Trends over 5 Decades in U.S. Occupation-Related Physical Activity and Their Associations with Obesity
By T. Church, Diana M. Thomas, C. Tudor-Locke, P. Katzmarzyk, C. Earnest, Ruben Q. Rodarte, Corby K. Martin, S. Blair, C. Bouchard. PLoS ONE, 2011
1,271 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Background The true causes of the obesity epidemic are not well understood and there are few longitudinal population-based data published examining this issue. The objective of this analysis was to examine trends in occupational physical activity during the past 5 decades and explore how these trends relate to concurrent changes in body weight in the U.S. Methodology/Principal Findings Analysis of energy expenditure for occupations in U.S. private industry since 1960 using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mean body weight was derived from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES). In the early 1960's almost half the jobs in private industry in the U.S. required at least moderate intensity physical activity whereas now less than 20% demand this level of energy expenditure. Since 1960 the estimated mean daily energy expenditure due to work related physical activity has dropped by more than 100 calories in both women and men. Energy balance model predicted weights based on change in occupation-related daily energy expenditure since 1960 for each NHANES examination period closely matched the actual change in weight for 40–50 year old men and women. For example from 1960–62 to 2003–06 we estimated that the occupation-related daily energy expenditure decreased by 142 calories in men. Given a baseline weight of 76.9 kg in 1960–02, we estimated that a 142 calories reduction would result in an increase in mean weight to 89.7 kg, which closely matched the mean NHANES weight of 91.8 kg in 2003–06. The results were similar for women. Conclusion Over the last 50 years in the U.S. we estimate that daily occupation-related energy expenditure has decreased by more than 100 calories, and this reduction in energy expenditure accounts for a significant portion of the increase in mean U.S. body weights for women and men.
Subfields: Occupational Therapy, Physiology, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/269864ec1902bfe0e856df40b9ed07a11b58f97c
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Physiology
In Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
Citations in the corpus
- Obesity: a chronic relapsing progressive disease process. A position statement of the World Obesity Federation (2017, background): “At the same time that tasty foods have become less expensive and more abundant, physical activity has gradually declined (57) and together with the abundance of food provide the major drivers for obesity.”
- Exercise standards for testing and training: a scientific statement from the American Heart Association. (2013, background): “determined by both a high rate of physical inactivity and an increase in caloric intake.(401,441) Optimally, weight reduction in”
- Time Use and Physical Activity: A Shift Away from Movement across the Globe (2012, methodology): “patterns and trends over time, such as in occupational energy expenditure using occupational codes (22,35).”
- Knee osteoarthritis has doubled in prevalence since the mid-20th century (2017, background): “Therefore, based on the limited data available, occupation-related physical activity among individuals in the early industrial and postindustrial samples seems to fit the trend of a shift toward less physically demanding jobs over the past half-century (43).”
- Energy balance and its components: implications for body weight regulation. (2012, background): “the same period (13) but only if such activity changes were not compensated for by nonoccupational activity changes in or modulations of food intake.”
- A review of lifestyle factors that contribute to important pathways associated with major depression: diet, sleep and exercise. (2013, background): “In the United States it was estimated that over the past 50 years occupationrelated energy expenditure decreased by more than 100 calories/day (Church et al., 2011).”
- A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System (2015, background): “Westerterp and Speakman (2008) have argued that Americans have not become less active during the period when obesity was rising at a rapid rate, but others have found otherwise (Archer et al., 2013; Church et al., 2011).”