Posted October 22, 2013
Guardian (UK)
By Denis Campbell
Official health advice that said household chores help keep you active has been debunked by research, which shows that the people who do the most housework are also the most overweight.
The findings challenge Public Health England and the World Health Organisation’s endorsement of household chores as a worthwhile contribution towards a recommended target of 150 minutes of physical activity a week.
A study of the physical activity habits of 4,563 adults, carried out by Professor Marie Murphy and her colleagues at the University of Ulster, found that women and older people were particularly likely to list “domestic physical activity [as] a significant proportion of [their] moderate to vigorous physical activity”.
But the study found that those who said they did the most were also the largest.
© 2013 Guardian Newspapers Limited.