2026
- Movement · Evidence4 min read
Fewer steps, taken faster: a 103,684-person study says pace counts too
Last July the largest review of step counts put the point of diminishing returns around 7,000 a day. A study published today in the British Journal of Sports Medicine adds the other variable.
- Movement · Evidence4 min read
Ninety minutes a week of strength training was the sweet spot in 147,374 people. More didn't help; none was worse.
The largest long-term study of strength training and death was published today in the British Journal of Sports Medicine: 147,374 health professionals in three American cohorts, followed for up to thirty years, with 35,798 deaths and exercise reported every two years.
- Evidence · The Fundamentals5 min read
Two papers in a week priced the fundamentals in years. Here is the receipt.
Two large studies from a University of Sydney team landed this week, and together they are the closest thing we have to a price list for the fundamentals.
2025
- Real Food · Follow the Money4 min read
Everything has protein in it now. The thing being sold is the word.
Protein ice cream. Protein soda. Protein water. Protein pancakes, chips, popcorn, candy. Semafor reports today that sales of products marketed as protein-rich rose 4.8% year over year through March, and that the food industry is reformulating whole aisles around a single nutrient.
- Movement4 min read
12,500 athletes over fifty are in Des Moines this week. None of them are optimizing.
The National Senior Games open today in Des Moines, Iowa, and run through August 4: more than 12,500 registered athletes, all at least fifty years old, competing in 25 sports from track and swimming to pickleball and powerlifting.
- Movement · Evidence4 min read
10,000 steps was a marketing number. 7,000 is the data.
The 10,000-step target began life as the name of a Japanese pedometer in the 1960s — manpo-kei, the ten-thousand-step meter — and has survived sixty years on the strength of being a round number.
- Industry · Evidence4 min read
A $101 million prize for restoring ten years of function. Watch the yardstick, not the money.
XPRIZE named forty semifinalists today in its $101 million Healthspan competition, chosen from more than 600 teams in 58 countries. Each gets $250,000 to run a trial.
2024
- Movement4 min read
Two days a week counted the same as seven. Read the fine print anyway.
A study published today in Circulation followed nearly 90,000 UK Biobank participants who wore a wrist accelerometer for one week and were then tracked through their health records.
- Evidence4 min read
A Blue Zones critic won an Ig Nobel today. What changes for you?
The Blue Zones are five regions — Sardinia, Okinawa, Ikaria, Nicoya in Costa Rica and Loma Linda, California — reported to have unusual numbers of very old people, and one of the best-known stories about simple living and long life.