(Elizabeth Gulino/ Refinery 29) — For as long as I can remember, 10,000 steps has been the gold standard of walking — at least, walking that’s tracked. It’s what we’re meant to aspire to achieve each and every day in order to attain an (alleged) optimal level of health. It’s become the default goal in the majority of our step trackers and the (sometimes unreachable) finish line to our days. And while we’ve all collectively decided that 10,000 is the ideal daily number to hit, where did it even come from? Who decided this was the number we needed to strive towards? More importantly, what if it’s a myth entirely?
As it turns out, the thought that we need to take 10,000 steps — or walk around five miles — a day was an accident. It came from the need to market a product. I-Min Lee, MD, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and researcher of physical activity, tells Refinery29 that in the 1960s, a Japanese company created a pedometer called “Manpo-kei” that translates to “10,000 steps meter.” “10,000 steps is a really catchy number,” she says. And so, it caught on. “It pretty much was in use without people questioning too much about it,” she says. (…)