Sitting on the job

You wouldn't buy a car because of its mileage if you barely intended to use it. And here we are, one of the best ratings of the lot, right up there with the caribou, and we spend all day sitting around.  Evolution doesn't normally select for redundant qualities, that's why fish in caves tend to be blind, so maybe this is a big hint ...


From ScienceDirect.com

Getting off our bottoms is one of the major public health problems of our time. 

The challenge is to bring this up the political agenda, an agenda that has lots of conflicting interests. One of the problems is that debate about physical activity is bound up in that about obesity and, because it is complex with many players and many different interests, has led to what Professor Tim Lang calls a policy cacophony. 

Of course, there is a connection between the two, but its not as simple as be more active and you'll lose weight. The very efficiency with which we move about means we can go an awful long way on remarkably little. If you're on a bike, the most efficient means of ground transport that there has ever been, then this just gets worse, or better, as you will. Many years ago friends and I were cycling in the Black Mountains in Wales and, during a break, were discussing not only the different ways of dismantling a Mars Bar but also its energy content. Suffice to say we reckoned that one Mars Bar was good for at least 50 miles.

It now seems that the most likely causal relationship is that being overweight discourages you from taking physical exercise. Indeed from what I remember from the book "The body has a mind of its own" (so good that I've lent out my own copy but it's reviewed here) it appears that the mental map of an obese person's body can become reduced to the extent that some motions no longer even seem to be possible. 

Up until recently physical activity has often been seen to be synonymous with sport. This takes the heat off special interest groups such as the motor industry which want to keep us dependent on our cars and sees the solution, not in choosing to walk or cycle, but in driving to the gym or out into the countryside with an accessory mountain bike strapped to the back.

But sport is never going to be a lifetime answer for very many people and physical education, which is primarily about giving young people awareness of their own bodies, is at least as likely to be about Indian Dance or whatever as it is being in the football team; no matter how willfully stupid David Cameron might be on the issue.

The most likely way in which we're going to get people moving under their own steam is to make our towns and cities good places to walk or cycle, plan our communities so that most of the things we need can be got to without using a car and make it clear that one of the best things a parent can do with their young children is to walk places with them. 

This is not likely to happen as long as we remain in thrall to the great car economy but, with  fewer young adults learning to drive, the signs are that we just might be beginning to get over it