I am a strong believer in walking for health — balancing caloric intake with its expenditure in activity. Now it seems that the American College of Sports Medicine has set out to demonstrate this axiom by hooking up a group of Amish to pedometers and monitoring their diet and exercise.
Amish men, who mostly work as farmers, logged an average of 18,425 steps a day. Women, who handle gardening, cooking and child care, recorded 14,196 steps. One man covered more than 51,000 steps in a single day by walking his field behind a team of plow horses. All participants exceeded the 10,000 daily steps often recommended for cardiovascular health. “Vigorous” activity in which Amish men took part included heavy lifting, shoveling, chopping wood and tossing straw bales.
High-calorie diets of meat, potatoes, breads, pies and cakes didn’t interfere with maintenance of a healthy body weight, the study found. Only 4 percent of Amish adults were obese, compared with 31 percent of Americans overall; 26 percent of the Amish were overweight, compared with 64.5 percent of Americans.
Scarton, Dana. “Doing The Plow.” The Washington Post. 13 January 2004. <www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11578-2004Jan12> (4 April 2004).