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Uncle Sam’s playing good cop, bad cop. On Monday, we reported that he wants you to have fun with your food. What a nice guy. Now he hits us with a fitness checklist that reads like week one at Paris Island: exercise five days a week, strengthen up, increase flexibility, quit smoking, get movin’.
America’s boot camp, a.k.a. Healthy People 2010 Initiative, is a 10–year health plan aimed at ending the nation’s love affair with the couch. It’s rooted in overwhelming evidence that regular exercise is the single best prescription for a long and healthy life. Your chances of suffering from heart disease, hypertension, stress, and osteoporosis are lessened with frequent physical activity, which is why the feds are rolling out the tough love.
Or not so tough. At first glance, the program’s major goals, announced last month by Surgeon General David Satcher, seem attainable, even humble. By decade’s end, 30% of Americans will exercise 30 minutes a day, and the number of obese children will be slashed in half. No problem. If you have a pair of running shoes in your closet or bike in the garage, you’re probably safe.
But these marching orders won’t be easy for the 40% of Americans who don’t exercise at all. Consider some equally telling statistics: 11% of 6–11 year olds and 14% of 12–17 are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And only 15% of the US population currently log 30 minutes of daily exercise. Americans, you see, have bought into the sedentary life required of our information–driven/press–button era with characteristic gusto.
Even the government misses the exercise mark. The 2010 initiative is the Department of Health and Human Service’s third 10–year push, (the program dates back to 1979), designed to improve America’s health and fitness. Although the 2000 Initiative report card isn’t final, preliminary results suggest that more than 40% of Americans failed to meet their end–of–millennium goals.
“The [United States] government wasn’t able to meet its last ten–year goals, and some of these 2010 goals might not be attainable either,” said Susan Barr Ph.D., professor of nutrition at the University of British Columbia. “For example, obesity has long been a target, but its rate has increased dramatically since 1990, particularly in kids.”
Part of the problem, she adds, is that the government outlines health goals, but then doesn’t fund the programs needed to attain them.
“It identifies where to go, but not how to get there,” Barr said. “But at least it’s (The government) starting to understand health more globally, such as recognizing how it’s tied to income and education.”
Barr is referring to the program’s second major thrust, which addresses the glaring health disparities between whites and members of other demographic segments. Think of it as exercise’s version of the digital divide, that disheartening social phenomenon in which some minorities lack access to the Internet. Instead of missing out on technology however, today’s blue–collar workers, homemakers, and minority groups don’t exercise nearly as much as affluent white males, according to a recent survey.
An analysis of the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which tracked the physical activity of close to 19,000 adults, found that while only 29% of white–collar professionals skipped physical activity, 40% of blue–collar workers and 47% of homemakers avoided breaking a sweat. In addition, 40% of Mexican Americans reported no physical activity, compared with 35% of blacks and 18% of whites, according to the analysis of the survey published in the Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. As for education, only 26% of college graduates avoided exercise, a number that rose to 47% among people who didn’t graduate high school.
Other major goals of the 2010 initiative include tackling tobacco and substance abuse, improving mental health care, fostering responsible sexual behavior, improving the nation’s access to health care, and ensuring a healthy environment.
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