Temperature and Obesity? A myth or can it shed some light into the public health crisis?

Does weather influence obesity? (i.e – Do people want to move around less if it’s hot outside or not go to public spaces if it’s too hot?)

Obesity is an epidemic in the United States, with a prevalence of 42.4% in 2017~2018. Obesity is a complex issue, and in previous research, researchers studied the association between obesity and the natural environment. They found obesity was more prevalent in counties that are hot in July or cold in January and the association was mediated by physical activity, not diet. I wanted to conduct my own research since this study was 6 years ago and at the county-level. I wanted to address obesity at the state-level and determine if Google Trend data could explain more user behavior in July.

HOT STATES VS. OBESITY

There does seem to be overlap between hot temperature states in July (averaged across 10 years) and states with high obesity (most recently from the CDC, 2019).

LEAST OBESE STATES

GOOGLE TRENDS BY STATE

The study 6 years ago mentioned utilized the CDC’s survey data to determine effect of weather on obesity, mediated through physical activity and diet. But can we get more accurate results by what people search in their browser? To effectively use Google Search Trends, there’s another paper 6 years ago where researchers conducted a scientific review of Google search terms as good predictors of an active lifestyle and food consumption. The terms were “Mcdonalds, diet, fitness, games”. Are these relevant now?

Searches at a glance (2019)

Mcdonalds

Diet

Fitness

Games

*red depicts high obesity state

State level searches (2019)

Mississippi

• Temperature: 81.3°F (#7 heat)
• Obesity Rate : 40.8% (#1 obesity)

Mcdonalds

Diet

Fitness

Games

There’s less searches for “fitness”(47/50) and more searches for “games”(2/50), and high searches for Mcdonalds (11/50) and diet (4/50). This suggests that overall food (healthy or not) and being sedentary is more prevalent in searches than fitness.

Florida

• Temperature: 82.6°F (#2 heat)
• Obesity Rate : 27% (#46 obesity)

McDonalds

Diet

Fitness

Games

Overall, Florida was the 2nd hottest state during July. It seems though that there was high interest in fitness and medium interest compared to other states about food consumption (Mcdonalds, diet). Compared to Mississippi, the interest in food consumption was much lower, fitness interest was higher and game interest was much lower.