This week, a physical education columnist with the New York Times named Gretchen Reynolds was all over the radio. In 48 hours I heard her interviewed by Terry Gross of Fresh Air  and then interviewed by the BBC World Service. She has published a book with a catchy title called The First Twenty Minutes. It appears to be catching fire.

I liked a lot of the things she was saying, and how she communicated. Reynolds is a communicator attempting to take peer-reviewed journal articles, which to nonscientists are impenetrable with graphs and meaningless numbers and confusing P values and unconnected to their lives, and make them fit into the larger problems this country faces with the obesity and overweight epidemic. I applaud her for calling attention to this problem that is bankrupting our medical system and leaving tens of millions of Americans unable to live more productive, happier lives.

I caught most of her interview with Gross, and while upbeat, I found some of the discussion on the health benefits of activities like standing up often while sitting to be out of touch with larger systemic issues causing the health crisis that led to two-thirds of this country to become obese or overweight.  Encouraging people to do minor things is not asking anything resembling sacrifice or commitment, which is what is required both in a personal sense and a larger policy sense. It is as if we have completely dumbed down all of our messaging to the lowest denominator. But then again, Reynolds is someone making a living as a writer and health expert — and selling a popular message as a product is critical to success.

Instead of the media talking to experts about whether 30 minutes of exercise is  good enough to keep us healthy, media should be talking about the primary reasons why people aren’t exercising—the overconsumption of TV and screen use, the built environment that promotes the utter dominance of the internal combustion engine, and the failure of each individual to take ownership for their health from the food they eat to how much they move their bodies. (And, yes, I know it is more complicated than this, especially for many minorities and lower-income Americans, but these factors matter a lot).

I was delighted, however, that Reynolds praised the health benefits of walking. She rightly called walking the single best exercise that exists on the planet and what humans are built for. She is right. It reduces your risk for heart disease and diabetes, and it apparently increases memory capacity in mammals (makes sense, blood flow stimulates oxygen and chemicals produced by the body to be delivered to the brain). As for me, there is no better exercise in the world than walking. A walk anywhere, anytime, in any weather, beats sitting on my butt and not walking at all. I feel healthy, happy, and more level-headed after a walk. I just wish more Americans could embrace walking and voted to support measures that promote walking – sidewalks in neighborhoods, parks and trails – and support politicians who want to change how we deal with public transportation funding in this country. Even one of the biggest promoters of lopsided transportation priorities, the car- and petroleum-friendly federal government, notes that a tiny sliver (0.7%) of federal transportation funds are spent on improving pedestrian facilities.

Maybe we need what Scotland has, the right to roam about in a responsible way (yeah Scotland).