1 Built Environments and Obesity Jeffery Sobal and Brian Wansink Cornell University Same Rules: Changes in red Thoughts in blue Introduction Obesity is a complex condition that is influenced by many diverse types of factors that intersect and interact. Understanding obesity requires multiple approaches that range from reductionist examination of the smallest mechanisms to synthetic consideration of global processes. Considerable research on obesity takes a biological perspective, examining physiological, genetic, and other characteristics and processes involved in feeding and body weight maintenance. Supplementing those perspectives are behavioral, cognitive, and other psychological analyses that provide information about motivations, attitudes and other reasons for why people are fatter or thinner. Additionally, social science investigations have revealed how social structure, culture, economics, among other factors, markedly affect food intake and body weight stability or lability. This chapter will move past physiology, beyond behavior, and separate from the social to consider how the physical environment influence obesity. An environmental perspective (Chang & Christakis 2002) has recently emerged as a way to both frame and interact with other approaches. Environmental approaches consider how the The published version of this chapter is: Sobal, Jeffery and Brian Wansink (2008), “Built Environments and Obesity,” in Obesity: Causes, Mechanisms, Treatment, and Prevention, ed. Elliot M. Blass, Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates Publishing