{{Kenyan children have been ranked among the most active in the world while Aussie kids trailed as the least active.}}<\/p>\n
A study released Wednesday, which compared data taken from 15,000 young Australians with that from 14 other countries, found that the most active youngsters overall were in Mozambique and New Zealand followed by Mexico.<\/p>\n
Next came Kenya, Nigeria, England, Colombia, Ghana, Finland and South Africa while Australia was grouped with Canada, Ireland and the United States just above bottom-placed Scotland.<\/p>\n
The study showed that more than 80 percent of Australian children aged 5 to 17 failed to get the recommended 60 minutes of moderate physical activity a day, despite most playing a sport.<\/p>\n
Australian children are among the least active in the world, ranking behind those in Britain and New Zealand, researchers say warning that the sports-mad nation was raising a \u201cgeneration of couch potatoes\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do rank quite highly on organised sport participation and we are a sporting nation as we like to say,\u201d Natasha Schranz, a researcher from the University of South Australia, told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut this has clearly shown that it\u2019s not enough because we still rank poorly for overall physical activity levels.\u201d<\/p>\n
Australia\u2019s report card, drawn from data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and a national survey of secondary school students, found that less than 30 percent of children met Australian guidelines of no more than two hours of screen time per day.<\/p>\n
Fellow researcher Grant Tomkinson, also from the University of South Australia, said many youngsters were spending so much time being sedentary they were likely to hurt their health, growth and development.<\/p>\n
Trevor Shilton, from Australia\u2019s Heart Foundation, said the result was a \u201cwake-up call\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re raising a generation of couch potatoes,\u201d he said. \u201cFar too many kids are being driven to school and spend most of their time sitting when they get there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re facing is a potential future health crisis where heart disease, diabetes and obesity rates will rise,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
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{{Kenyan children have been ranked among the most active in the world while Aussie kids trailed as the least active.}} A study released Wednesday, which compared data taken from 15,000 young Australians with that from 14 other countries, found that the most active youngsters overall were in Mozambique and New Zealand followed by Mexico. Next […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000052286,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-14544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000052286,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14544.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14544.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14544.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14544.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14544.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14544.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000052286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14544"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=14544"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=14544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}