Study Finds Kids Across The Globe Too Sedentary
Mar 31st, 2010 | By admin | Category: Diet & Nutrition, Exercise, FeaturedA new study finds that American children aren’t the only couch potatoes out there.
In their study, published in The Journal of Pediatrics, Guthold and her team looked at 72,845 13- to 15-year-old schoolchildren from North and South America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. The children were surveyed between 2003 and 2007.
The researchers defined adequate physical activity as at least an hour of exercise (outside of gym class) at least five days a week. Children who spent three or more hours watching TV, playing computer games, or chatting with friends (aside from time in school or time spent doing homework) were classified as sedentary.
Just one-quarter of the boys and 15 percent of the girls were getting enough exercise by their definition, the researchers found. And a quarter of boys and nearly 30 percent of girls were sedentary and didn’t get enough exercise.
In every country, aside from Zambia, girls were less active than boys. In more than half of the countries in the study, less than a quarter of the boys were getting enough exercise.
The study’s authors also offer a number of suggestions for reversing this trend, including promoting physical education classes and installing more bike lanes.
Source: Yahoo! News
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