A new research suggests that the growing trend in sedentary jobs is one of the major factors in the increase of obesity cases in the United States. Sitting in front of the computer for eight hours a day rather than working on the field means that American workers are burning 140 fewer calories per day than they did decades ago.

According to a research study posted online on PLos One, we should put greater emphasis on promoting physical activities if we want to win the war against weight. Dr. Robert Graham said that the key in weight loss is monitoring the calories that come in and those that come out; and right now, Americans are taking in more calories than it is burning.

Although both exercise patterns and eating habits affect we either gain or lose weight, a contradicting study suggests that our caloric intake is still the major reason why one third of our population is either overweight or obese. This is because the study has noted that our leisure-time physical activities have not really changed over the past years.

Many, however, do not agree because based on a statistics report by the US Bureau of Labor, more and more active jobs (like farming and mining) have been replaced with sedentary jobs like office works and stay-at-home jobs.

The authors of the study stated that only a quarter of Americans are performing the prescribed level of exercise. Keri Gans of the American Dietetic Association said that the growing demands of our everyday life are eating our time for exercise. However, she said that it is necessary that we make time for it to fight obesity.

Eastern European teenagers have been reportedly involved in drunkenness for the past decade according to the Swiss research. This bad habit has become more widespread, particularly in the Eastern European girls as alcohol marketing has reached the younger audiences.

Based on the study made among 80,000 teenagers at the age of 15, the general teens’ population had been drunk on an average of two to three times. However, it appears that drunkenness was becoming less frequent in the Western countries.

It appears that adolescents in Eastern Europe think of alcohol consumption as an attractive lifestyle. On the other hand, the teenage boys in Western Europe and North America, considered as the high-consuming group before, had resented to alcohol consumption and drunkenness.

According to the researchers, the lack of alcohol marketing and social control of leisure time had kept the adolescent drunkenness down before.

But, the increasing and aggressive marketing of alcohol in the 1990s contributed to the increase in alcohol use in today’s teenagers.

The average frequency of drunkenness across all seven Eastern European countries has increased to about 40 percent over the last 10-year study period. It appears that global marketing have been triumphant to increase excessive consumption of alcohol among teenagers in the Eastern Europe as noted by the researchers.

As a result of the given findings, the researchers suggest that Eastern European countries should give emphasis on public health to ward of drunkenness. This could be done through increasing taxes on alcohol, as well as restricting alcohol advertisement.