Fairfield County, because of its size, proximity to New York, and its diversity, many times finds its residents categorized broadly when the details aren’t nearly as black and white. A recent example was a fitness study that categorized the fittest regions.
Our region, which effectively comprises of Fairfield County, was among the fittest. But as my former colleague Amanda Cuda noted, Bridgeport, which is part of the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk region included as a fittest region, has a much higher percentage of people classified as overweight and obese. It’s just that the rest of the region drives the average down. So it creates a misnomer because, despite Bridgeport’s name leading the list for the region, the city itself continues to struggle with how to turn that around.
In fact, the regional study, which cites less than 20 percent of people as obese, is in stark contrast to another study focusing on just Bridgeport, which found 36 percent of people as obese. Health officials in the region continue to work on ways to drive that down, but it does show that there’s many time more to the numbers than meets the eye.