Boston Number Three Energetic City

It must be the Dunkies Turbo Ice. Well, not really. The makers of Hiro Beverage, yet another option on the ever-expanding field of contenders to Red Bull, asked Sperling's BestPlaces to come up with some stats on the most energetic cities to help hype the beverage's launch. Statistics supported the assertion and put Boston in third, San Francisco took the top spot and New York City was the nearest East Coast contender hitting the top 50 at number 21. The statistics were varied and conclusions were drawn across a number of factors

… Sperling looked at government statistics on how people commute, and how much time they spent each week engaged in moderate and vigorous exercise. Sperling also analyzed results from the world's largest health questionnaire to find how people were feeling, in regards to their general health and also their physical and emotional wellbeing. Sperling looked at the recreational resources available to the residents of each metro, such as the natural resources like oceans, mountains, or climate, and the number of fitness centers and outdoor recreation stores. Finally, Sperling considered the area's partiality towards healthy living, by looking at the number of farmers' markets, food co-ops and manufacturers of organic products.

Boston ranked low in the 80's (say a B-) for both Active Lifestyle and Quality of Health, Healthy Living got a B+ rating while Recreation Resources were rated at nearly 100 – helping the average. These lists are so confusing. Just last week the "Walking City" of Boston was snubbed by Prevention Magazine and was excluded from their top 10 walking cities. They based their rankings on air quality, parks, athletic shoes sold, and weather. And if weather didn't drag us down we don't know that would. But we're still energetic - perhaps America really does run on Dunkin.

Sometimes we have a hard time finding an image - in this case the photo featured comes from Flickr user J. Random and is aptly titled "Counting Energy"