Too Much Fast Food in Howard County?
According to one study, more than 50 percent of restaurants in the county are fast food. Is that too much?
Howard County was recently named the healthiest in the state by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The county came in first or second healthiest in all but one of six categories - Physical Environment which included percentage of all restaurants that are fast food establishments: 58 percent in Howard County.
To be clear, the state average was 60 percent, so relatively, we're not an outlier. But the national benchmark is 27 percent.
The data used in the study came from the USDA's Food Environment Atlas, a warehouse of food access statistics.
The USDA asserts a correlation between eating out and health risks, as do the National Institutes of Health and many others.
So what do you think? Are there too many fast food restaurants in Howard County?
Elle
11:59 am on Saturday, March 23, 2013
There certainly are a lot! I have 4 McDonalds all in a 1 mile radius of me! But I stopped eating fast food when I ordered a burger from a Wendys and it came with a WAD of hair on it. That was about 7 years ago and I swore off the fast food places! ALL of them :)
Eric Spiegel
10:11 am on Monday, March 25, 2013
Bet it was the Wendy's in Clarksville. That place is horrid.
Nicholas Aleshin
12:36 pm on Saturday, March 23, 2013
Why the concern? Nobody forces anyone to eat at any of these restaurants!
Aren't we a "free" country?
Or maybe there are some who want us to have been a free country, once upon a time, long, long ago. That's what such stories make me think.
Candace Y.A. Montague
2:11 pm on Saturday, March 23, 2013
I think I would need to see this data in a different light before answering the question. How many fast food restaurants are in Howard County (I'm looking for a hard number not percentage)? How does that compare with the number of healthy restaurants in Ho Co as deemed by the health department? I count almost 80 restaurants that are listed in the Healthy Howard Program but a few of them are fast food restaurants. It's not about what's there. It's about having enough education to make an informed decision on what to eat. You can have 100 Wendy's around me. I know what's there and I know how to select something relatively healthy off the menu.
Thanks for the info!