According to a study by Harvard's School of Public Health, fast-food restaurants tend to cluster closely by elementary and high schools in urban areas. This is likely a contributing factor to the nation's obesity epidemic.
Three Times as Many
Nearly 80 percent of Chicago schools have at least one fast-food restaurant within half a mile. There were generally at least three times as many fast-food restaurants within a mile of any given school than could be accounted for by random chance.
Previous studies have shown that every day, nearly one-third of American students eat fast food.
"Nothing to Do With Schools"
A McDonald's Corp. spokesman said that McDonald's places its restaurants "in high-traffic areas like every other business, to serve customers. It has nothing to do with schools."
Sixteen percent of U.S. children -- more than 9 million of them -- are seriously overweight or obese, a number that has tripled since 1980.
The obesity epidemic has never been a result of your ability to distinguish healthy from unhealthy, but instead your ability to make better choices.
The failure to do so is what makes you unhealthy, not what is or isn't available at McDonald's. However, their proximity to your child's school certainly doesn't help either, and is one of the many ways they have tried to push junk food on children.
If you want more information about McDonald's, I would strongly recommend reading Fast Food Nation.
Here are some interesting facts from the book:
There are some practical ways to prevent your child from becoming a statistic in the obesity epidemic: