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Study Finds Kids Take 90 Seconds Longer To Run Mile Now Vs

On average, it takes children 90 seconds longer to run a mile than their counterparts did 30 years ago. Heart related fitness has declined 5 percent per decade since 1975 for children ages 9 to 17.

The American Heart Association American Heart Association, whose conference featured the research on [Nov. 19], says it's the first to show that children's fitness has declined worldwide over the last three decades.

Health experts recommend that children 6 and older get 60 minutes of moderately vigorous activity accumulated over a day. Only one third of American kids do now.

The good news, I guess, is that researchers said in many regions, including North America, the fitness decline is leveling off, though in China it's still getting worse.

Researchers' concern is that if cardiovascular health is bad in kids now, it'll be terrible when they're adults. After all, adults, before you get all Old Man Grumpus about "how back in my day, we could run a mile without collapsing," remember your obesity rate has shot up over the last 30 years, too.

So what can we blame for the lack of movement? The first thought that comes to mind might be video games and other screens, but that's only a small part of it. Over the last 30 years, we've also had a lot more suburban sprawl, fast food chain expansion and child poverty all of which contribute to poorer health. Sprawl along with worries about child safety also explain a precipitous drop the percentage of children walking or biking to school, from 50% in 1969 to 13% in 2009, according to the Safe Routes to School National Partnership, a private public advocacy organization. And with food, farm subsidies go much more toward crops used for unhealthy food than for many fruits and vegetables, creating a price imbalance that makes junk cheap and good stuff relatively expensive.

Also in the last 30 years, schools have cut physical education because of budget issues and institution of stricter academic standards. Schools keep cutting athletic programs, or instituting pay to play rules, restricting opportunities for kids to get free or inexpensive organized activity, particularly at the elementary or middle school level, when kids are trying out different sports on for size.

Then again, there's no profit in children playing for free, and it's very easy to frighten parents into deciding they need high level competition for their children at an early age, rather than let their kids figure it out themselves outside (and with sprawl, crime worries and all the other kids in organized sports, who would those kids play with, anyway?)

Often, obesity is portrayed as being about bad parenting and an inability to put down the fork. But the choices, if you will, about obesity aren't just on the individual level. In many ways, we as a society have made choices that have led us to the point that if we dared ask our children to run to the store, they could not actually run to the store.

Most importantly for this blog, Bob is a father of four who is in the throes of being a sports parent, a youth coach and a youth sports economy stimulator in an inner ring suburb of Chicago. He reserves the right to change names to protect the innocent and the extremely, extremely guilty.