alt Hacker NewsThere's a confounding factor to your theory: people in Japan are dramatically less likely to use a car for door-to-door travel. The amount of walking a Japanese person does burns a huge number of calories that most people in the US simply don't burn.
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This is certainly true. Others will quote that exercise is not an effective mechanism to maintain healthy weight with 40 studies to back it. The goalposts seem to move a lot in this domain. Nevertheless, there is a ton of evidence of people in various behavior patterns that do not have such obesity issues in their society. It's wild to me how many people reach a conclusion of helplessness given that fact. The real kicker is that we aren't talking about one population being 5-10 lbs too heavy. We are taking about a difference between healthy weight and pervasive obesity. It's wild that such a delta is normalized
Only have the anecdata of being in both Tokyo and NYC, but obesity rates are clearly higher in NYC than in Tokyo. I'm not convinced that relative obesity in Japan vs US is primarily due to walking differences.
As another commenter posted, the amount of walking even a highly active person does is fairly negligible wrt weight loss/gain. As another anecdote - my ambient walking milage is 5 miles/day and I run an additional 20-30 miles a week and still maintain an obese BMI
I don’t buy it, putting aside the fact that there are many public transit-heavy countries with obesity problems, the amount of calories you burn from walking is a drop in the bucket, you can wipe out a full day of city walking with a small portion of French fries.
Diet is a way bigger factor in weight control than activity, unless you’re a pro athlete burning thousands of calories a day from exercise because you’re working out nonstop as your job.
You should still walk for general health, but not for weight loss.
EDIT: this report from Time about Japanese food culture rings true.
https://time.com/6974579/japan-food-culture-low-obesity/