Europe’s champion sitters: even the sporty Dutch are falling victim to ‘chair-use disorder’

Time out at a cafe in Amsterdam: while the Dutch are a sporty nation, the issue is what they do when they are not playing sport, a researcher says. Photograph: Artur Bogacki/Alamy

The Dutch are perceived as a nation of healthy giants, leaping on their bikes to cycle energetically across flat lands. But new research suggests they are in fact the “sitting champions of Europe”, with a sedentary lifestyle that causes thousands of early deaths.

Health experts are calling for urgent action to stop so-called “chair-use disorder” spreading across western countries. A report by the research organisation TNO, published on Friday, found too much sitting costs the Netherlands €1.2bn (£1bn) annually and leads to 21,000 premature deaths a year from cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer. It is riskier, researchers found, to be a lawyer than a lorry driver.