By Janet Raloff
The more concerned parents are about neighborhood safety, the more likely their youngsters will be overweight, a new study finds.
When pediatrician Julie C. Lumeng was working at an inner-city clinic in Boston, parents of overweight children often told her, “I can’t send my kids out to play because it’s not safe. There’s too much crime,” she recalls. The new study “grew out of that experience,” explains Lumeng, now at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.