“I’d better rest on the couch!” - this is exactly the answer given to the parents of Italian teenagers when they try to involve their children in a healthy lifestyle.
According to a recent study, Italian children and adolescents are almost the most lazy in Europe when it comes to sports. “The authorities are seriously concerned about the situation,” said Corrado Zunino, head of the Italian Society of Pediatrics (Società italiana di pediatria), citing data from the ISTAT National Statistical Agency.
Recent polls have shown that the number of lazy children and young people continues to grow almost exponentially: if earlier adolescents quit playing sports at 14 years old, now this happens three years earlier at 11. According to doctors, the complete lack of sport in life human leads to various kinds of diseases, which include obesity.
These sad statistics, says Zunino, can be explained by the recent crisis of 2012, which caused the worst year in Italian sports history.
Now children and adolescents are no longer playing sports for several reasons: 64.5% of respondents said that it was a boring and monotonous activity, while 24.4% of respondents explained that sport requires too much effort. 19.4% of children and adolescents explained their decision by too picky behavior of trainers and more than 56% of all people who took part in the study said that their parents are forced to lead a healthy lifestyle, so playing sports does not bring any pleasure.
The head of the Italian Society of Pediatrics explains: “This is a serious problem. With such data, we cannot move forward. Regular physical activity is a great way to prevent diseases of future generations. ”
Today, only one in four Italians aged 15 to 24 years is willing to regularly devote time to sports.
These figures clearly indicate that Italy has become one of the laziest nations in Europe. Every fourth Italian from 15 to 24 years old leads a sedentary lifestyle. Every second teenager 15 years old refuses to constantly engage in sports. Similar indicators are lower only in Greece and Romania, as well as in France, where schoolchildren do physical education only 2 hours a week.
As for the adult population of Italy, they devote only about 95 days a year to classes in the gym, while the average in Europe is 108 days. Only the inhabitants of Holland turned out to be lazier than Italians, who devote only 93 days to training. The most athletic, and therefore healthy, are considered energetic Spaniards (they are ready to spend more than 130 days a year in the gym, the French (116 days), the Swedes (115), the British (108) and the Germans (101). However, the Spaniards easily broke the record residents of the United States of America: smiling Americans spend 135 days a year in sports, while the following trend is observed in Italy: women in the country improve their body more often than their men: 83 percent of the fair sex regularly monitor their physical shape, and 19 percent women like Ali himself, that in the new year, they will have time for sports.
Meanwhile, residents of the Apennine Peninsula are getting ready for the upcoming Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, the opening ceremony of which is scheduled for February 7.
The country's Prime Minister, Enrico Letta (Enrico Letta), said that he plans to attend the Olympics, as well as lead the procession of the entire Italian delegation. The lazy people of the country definitely have something to strive for: the Italian government has promised athletes 140 thousand euros - for each gold medal, 75 thousand euros - for silver and 50 thousand euros - for the bronze. What is not an incentive?
