Former California State Health Officer Richard Jackson offers a prescription for a country suffering from obesity, diabetes, and poor fitness: design neighborhoods, schools, and buildings that promote incidental exercise.
"I'm going to argue in part that childhood obesity is because of the inability of children to walk to school. Nothing in America has gone down except the number of schools-70 percent since World War II. Schools have gotten bigger, and the number of kids who walk to school has decreased. In 1969 half the kids walked to school; now it's less than 15 percent. Because very few children walk to school, it feeds on itself because you don't want to be the one child that's out there walking. You don't want your son or daughter walking by themselves."
"We ought to be designing communities that entice people to exercise. You don't need to go to the gym to exercise; you can have incidental exercise in your life if you walk to the store and buy a carton of milk or walk your dog. Even walking up one flight of stairs a day for a year is a pound of body weight."
Thanks to Josh Stephens
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