Too much sitting in front of the computer and television appears to leave teenagers more and more lethargic and immobile. Even those who are not overweight. This was shown in a study by the University of Essex in England. In 1998, the researchers selected 300 ten-year-olds, with very few overweight children, from six schools in the town of Chelmsford and tested their fitness in a 20-metre run. The researchers at Gavin Sandercock repeated the tests in 2008 with a further 300 ten-year-olds. Result: The children from 1998 beat the children in 2008 in the running competition by 95 percent. Although the participants in the study in 2008 were not anymore overweight than the comparative group ten years previous, there was a clear difference in fitness. “It was a great difference and it was frightening,” says study leader Sandercock. Researchers worry that they will get similar or even worse results when they carry out the tests on teenagers from areas with higher numbers of overweight children.
“Merely measuring how overweight children are will probably not be sufficient if we are dealing with the future health of children,” says the study leader. He sees the necessity to monitor fitness in the future. “We have a generation of children who spend an increasing volume of time in front of the television or computer.”
(Apotheken Umschau of 22 December 2009 – by Sibylla Machens)
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