April 5th, 2010

Reports the Evening Sun:

It seemed too good to be true.

In the snack food capital of America, where good, down-home Pennsylvania Dutch cooking begs to be eaten, we’re actually a lot healthier than we feared.

But that was the verdict in February, when a University of Wisconsin and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation study placed York County as the 25th healthiest among the state’s 67 counties.

But there’s that old saying: “If it seems too good to be true, then it probably is.”

Just a month after the good-health ranking came another study that showed the area may have earned its snack food capital status after all – but not in a good way.

The York-Hanover metropolitan area – which follows York County’s borders – was ranked the fourth most-obese metro area in the U.S. by a Gallup study released last month.

That study said the area’s obesity rate was 34 percent, higher than the national average of 26.5 percent; and that more than one-third of adults in the area are classified as obese.

So how did we end up labeled both a healthy county and a county pushing its way to the top of obesity charts?

Health officials say it’s the nature of studies, which use different methods to address the same issues.

And it’s particularly the nature of studies that rely on self-reported data, like both studies did. Both asked the people surveyed to evaluate their health habits and used those evaluations to get results.

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