We’d really rather take a taxi.
American adults walk less than adults in some other countries with lower obesity rates, according to a new study in the October issue of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise.
Researchers compared 1,136 U.S. adults wearing pedometers with adults involved in similar studies in Australia, Japan and Switzerland. The mean number of steps Americans take in a day is 5,117, compared with 9,695 for Australians, the walking leaders among the four countries. The USA’s 34% adult obesity rate is more than double Australia’s 16%.
“It did surprise me how sedentary U.S. adults are,” says David Bassett, the lead author of the study. “The additional walking seems to have an enormous public health benefit for those (other) countries.”
[i]Solvitur ambulando[/i]
“It is solved by walking.”
This became my motto about 6 weeks ago. I have been walking 5-7 times per week, 30 minutes minimum, at 2.5 – 3.5 mph. It is working! My health is improving and I feel better.
Walking is easy on the joints, and I like to pray when I walk. Give it a try!
Alas, I do agree. We don’t walk or exercise as much as we should. However, our society is not walker friendly. It used to be that as a child I could walk to a local 5 and dime store for candy or walk to a neighbor’s for an afternoon of fun probably playing some sort of game outside. Now kids can’t walk the streets for fear of being snatched. SO mom or somebody has to drive the kids down the block to a neighbor’s house. My mom and I used to walk several blocks to a neighborhood park. But now how many of these small neighborhood parks are still around??
i agree also but in a lot of places that i have lived it’s the lack of sidewalks that discourage neighbourhood walking. plus the super sizing thing doesn’t help.
Oh for pity’s sake, if Americans want to be overweight, let them be fat. What are you going to do, create legislation that makes being fat a crime? (Come to think of it, this MIGHT happen.) Be fat; die young.
That their business, however much it strains the waistline and the medical system. We tolerate and encourage sodomy but we can’t tolerate being fat? Please. Larry
Larry, as I read your comment, I found myself wondering if the assumptions and presupposition underlying your argument don’t account, at least in part, for the gap between the American and Finnish educational systems as recently discussed in another post?
WarrenS, you have lost me here. What differences do you refer to? I am interested in this information and the conclusions you are drawing therefrom.
My assumption is that evolution takes cares of those who are unfit to survive. We protect the helpless – to our considerable genetic damage – (no this in not an argument in favor of euthanasia) but the obese, by and large, do not fit into that category. They’re tubby because they choose to let it happen. Why shouldn’t they therefore be allowed to get on with it? Larry
Larry
The difference I’m referring to is an adversion to any form of government involvement or oversight. I think that, before they are competent or mature enough to make their own decisions, children are often set down a course in life – whether it be education or a lifestyle that affects their fitness and obesity – by decisions made by their parent(s).
When I worked in London for 3 months, I walked pretty much everywhere. If it was beyond walking, I took the underground or a bus and walked from there. Even eating out every day and the copious amounts of wonderful British beer, I managed to lose weight. Unfortunately I live in Orlando, which is NOT an area conducive to walking since it’s so sprawled out (not to mention the weather for 2/3 of the year alternates between 98F with 99% humidity and pouring rain). If I lived in a real city like Philadelphia or something, I could see doing a lot more walking as an integral part of life.
larry people can languish for years straining the health care system with the fantastic drugs we are developing. they won’t make you healthy but they can keep you hanging on for years and years. i don’t care if people get fat i just don’t want to be affected by it directly or indirectly.