Can Traffic Delays Increase Unhealthier Eating Choices? Study Sheds Light

New research shows that traffic delays significantly increase visits to fast food restaurants, leading to unhealthier eating for millions each year.

Researchers had access to daily highway traffic patterns over more than two years in Los Angeles, along with data showing how many cell phone users entered fast-food restaurants in the same period.

With these data, the team created a computational model showing a causal link between unexpected traffic slow-downs and fast food visits.

This pattern held at various time scales, including 24-hour cycles and by the hour throughout a given day.

When analyzed by the day, traffic delays of just 30 seconds per mile were enough to spike fast-food visits by 1%.

When the researchers broke the day into hour-long segments, they found a significantly greater number of fast food visits when traffic delays hit during the evening rush hour.

At the same time, grocery store visits declined slightly.

"Our results contribute to the literature suggesting time constraints are really important to the food choices people make. Any policies aimed at loosening time constraints -- and traffic is essentially lost time -- could help battle unhealthy eating," said study author Becca Taylor, assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at Illinois. "That could mean improvements in infrastructure to mitigate traffic congestion, expanding public transport availability, and potentially increasing work from home opportunities."

Reference: https://aces.illinois.edu/news/slow-traffic-fast-food-study-links-road-delays-unhealthy-eating