Commuting May Kill You (Well, Not Really)
Well, not really. But it can certainly affect your health. According to Jane Brody at The New York Times, commuting causes those who do it to lose "hours a day that would be better spent exercising, socializing with family and friends, preparing home-cooked meals or simply getting enough sleep ." The fact that most of us do not live in cities but in suburbs where cars are necessary to get us to work, school, and other activities makes it an absolute necessity to commute. It's not just workers who commute, Brody notes, but soccer moms, too, ferrying their kids to ball games, ballet, play dates, after-school clubs, putting the same amount of mileage on their cars sometimes as people who use them just to get to work. Brody points out that's probably one of the things behind our obesity problem in this country. “In places where people walk more, obesity rates are much lower,” Leigh Gallagher, an editor at Forbes and author of a book on the perils of commuting, to...