at the survey’s sole indicator: the percentage of people who had not engaged in any physical activity in the past 30 days. To determine TV watching habits, we used Nielsen data on the average number of hours of TV watched per week by metropolitan area.
Find out if your city is on the list.
New Orleans