While it may be true that the figure of 10,000 steps per day is fairly hand-wavey, headlines like this can be counter-productive since they can encourage people

While it may be true that the figure of 10,000 steps per day is fairly hand-wavey, headlines like this can be counter-productive since they can encourage people to abandon the overall goal of being more active. What's interesting to me is how governments spend millions on public health messages (in the UK: "five a day" fruit and veg, recent TV campaigns about lung and bowel cancer) while messages like 10,000 steps and "eight glasses of water" take off from the grass-roots.