The Amish community prefers to live apart from the industrialized world, and new research suggests that outsiders could learn a lesson or two about personal fitness from it.

A new study has found that members of an Old Order Amish community in Canada are much less likely to be overweight or obese than people living in modern society, mainly because the Amish engage in so much physical activity in their daily lives.

"The Amish were able to show us just how far we've fallen in the last 150 years or so in terms of the amount of physical activity we typically perform," lead author Dr. David R. Bassett Jr. of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville said in a news release.

"It is unreasonable to suggest that we return to a lifestyle where vigorous physical activity dominates our workplace," Bassett said. But the mainstream world can learn something from the Amish, according to the Tennessee researcher.

In the study, Bassett and his colleagues asked 98 members of an Old Order Amish community in Ontario to wear a pedometer to keep track of how many steps they took each day. Participants also filled out questionnaires about their physical activity.

The Amish were much less likely to be overweight or obese, Bassett's team reports in the January issue of the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

Just 4 percent of them were obese and 26 percent were overweight. In contrast, about 15 percent of non-Amish Canadians are obese and almost 51 percent are overweight. In the U.S., about 31 percent of residents are obese and 65 percent are overweight.

The Amish diet is rich in fatty foods and sweets, so the secret to slimmer waistlines seems to be in physical activity.

Amish men reported an average of 10 hours a week of vigorous physical activity and more than 40 hours of moderate activity. Women did not report as much vigorous activity, but they engaged in nearly as much moderate activity in their daily lives, according to the report.

These levels of physical activity were much higher than those reported in a survey of modernized nations.

On average, Amish men walked about 18,000 steps a day and women walked about 14,000 steps a day.

Most of the physical activity revolved around farm work, but it also included activities such as construction, furniture making, childcare and household chores.

"What we should do is realize through this study that the modern environment has changed for the worst in terms of promoting activity and good health," Bassett said. "It will be up to each of us to adapt to this reality by finding new opportunities to become and stay active."

SOURCE: Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise, January 2004.

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