What’s so sacrosanct about the 10,000-step goal?
What’s so sacrosanct about the 10,000-step goal? Of late, I have been thinking about this popular exhortation to achieve the 10,000 step daily goal. Maybe it is the coming together of multiple sporting events (the Olympic Games begin today), or maybe it’s just my idle mind, deprived of social stimuli. In any case, what bothers me most is the apparent precision of the goal. Why not 7,500 (which in any case is well beyond an average person’s activity level), or 8,000? Is it our collective preference for round numbers? (10,000 is considered more “round” than 8,000). Is it okay to take a few steps below this magic number? What about a few thousand steps more? The lay press, citing reputed researchers, would have us believe that between 7,000 and 8,000 steps a day lies the proverbial “sweet spot”. The implication being that anything more or less than this, can cause you harm. And conveniently, this also plays nicely into that popular trope, of “moderation” being the best th...