A love affair with fatty, processed foods and heaping portions has long been blamed for the growing weight problem in the United States, where an estimated 1 in 3 people are obese.
A report published last month, however, attempts to cast the battle against obesity in a different light. Shifts in the labor force, the study argues, mean people are far less active at work now than they were 50 years ago.
In fact, the decline in physical activity that has occurred as jobs have moved from farms and factories to the cubicle – equal to around 120-140 calories a day – closely matches the country’s weight gain since 1960. Diet, of course, has played a major role in obesity, but so has the emergence of occupations that put the human body in an office chair for eight hours a day.
The loss of those calories, researchers say, has to be made up somewhere. The study, they argue, shows the importance of workplace wellness initiatives that get workers up and moving at different parts of the day.
But it also provides plenty of reason for Americans to get off the couch and out of the house once the workday is over.
It is fortunate, then, that southern Maine residents have an alternative to treadmills and repetitive gym sessions: hundreds of miles of on- and off-road trails.
Thanks to the hard work of land trusts and outdoors organizations, there are trailheads within a short walk or ride from some of the Maine’s most densely populated neighborhoods. These trails – the Portland Trails system, the Greenbelt Walkway in South Portland, the Mountain Division Trail and the Eastern Trail, to name a few – can provide hours of entertainment and exercise.
For those who are unfamiliar with what the local trails have to offer, Saturday is National Trails Day, set aside as a celebration of all the work that has been done to build and maintain these trails, and to introduce people to their joys and benefits. National Trails Day is a gentle reminder that all these walkways and biking paths exist right outside our front doors, and are able to open up a new world to people of all ages and ability levels who want this to be an active, invigorating summer.
Coming off a beautiful Memorial Day weekend that followed a harsh winter and a wet spring, the words of John Andrews, a Saco resident who is president of the Eastern Trail Alliance, ring especially true: “Breathing fresh air, listening to the crunch of gravel and twigs underfoot, feeling the breeze in the pines and hearing the call of song birds is a refreshing, clean pleasure.”
Ben Bragdon is the managing editor of Current Publishing. He can be reached at bbragdon@keepmecurrent.com or followed on Twitter.
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