We’re Quite a Few Steps Behind

Posted By elissa on Oct 20, 2010 | 2 comments

The title of this NY Times article pretty much says it all: “The Pedometer Test: Americans Take Fewer Steps.” It summarizes the results of a recent study on the number of daily steps taken by American adults.  Yeah, as you might have guessed, it’s fairly low. But the kicker is that it’s also lower than the number of steps taken by people in other developed countries.

Americans are thousands of steps behind other countries when it comes to daily physical activity, according to new research that used pedometers to measure movement.

The study tracked the steps of 1,136 adults around the United States who wore pedometers for two days in 2003. The results were compared to similar pedometer studies in Switzerland, Australia and Japan. The data collected showed that Americans, on average, took 5,117 steps a day, far short of the averages in western Australia (9,695 steps), Switzerland (9,650 steps) and Japan (7,168 steps). The findings were published in the October issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

…“It did surprise me that Americans were that sedentary,” said the lead author, David R. Bassett Jr., a professor in the department of kinesiology, recreation and sport studies at the University of Tennessee. “A person is typically considered sedentary if they take less than 5,000 steps per day.”

The study also showed that American men, with an average daily step count of 5,340, are moving more than women, who averaged only 4,912 steps a day.

This has actually made me kinda curious about how many steps I take per day! Time to order a pedometer, methinks.