I'm not sure what to think of the latest buzz that sitting for more than three hours a day takes two years off your life, particularly such statements as, "Sitting, it turns out, can shorten life expectancy almost as much as smoking can." As with many such generalized studies, I think it's making its splash long before there has been sufficient time for analysis and confirmation or contradiction. Be that as it may, it's clear enough that the human body is more designed for movement than for sitting on our hind ends for extended periods.
The articles I've read about this new study recommend that we watch less television, cut down our computer time, and walk to a colleague's office rather than sending an e-mail. Only the first is at all practical for those whose work involves the computer, and whose colleagues may be half a world away. Our hope, I assume, lies in taking frequent breaks to get up and move around, although the value of such behavior may be hard to sell to an employer who is more worried about productivity than longevity.
But as long as they're considering impracticalities, I'm puzzled by the obvious omission in the articles: Not one has addressed the long hours our children spend sitting in school, with less freedom of motion than an office worker with a swivel chair and the ability to walk at will to the bathroom. When was the last time you heard a serious suggestion to keep school time to under three hours? (Besides here, of course.)
Worse still, consider what we do to our children before school: The hours tightly bound in car seats, or confined in other devices, aka baby shackles. Little time spent on their tummies learning to become mobile. Day care and early school where mobility is discouraged in the name of education or just plain crowd control.
No wonder we don't care to get off our duffs.
"Due to the obesity problem in America", reimbursement for half-pints of milk served at school is now restricted to fat-free or 1% milk only, not 2% - we were recently informed. Seriously?? How about soda machines in schools and cut backs in physical education programs being more significant contributors, to say nothing of what you have mentioned?
Here here! (Or, for those who want to bare arms, hear hear!) The best quote I have heard came from a high-schooler in "Digital Immigrants" who said he had to "power down" when he got to school. I don't think he was simply talking about his phone, either. . .
Bizarre. I'd call that a leftover from the discredited "fat is the demon" craze of long-ago. And yet even as recently as Switch, making the move from whole to low-fat milk is promoted as an effective way to combat obesity.
The soda lobby must be HUGE. I think of the fuss made about bottled water companies draining our aquifers: it is in truth a problem for Florida, but why are soda manufacturers exempt from this concern?
And why can our children easily get unhealthy soda for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and all times in between, but to give them the benefits of good, fresh, straight-from-the-cow milk in Florida, one must pretend they are pets? Perhaps this is just the flip side of all those people who pretend their pets are children....
