Indians among laziest in the world; just take 4,297 steps in a day

Scientists tracked smartphones to find that Indians walked an average of 4,500 steps a day, while the worldwide average stood at 4,961.

A new study has listed India among the world's laziest countries. The study, which compared walking patterns of people from 46 countries, placed India at a low 39, with people averaging only 4,297 steps a day.

Researchers from Stanford University tracked the smartphones of 7.17 lakh people in 111 countries, in what is being called the largest ever study on human movement, reports journal Nature. Scientists tracked smartphones to gain 68 million days' worth of data.

People in Hong Kong particularly are the most active, walking an average of 6,880 steps, followed by China at large (6,189), Ukraine (6,107), Japan (6,010) and Russia (5,969). Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia were ranked the lowest, with people walking less than 4,000 steps a day on an average.

The UK, Italy, Germany and France average between 5,000-5,500 steps a day, while the US, Australia, Canada and the UAE only manage between 4,500-4,900 steps a day. An average person walks 4,961 steps per day over an average of 14 hours.

The study, which was published in the journal Nature, was able to draw a parallel between the rate of obesity in these countries with the amount people walked.

However, the data findings that Indian women walk even less than Indian men assumes even more alarming significance.

The study further showed that larger number of steps recorded are associated with lower obesity, however, for females, the prevalence of obesity increases more rapidly as step volume decreases (232 per cent obesity increase for females versus 67 per cent increase for males; comparing lowest versus highest activity).

OneIndia News