Less Than Three Percent of U.S. Adults Live a Healthy Lifestyle

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Less Than Three Percent of U.S. Adults Live a Healthy Lifestyle

April 1st, 2016

Awake Goy

A balanced diet is part of a healthy lifestyle.

A recent study by researchers at three universities used four criteria to determine the health status of Americans. The results showed that over 97% of those studied were not “healthy”.

Criteria used to gauge the healthiness of a participant’s lifestyle were: an appropriate balanced diet, defined as being within the top 40 percent of people who ate foods suggested by the Department of Agriculture; being active, defined as 150 minutes of moderate or vigorous exercise each week as measured by an accelerometer; not smoking, measured by testing blood samples; and normal body fat percentage, measured by X-ray.

Researchers used data from the 2003-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. There were 4,745 participants and their ages ranged from 20 to 85 years.

Analysis of the data revealed that only 2.7% of the participants had all four healthy lifestyle characteristics, and 11% had none. About 16% had three of the criteria, 37% had two of them, and 34% had one. Other results showed that 71.5% of the participants were nonsmokers, 46.5% received enough exercise, 37.9% ate a healthy diet, and 9.6% had a “normal” body fat percentage.

The four behaviors used to determine the healthiness of lifestyle are basic and the researchers emphasized that they play an important role in reducing the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers. Those maladies are the nation’s leading causes of early death and disability.