Canada’s global ranking means our kids need to move more

Winning isn’t everything. The important thing is having fun.

But in one particular race, winning does matter. Lots. Because this race determines how healthy children are around the world. Canada came in 19 out of 47. That may not be the worst, but it certainly isn’t the best.

The Globe and Mail reported that researchers came to this result by looking at the results of how “more than one million children between the ages of nine and 17 from 50 countries performed on the shuttle run test”.

According to Ottawa researcher Justin Lang, “Kids in Canada probably aren’t as active as kids elsewhere in the world. And we have problems with sedentary behaviours where kids probably sit too much.”

Lang says that this is a “learning opportunity”.

“For Canada in particular, there are countries in northern Europe that are very similar in terms of climate and their economies and culture, yet they have fitter kids than we have.… We can maybe learn from some of these countries and find out why their kids are more active and more fit than our kids.”

Tell us what you think? Are we enabling our kids to be sedentary? What can we do to improve our score?