NPR: And why we should.
How many steps do you walk each day? If you live in the U.S. and can claim more than 4,774 steps daily, you're exceeding the average American's total. Comparable figures from England and Japan are 5,444 and 6,010 daily steps, respectively — with this info derived from cellphone data.
The distance that individuals walk daily varies, with a host of factors affecting the total, including where you live, what work you do and whether you are able to walk at all. In a riveting book published Tuesday, Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do is Healthy and Rewarding, Harvard University evolutionary biologist Daniel E. Lieberman cites the step data to make a point. Many of us today are fairly inactive (under 5,000 steps is defined as "sedentary"), so much so that our activity levels are mismatched with the way we evolved. READ MORE
(Source: NPR, 01/05/2021)