99% of children are not getting enough exercise

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Canada’s physical activity guidelines suggest that all children aged 5 to 17 years accumulate at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity every day.

Unfortunately,  99.5% of the 856 schoolkids (aged 10-12 years) enrolled in this study did NOT reach that 60 minute minimum.

In fact, of the average 16.7 hours per day of data collected per day, the average child spent…

• 13.3 hours (79.6%) being sedentary.
• 2.9 hours of their day (17.4%) engaged in light intensity activity
• and only 35 minutes for boys and 24 minutes for girls in the moderate-to-vigorous and vigorous activity ranges

Sadly, none of the girls and only 0.5% of the boys met the required minimum of 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) every day.

[box type="note"]If you’re wondering what happened to the 24 – 16.7 =  7.3 hours that weren’t tracked by pedometer…..these were the hours that the ‘average kid’ spent SLEEPING.[/box]

Here is some more data for you to chew on…

• 22.6% of boys  performed 30 minutes of MVPA per day at least 6 days per week
  
• 5.4% of girls performed 30 minutes of MVPA per day at least 6 days per week
• 71.8% of boys accumulated 30 minutes of MVPA at least 3 days per week
• 39.6% of girls accumulated 30 minutes of MVPA at least 3 days per week
• Not a single child accumulated at least 90 minutes of MVPA at least 6 days of the week
• Only 2% achieved 90 minutes of MVPA on at least 2 days of the week (3.3% of boys, 0.9% of girls)
• When we drop the frequency down to 1 day per week, we see 16.8% of the kids performing 90 minutes of MVPA - with approximately 10% more boys than girls doing so (22.3% and 12.3%, respectively)

Conclusion

Our kids simply aren’t getting enough exercise….is it really so surprising that more and more of them are obese and being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

[box type="note"]This study was conducted in urban Toronto. I have no idea how directly to apply this data to rural communities of other communities outside of Ontario, Canada. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the kids in your hometown are just as lazy as the ones in Toronto.[/box]

Reference

• Chronic Diseases and Injuries in Canada
• Project BEAT

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