Freakonomics Radio
The Zero-Minute Workout
There is strong evidence that exercise is wildly beneficial. There is even stronger evidence that most people hate to exercise. So if a pill could mimic the effects of working out, why wouldn’t we want to take it?
We all know that exercise is good for us. We also know that most people don’t get nearly enough. Thirty-four percent of U.S. adults are “physically inactive”; another 20% are “insufficiently active.” And, not surprisingly, almost 40% of U.S. adults are classified as obese. To be reductive: many of us eat too much and exercise too little.
The cost of physical inactivity is massive — not just in illness and death but in dollars, too: researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Emory University say the U.S. spends around $117 billion a year on health care due to inadequate physical activity. And those are just the direct costs from treating cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and so on. It doesn’t even include things like loss of productivity.
A lot of smart people have spent a lot of time and effort trying to get people to exercise more. Mostly, they’ve failed. On this week’s episode of Freakonomics Radio: what happens next?
Obesity started out as a problem in wealthier countries, but now it’s spread to middle- and low-income countries. The contributing factors are not in dispute: we consume too many calories, especially low-quality calories; and we don’t burn off nearly enough calories with physical activity. To be fair, burning calories through exercise is a pretty inefficient process; it takes a lot more exercise than you’d think to burn off one cheeseburger. In that regard, it’d be better to just eat less.
That said, exercise is also considered a very valuable input for overall health. The benefits of exercise have not been oversold, says Michael Joyner, a physiologist at the Mayo Clinic.
“[P]eople who are physically active, especially if they get somewhere between 150 and 300 minutes per week of moderately vigorous physical activity, have a large reduction in their all-cause mortality — typically about a 50% or maybe 40% reduction in their…
