Top 20 Laziest Countries

The Lancet has released a hefty series of studies on the growing worldwide health problem, inactivity, which has now been elevated to "pandemic" status.

The take-home message from the series is that about a third of people across the world do not meet the minimum activity recommendations (which is generally about 2.5 hours of moderate activity per week).

However overweight, obese, and sedentary Americans have the reputation for being, we’re not among the most inactive, with 40.5% of U.S. citizens being rated as such. As is the case for many of the nations analyzed, the situation is worse for U.S. women, with 47% being inactive, vs. only 33.5% of men.

Unsurprisingly, in the higher-income countries, jobs are providing less of a person’s overall activity than they did decades ago. Calorie expenditure from work-related activity has fallen by about 100 calories per day, which would translate roughly to a weight gain of about 7.5 pounds/year. Luckily, the amount of activity gotten from one’s leisure time has increased in recent years, filling this gap somewhat. But we’re still in the red when it comes to energy intake vs. output.

At heart, the issue is not an aesthetic one. Experts estimate that 5.3 million deaths worldwide are the result of inactivity, which is about the same number attributed to tobacco use, making the situation seem even more grave. The World Health Organization (WHO) says that physical inactivity is the fourth leading cause of deaths due to non-communicable diseases worldwide.