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Nanny Bloomberg might want to reconsider his war on everything that tastes good.
A Columbia University study has found a higher density of fast-food and pizza joints in a neighborhood is a predictor of skinnier teens.
“Contrary to expectations, we find an inverse relationship between the number of fast-food restaurants and adolescent obesity, particularly for boys,” declares the article, obtained by The Post and soon to be published in the journal Health & Place.
The study looked at 94,348 city public-high-school students, using the body-mass index as a measure of obesity.
It found a boy who had three fewer fast-food eateries in his neighborhood than an otherwise similar boy had 12 percent higher odds of being obese — equivalent odds to being on welfare, which is also correlated with adolescent obesity.
Girls didn’t have such a relationship to fast food — but did with pizza. A teen gal with three fewer pizza joints in her neighborhood than similar girls had 9 percent higher odds of being obese.
“Maybe the worst places for your health are where fast-food restaurants won’t locate,” said Michael Bader, an associate professor of sociology at American University who worked with Columbia’s Built Environment and Health Research Group.
Neighborhood poverty levels and students’ socioeconomic statuses — two key predictors in obesity — were factored out for the study, said Bader, who admitted being surprised by the findings.
Local pols have considered tightening the belt around fast-food joints. In 2006, Bronx Councilman Joel Rivera, proposed a change in zoning law to limit their proliferation, as did Speaker Christine Quinn in 2010.
Both measures fizzled, but Mayor Bloomberg and the city Health Department have has waged successful battles against salt, sugar and fat.
But the researchers suggest caution with such measures.
“Our results suggest that policy makers should approach policies designed to limit fast food . . . with caution,” it says. “By focusing exclusively on the link between fast-food restaurants and obesity risk, public health researchers and policy makers risk missing — and ultimately exacerbating — more fundamental causes of socioeconomic, and particularly, racial disparities in obesity.”
City health officials were unimpressed.
“Fast-food restaurants are only some of the many places where people can get food, and they vary in what they offer. By focusing only on the neighborhood density of these restaurants this study tells us almost nothing about the causes of obesity,” the city Health Department said.
Bader was careful to say he is not advocating that kids eat more junk food.
“The idea is to look at the big picture,” he urged.
A mechanism to explain the data is still unclear. The theory is that fast-food restaurants are reflective of commercial investment in a neighborhood. Retail density creates jobs, reduces crime by having more “eyes on the street” and improves city services, which help a neighborhood’s — and apparently a teen’s — overall health.