Casino Gambling Can Reduce Childhood Obesity

It turns out you can lose more than just cash in a casino, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The Journal of the American Medical Association has unveiled results of a study that found adding slot machines to California casinos were linked to a reduction in obesity rates for Native American children.

For every one-armed bandit added per child, there was a corresponding 0.19% reduction in obesity risk. 117 Californians took part in the study.

Say what?

From the Los Angeles Times:

To determine whether the casino income had an impact on child obesity, researchers collected gym class fitness records for 22,863 tribal children ages 7 to 18 between 2001 to 2012. They then compared the data for communities before the casino construction or expansion, and after.

During the study period, researchers found that the average number of per-child slot machines doubled from four to eight.

"Opening or expanding a casino was associated with increased economic resources and decreased risk of childhood overweight/obesity," wrote lead author Jessica Jones-Smith, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, and her colleagues.

They wrote that the overall prevalence of obesity among the studied children was 48%. On average, communities that added slot machines reduced that rate by about 5%.

 illnesses and a decrease in overall mortality, others have reported increases in accidental death rates and increased obesity among low-income young adults, the Times noted.

- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com