Health In The US: Only 2.7 Percent Of American Adults Live A Healthy Lifestyle, Study Finds

Despite the rising popularity of Apple Watch, Fitbit and other fitness gadgets, a new study conducted jointly by Oregon State University and the University of Mississippi has revealed that adults in the United States are not as healthy as they should be. Results of the study show that only 2.7 percent of American adults live a healthy lifestyle.

Yahoo News reports that the research, published in Mayo Clinical Proceedings, achieved its conclusion by assessing adults in the U.S. based on four barometers that could define healthy lifestyle characteristics. These include an appropriate balanced diet, moderate exercise, a recommended body fat percentage and being a non-smoker.

Utilizing the 2003-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data, the researchers discovered that out of 4,745 people, 97.3 percent of them failed to meet all four healthy lifestyle characteristics. Moreover, 16 percent of them met three criteria, 37 percent had two, 34 percent met one, and 11 percent had none.

The researchers also found that 71 percent of the respondents were not smoking, 38 percent consumed a balanced diet, 46 percent were moderately active, and 10 percent possessed a normal body fat percentage. The results also uncovered that adults with ages 60 years old and above had fewer healthy lifestyle characteristics than adults with ages 20-39.

"This is pretty low, to have so few people maintaining what we would consider a healthy lifestyle," Ellen Smit, senior author of the study and associate professor in the OSU College of Public Health and Human Sciences, stated in an article of The Washington Post. "This is sort of mind boggling. There's clearly a lot of room for improvement."

Smit and her team believed that the results of their study are more reliable compared to previous studies because they utilized technology to monitor the participants instead of self-reported surveys. They also noted that more studies should be done to figure out ways for American adults to adopt multiple healthy lifestyle characteristics.