Research
Adherence
Urbanization is positively associated with higher Body Mass Index (BMI) across countries, independent of national income and Western diet, suggesting that urban living environments drive obesity through mechanisms like physical inactivity.
Living in a city often means a more sedentary lifestyle due to job types and transportation. To counteract this, you must consciously integrate physical activity into your daily routine, as the urban environment itself may not provide enough movement.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
BMI had a positive relationship with the percentage of urban population in both 1980 and 2008... The persistent positive association of BMI with urbanization, especially for men, is consistent with a role of physical inactivity in urban populations and in urbanizing countries.
Why this rating
Large-scale ecological study (199 countries) with robust statistical modeling, though observational.
Source
The Global Cardiovascular Risk Transition
Goodarz Danaei et al. · Circulation · 2013
DOI 10.1161/circulationaha.113.001470
cross_sectionalCited 249×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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