Fat And Happy.(ISSUES & INSIGHTS)(EDITORIALS)(Editorial)

Sprawl: Suburbia now stands accused of feeding America's obesity epidemic. No word yet on whether it also causes warts or the heartbreak of psoriasis.

According to a just-released analysis of development patterns and health data in 448 counties, suburban sprawl is contributing to waistline sprawl. Cooped-up Manhattanites and San Franciscans are leaner, on average, than folks who live large, landwise, in low-density counties on the outskirts of large cities.

The study, published last week in the American Journal of Health Promotion and partly funded by the anti-sprawl group Smart Growth America, got its headline interest from the confluence of two causes.

One is the trial lawyers' new rage against the corporate interests allegedly behind the obesity epidemic. The other is the environmental movement to preserve open space (a fancy term for vacant land).

The research also dovetails neatly with the ideology of urban-planning academics, who keep trying to find ways of getting people out of their cars and into public transit or on bicycles.

We'll grant the study this much: It starts from a couple of valid assumptions, that obesity is indeed on the rise and that lack of exercise is one likely cause, among several. But as the authors themselves admit, the link between exercise ...