LONDON, July 21 (UPI) -- Current guidelines on children and exercise in Great Britain are far below what they should be, a new study finds.
The report recommends children should exercise for at least 90 minutes a day, the BBC reported. Current U.K. guidelines suggest an hour a day, but only one in 10 children in the study reported having reached that level.
Authors of the study recommended children exercise to ward off problems such as heart disease and obesity.
The study looked at more than 1,730 children ages 9 to 15 from schools in Denmark, Estonia and Portugal.
Authors of the study said many children appear to have adopted a "sedentary lifestyle" built on video games, TV watching and daily rides to school in place of walking.
The study suggests that if current trends continue, half of all children in England could be obese by 2020.
