A recent study sought out to find what percentage of Americans engage in four behaviors that are considered key to a healthy lifestyle. If you had to guess, what percentage do you think received passing grades in all four categories?
Nearly no one. Specifically, it found that 2.7 percent of those who participated in the 2003-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey got 150 minutes of activity a week, had a healthy diet, didn't smoke, and had low levels of body fat.
"This is sort of mind boggling," Ellen Smit, a professor at Oregon State University who co-authored the study, which was published by the Mayo Clinic, said in a statement. "There's clearly a lot of room for improvement."
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Perhaps Americans have improved over the past decade, but probably not by much. It would be shocking, for instance, if even 10 percent of us would ace all four categories.
Still, there has been a significant push for healthier habits in recent years. Michelle Obama's signature initiative as first lady has been a campaign aimed at encouraging healthier diets and more physical activity, particularly for kids.
And as Ariana Eunjung Cha of the Washington Post points out, wearable fitness trackers are all the rage; employers have increasingly turned to them as a way to encourage workers to get more exercise, in the hopes that slimmer employees will be more productive and reduce health costs. However, employees aren't jumping on the wearables bandwagon with nearly as much zeal.
Many employers are also offering workers incentives to quit smoking or lose weight, initiatives that have garnered plenty of criticism from those who worry that they infringe on the privacy of workers as well as from experts who cast doubt on the efficacy of such programs in reducing health costs.
And there has been some evidence that people are getting healthier, or at least not more unhealthy. Obesity appears to have stabilized and smoking has steadily declined in recent years, with less than a fifth of adults now lighting up daily.
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