Does This Borough Make My Butt Look Big?

Nope, but that butt may make your borough look small—oh, snap! No, seriously...

According to the New York Times, in keeping with bulking trends of the rest of the nation, New Yorkers packed on 10 million pounds between 2002 and 2004. But in a city that paces out some of the most expensive space on the planet in square feet, that means that widening citizens are consuming precious NYC real estate as recklessly as they are apparently consuming complex carbohydrates and contraband transfat.

Not convinced your Brooklyn apartment is fitting a bit more snugly these days? Sam Roberts of the Times, advises:

Think of it this way: 10 million more pounds is the equivalent of adding 20 full-sized replicas of the Statue of Liberty.

So four years since 2004, some New Yorkers may well be sharing their Queens condos, Brooklyn brownstones, Bronx coops, and Staten Island split-levels with their share of 40 more Lady Liberties worth of pudge. But New Yorkers in Manhattan apartments have had to part with far fewer square feet.

Over all, more than 300,000 New Yorkers get to work on foot. But Manhattanites tend to walk more than people who live and work in the rest of the city. They’re more likely to walk to the bus or subway. Walk up and down stairs to stations. Even walk all the way to work.

Here's how the boroughs tip the scales based on percentages of overweight denizens: Manhattan, 42.3%; Queens, 57.6%; Staten Island, 57.7%; Brooklyn, 58.6; and the Bronx, 62.7%.

Cheer up plumper borough dwellers! According to another Times article, you can shave 4 years off your looks if you stand next to a suburbanite:

[R]esearchers concluded that suburbanites were more likely to report chronic health problems, like high blood pressure, arthritis, headaches, migraines and breathing problems than people who lived in the city… [T]heir findings suggested that sprawl ages a community by four years.