Via BikeBiz.com

Last year the British Medical Journal published a study that argued driving children to school has been wrongly blamed for falling levels of exercise and rising obesity in young children. Kids who walked or cycled to school were no more active throughout the week than kids taken to school by car, said the the Peninsula Medical School study. Not true, asserts a new and bigger study published in October’s American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

In August 2004, the BMJ published research from the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth which found no difference in weekly activity levels between those who were driven to school and those who walked or cycled. The study monitored 154 boys and 121 girls in their first year at 53 urban primary schools.

Terry Wilkin, professor of endocrinology and metabolism at the Peninsula Medical School, claimed that although those who walked or cycled to school recorded more activity in the process, their total weekly activity was identical to children driven to and from school. Somehow, car-borne children made up for their lack of exercise in the morning and afternoon by being more active during the school day.

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