URBANA, IL (Chambana Today) – A new University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign study links traffic delays to unhealthy eating.

“In our analysis focusing on Los Angeles County, unexpected traffic delays beyond the usual congestion led to a 1% increase in fast food visits. That might not sound like a lot, but it’s equivalent to 1.2 million more fast food visits per year in LA County alone. We describe our results as being modest but meaningful in terms of potential for changing unhealthy food choices,” said study author Becca Taylor, assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at Illinois.

Taylor and her co-authors used traffic data from over two years in Los Angeles along with cell phone data involving fast-food restaurants in the time period. Using these datasets, a computational model showed a causal link between traffic and fast food. They found a much larger increase in fast food visits during the evening rush hour when traffic hit. They also found that grocery store visits had a slight decline.

“It might not be intuitive to imagine what a 30-second delay per mile feels like,” Taylor said. “I think of it as the difference between 10 a.m. traffic and 5 p.m. traffic.”

This study implies a greater pattern in major cities between traffic and fast food restaurants beyond Los Angeles. Taylor and her co-authors argue that policymakers should prioritize changes to infrastructure to ease congestion.

“Our results contribute to the literature suggesting time constraints are really important to the food choices people make. Any policies aimed at loosening time constraints — and traffic is essentially lost time — could help battle unhealthy eating,” Taylor said. “That could mean improvements in infrastructure to mitigate traffic congestion, expanding public transport availability, and potentially increasing work from home opportunities.”

The study, “Slow traffic, fast food: The effects of time lost on food store choice,” is published in the Journal of Urban Economics [DOI: 10.1016/j.jue.2025.103737]. Authors include Panka Bencsik of Vanderbilt University, Lester Lusher of the University of Pittsburgh and IZA, and Becca Taylor.