There’s an interesting societal trend toward the path of least resistance, to the “magic solution” that will give maximum results with minimal effort.  The modern day equivalent of snake oil salesmen thrive in large part because the idea of losing weight, increasing sexual prowess, whatever in effortless and relatively inexpensive ways make for an easy bandwagon to jump upon.

Those ugly toning sneakers (such as Shape-ups by Skechers), the funny-looking ones with the thick sole that supposedly provides a gym workout while walking, are just the latest in a long line of fads that appear to have been outed as a bunch of hype.

$1.5 billion worth of hype, in fact, as an astoundingly large number of people decide to work out while they walked.

From MSNBC:

The American Council on Exercise (ACE) commissioned a study at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse. Researchers compared people walking on a treadmill wearing a regular running shoe by New Balance and three brands of toning shoes: Skechers Shape-ups, Rebook EasyTone and MBT shoes from Masai Barefoot …

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