February 29, 2008
D.C. Ranked Third Healthiest City By Cooking Light
Who doesn't love arbitrary rankings? Cooking Light, in celebration of recycling the same healthy recipes for the past 20 years, recently aggregated a bunch of statistics to create a list of the healthiest cities in America. The District finished a respectable third overall, falling just behind the granola-totin' cities of Seattle and Portland, OR. At least we're the champs east of the Mississippi!
The criteria are dispersed among various categories and focus on the quality and availability of healthy food, who's cooking it, and the overall health of each city's residents. This list combines input from sources that make sense considering its objectives (CDC for weight and exercise, LocalHarvest.org for organic information) and some that are head-scratchers (Bureau of Labor Statistics for the number of chefs working in the city and how much they're paid, number of Trader Joe's/Whole Foods locations). According to Cooking Light:
Washington, D.C., earned the third spot on our top 20 list of Cooking Light cities because it ranked highly in the following categories: the number of James Beard nominees for best restaurant and chef per capita; the number of farmers' markets per capita; the percentage of residents who consume five or more servings of fruits and vegetables per day; and its walkability.In basing a good part of the criteria on quantity numbers alone, the list falls short where it could have gone more in depth. Yes, the food sold at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods may be organic/free range/massaged daily, but that doesn't account for things like fat, calories, cholesterol, etc. Sure, there are a lot of chefs working in any given major city, but the butter they're using to make their pan sauces isn't going to make your ass any less huge. On the other hand, statistics concerning green space, parks, and walkability show that the survey attempted to incorporate data on health, as opposed to leaping to conclusions based on what seems like purely demographic data.
Photo by jennmich
Unfortunately, Cooking Light's in-depth description and reasoning behind D.C.'s third place ranking, as well as those of other cities, reads more like a Travel Channel special than any kind of meaningful analysis. In fact, the story is placed in the "Travel" section of their website. While restaurants such as Minibar, Poste, and Restaurant Eve earns D.C. 3.5/4 stars for eating "smart," and Rock Creek Park and paddle boats earns 3.5/4 stars for being fit, D.C.'s museums, music scene, and hotels garnered a mere 2.5 stars.
The complete rankings and list of criteria can be found here.
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Men's Health Magazine ranked DC as 3rd Healthiest, but I kinda think all those ripped homos at Results threw the curve. Thanks, guys. Would it be too much to ask you to up your vodka tonic intake?
Oh yeah? Then how come I feel like crap today?
ohmygod how cute is that little redheaded kid?
Recently? They created that list over a year ago, and the issue featuring DC came out last October.
Not gonna lie, but something about dc makes me work out and eat healthy. But when I go home I pig out and sit around...interesting
what a joke. maybe if you only looked at certain neighborhoods in ward 1 and 2. how about factoring in the incredible high rates of HIV, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity -- all of which rank well above the national average.
ok, ok, ok then. the wealthy, white yuppies who live in ward 3 and the fancy parts of wards 1, 2, and 6 constitute the 3rd healthiest city (and healthiest east of the rockies, not just the mississippi).
that makes the rest of us about as healthy as milwaukee.
Then how come almost every single DC native has Type II diabetes?
dude, philly and chicago are on this list. didn't they recently rank as two of the fattest cities in the nation? this seems a bit contradictory. i don't buy any of it.
Don't we lead the country in new AIDS infections, asthma, infant mortality, and diabetes? I'd think that would offset the "healthiness" of a few Whole Foodses.
admittedly i've never been to a whole foods in DC, but the quality of the produce i get in shoppers or giant make me think my 5-a-day may actually be _causing_ health issues