More Hong Kong residents are doing physical exercises, like walking at least 8,000 steps a day, but the "vast majority” are not eating enough fruits and vegetables, according to a Department of Health survey.

The DH released the results of the Health Behavior Survey (HBS) 2023 on Thursday and urged city residents to adopt a healthy lifestyle and practices to reduce the risk of developing major non-communicable diseases.

"To prevent NCDs, members of the public should lead a healthy lifestyle, such as maintaining sufficient physical activity, having a balanced diet, keeping a healthy body weight, not smoking and avoiding alcohol consumption,” a spokesman for the DH said. 

According to the survey, 14.8 percent of the city’s adult population aged 18 or above had “an insufficient level of physical activity”, or did not meet the World Health Organization recommendation of doing at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity per week.

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This is a “significant improvement” compared to the 24.8 percent recorded in the Population Health Survey (PHS) conducted in 2020-22, which was possibly partly related to the resumption of normalcy after the pandemic, the DH said.

8,000 steps a day

Among persons aged 18 or above who used step-counting device in the past month, 61.6 percent walked at least 8,000 daily average steps in a typical week, while 45.2 percent of them walked at least 10,000 daily average steps in a typical week, according to the HBS survey.

Overall, the mean duration of sedentary behavior on a typical day was 373.1 minutes, or around 6 hours among persons aged 18 or above; and 33.9 percent reported spending 8 hours or longer sitting or reclining on a typical day.

Notably, around 40 percent of younger age groups were engaged in over 8 hours of sedentary behavior on a typical day (37.7 percent for those aged 18–24 and 40.9 percent for those aged 25–34), the DH said.

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According to the WHO’s recommendation, adults should aim to do more than the recommended levels of moderate-intensity (more than 300 minutes) or vigorous-intensity ( more than 150 minutes) aerobic physical activity throughout the week to help reduce the detrimental effects of high levels of sedentary behavior.

On the other hand, 97 percent had an inadequate intake of fruits and vegetables, or consumed less than 400 grams or five servings of fruit and vegetables per day as recommended by the WHO.

The department said that this was similar to the 97.9 percent recorded in the Population Health Survey 2020-22.

Overall, daily vegetable consumption was reported by 83.9 percent of persons aged 15 or above, but only 4.5 percent consumed three or more servings of vegetables per day. Only 14.2 percent consumed two or more servings of fruit daily.

Uptick in binge drinking

The DH also noted that the proportion of the population aged 15 or above who had engaged in binge drinking--consuming at least five cans of beer, five glasses of wine or five glasses of spirits on a single occasion at least monthly--increased from 2 percent in PHS 2020-22 to 2.7 percent in HBS 2023.

The department also said the proportion of persons aged 50 to 75 who were screened for colorectal cancer increased from 42.6 percent in PHS 2020-22 to 46.2 percent in HBS 2023, but the uptake of cervical screening among women aged 25 to 64 was 49.8 percent, which was lower than the 52.1 percent recorded in PHS 2020-22.