Office workers often complain that they feel like battery chickens. Scientists report that they would be a lot better off, physically and mentally, if they felt like hamsters.

Obesity is a constant peril of the deskbound. The answer, according to an American experiment, is this: while your hands are tip-tapping on the computer keyboard, with minimum energy burn, your feet should be pedalling a treadmill.

As if work were not already a treadmill in its own right, the scientists have developed a moveable workstation. The desk, called a vertical workstation, can be positioned over a wheel which employees can turn as though operating an old-fashioned treadle sewing machine or emulating a small furry rodent in a cage.

The desk was tested on 14 obese women and one obese man at the Mayo Clinic, a medical research centre in Minneso-ta. According to the results, published in The British Journal of Sports Medicine, the guinea-pigs masquerading as hamsters lost up to 4lb 7oz (2kg) in a year.

Sitting at a desk punching a keyboard burns no more than 72 calories an hour, the researchers found. But wheeling the desk over a treadmill forces the worker to walk the equivalent of one mile in an hour, burning 191 calories. The average increase in expenditure of walking over sitting was 119 calories an hour across the group.

The scientists designed a tubular steel desk in the shape of the letter H. Four locking rubber wheels were fixed to the bottom, allowing it to be moved around and over a communal office treadmill. One adjustable arm of the desk holds a computer screen while another holds the keyboard and mouse. There is, according to the designers, room for a vase, cup-holder, penholder and paper tray.

Much the same effect would be achieved by getting staff to strap laptops to their bicycle handlebars and do their work while cycling to the office. The drawback is a potentially large increase in traffic accidents.

That the researchers thought to invent such a device says little for Americans making the connection between what they eat and what they weigh.

The report’s authors conclude: “If sitting computer time were replaced by walking-and-working, energy expenditure could increase by 100kcal per hour.”

They say that if obese workers walked instead of sat in front of computers for two to three hours a day and, “if other components of energy and balance were constant”, significant weight loss could occur.

The researchers also claimed that the desks were popular with the volunteers. “The vertical workstation and treadmill walking were well tolerated by all subjects; there were no injuries, falls or unsteadiness,” the report said.

The day has not yet dawned, at least in Britain, when every office has its in-house treadmill to which employees wheel themselves every day for an hour or two of energy-burn. The potential, however, is enormous. If every office treadmill were linked to the National Grid, fat clerks could light a town the size of Rochdale.

But there would always be cheats. Who does not know an office colleague who would mount the treadmill with ample cheeks packed full of nuts?

Work it out

Stand during meetings

Take the stairs, not the lift

Don’t e-mail a colleague; go and visit them instead

Do press-ups at the photocopier

Use 500-sheet packs of A4 paper as dumbbells

Do leg-lifts while talking on the phone

Go for a walk, not to the pub, during your lunchbreak

Change your position regularly between walking and standing

Blink every five seconds; computer screens can make you stare

Source: Times database

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