Knowing Exercise

Only about a third of Americans can identify that basic recommendation that we get 30 minutes or more of physical activity every day, according to a new study.  And fewer than half meet the recommendations.  While the analysis is new, the data are from 2005.  But it gets at the heart of what people know -- in this case, what they know about exercise.

Exercise Makes You Smarter

I was reading a NYTimes Magazine article this weekend and was struck by an experiment (abstract available here) that compared running, lifting weights, and sitting quietly and how well college students did on a memory task.  Running led to better memory than either of the other two.  According to the abstract:

These data extend the current knowledge base by indicating that acute exercise-induced changes in cognition are disproportionately related to executive control and may be specific to the aerobic exercise domain.

Translated: aerobic exercises such as running apparently do something to the brain to make it work better.

How I can tie this to political knowledge, I'm not sure.  It's not like we can make people do jumping jacks while watching or reading the news, but it might be interesting to include in a survey items that attempt to tap a respondent's aerobic activities.  My guess is, any difference or effect here is lost in the maze of other potential variables that influence political knowledge -- which is usually more long-term memory, than this example.  Still cool. 

Gotta run!

Exercise and Weight

We've been told over and over -- if you exercise (and eat right), you'll lose weight. Not so much, or so says a Time Magazine article (image from the site at the right). The online version is a bit different than the print version, which I read this weekend. But the result is the same ... yeah, exercising is good for you, but it's what you eat that counts. And a burst of exercise, that twenty minutes you do a day on some torture machine, that is not the way to go if you want to lose weight. And even more important, after exercising many people decide they need a treat -- a muffin, or some caloric catastrophe from Starbucks.

Why are we always told to exercise? It's good for ya, sure, but there's a whole industry built around going to the gym or buying crap for your house that ends up more of a place to hang clothes than actually use. But we don't want to upset the food industry all that much, so what people know about losing weight is more about spending time at the gym rather than not eating at McDonald's.