INSTRUCTION: Answer question in relation to text.
TEXT
An effort to count the world’s sloths
A paper in the Lancet, shamelessly timed to coincide
with the Olympic games, compares countries’ rates of
physical activity. The study it describes, led by Pedro
Hallal of the Federal University of Pelotas, in Brazil,
[5] is the most complete portrait yet of the world’s busy
bees and couch potatoes. It suggests that nearly a
third of adults, 31%, are not getting enough exercise.
That rates of exercise have declined is hardly a
new discovery. Since the beginning of the industrial
[10] revolution, technology and economic growth have
conspired to create a world in which the flexing of
muscles is more and more an option rather than a
necessity. But only recently have enough good data
been collected from enough places to carry out the
[15] sort of analysis Dr Hallal and his colleagues have
engaged in.
The high rates of inactivity he found in his paper are
worrying. Paradoxically, human beings seem to have
evolved to benefit from exercise while eschewing it
[20] whenever they can. In a state of nature it would be
impossible to live a life that did not provide enough of
it to be beneficial, while over-exercising would use up
scarce calories to little advantage. But that no longer
pertains. According to another paper in the Lancet,
[25] insufficient activity these days has nearly the same
effect on life expectancy as smoking.
The Economist Jul 21st 2012, from the print edition.
The study referred to in the first paragraph is about
