Some health messages such as "sitting is the new smoking" spread not because they're true, but because they're catchy and tweetable. And when promoting a new health scare, comparisons are always useful for raising alarm. "Sitting is more dangerous than smoking, kills more people than HIV and is more treacherous than parachuting. We are sitting ourselves to death," said one expert in the Los Angeles Times.
It's a great quote to show to worried family members if you want to go parachuting. But otherwise, this sort of thing can make it seem pointless to even try to live a healthy lifestyle. You work hard to quit smoking only to learn your office chair will kill you.
Matt Buman, health researcher at Arizona State University, said he and some colleagues decided to try to put "sitting is the new smoking" to the test. He told me he agrees with the evidence that sitting too much is a health hazard. There have been studies showing that people who spend more time sitting are more likely to die earlier from various chronic diseases than are people who sit less. But is sitting really as bad as or worse than smoking?