Say it ain't so!
Slobs are us? Houston ranks sickeningly low on America's Fittest Cities list
The American Fitness Index released its 2013 report on Wednesday, and while it's not terribly surprising that Houston has a poor showing — we did rank as Men's Fitness' 2012 Fattest City in America, after all — this ranking is perhaps worse.
Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown took No. 43 among United States cities in terms of the metropolitan statistical area's overall health and fitness, with a score of 38.3. While the Bayou City's areas of excellence included a high percentage of city land as parkland and a high acreage of parkland per capital, plus more strict state requirements for physical education classes, it could use improvement on nearly two dozen data points.
Those priority areas include: A low percentage of people eating five or more fruit and vegetable servings per day and a low percentage of people biking, walking or utilizing public transit to get to work, but a high percentage of smoking, obesity, diabetes, angina or coronary heart disease.
Plus, we have pitifully few park playgrounds, dog parks, golf courses, recreation centers, farmers markets, swimming pools and tennis courts per capita. And — get this — fewer primary heath care providers per capita than most other cities, even with the Texas Medical Center in our midst.
For the third consecutive year, Minneapolis ranked No. 1 on the American Fitness Index. Austin-Round Rock ranked No. 11 overall with a score of 63.6 on the AFI scale. Houston barely beat out Dallas, which ranked No. 44 with a score of 37.4, and San Antonio, which took No. 48 with a score of 35.1.
