Eat well, move more, live longer

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The world’s longest-living nations have something to tell us about the way to live a healthy life, and it’s got nothing to do with drugs and medicine. Bryan Hubbard reports

Yes, we’ve all gotten the memo around 4,000 times: eat nutritious food, don’t smoke, exercise and drink in moderation if you want to live a long and healthy life.

Surprisingly for such a well-circulated memo, there are plenty who haven’t read it or have chosen to ignore it. They hold to the belief that if anything starts to go wrong, medicine can step in and fix the problem with drugs or surgery. In the meantime, order in another pizza.

But medicine doesn’t have a silver bullet, and a new analysis of the world’s fittest nations makes the point. Trekking organizer Magical Nepal gathered 11 factors that help determine fitness and longevity, then used them to rank the 40 fittest countries worldwide. The fittest and longest-lived are the Japanese, whose average life expectancy is 84.8 years.

But where are the US and the UK? With an average life expectancy of 77.2 years and poor health habits, the US is nowhere to be seen. The average Japanese person will live eight years longer than an American, but how can this be for the world’s richest nation?

America’s annual healthcare spend is a breathtaking $4.5 trillion, which equates to around $13,493 per citizen (£3.4 trillion / £10,274), compared to Japan’s measly $310 billion, or $2,480 per person (£236 billion / £1,888). Spending more clearly isn’t helping Americans live longer.

And look at the two nations’ obesity rates: just 5.6 percent of Japanese adults are obese, compared to 41.9 percent of Americans.

The UK fared better than the US with an average life expectancy of 80.7 years and obesity afflicting 28 percent of the population. Its healthcare spending is about $182 billion per year, which works out to $2,690 per person (£139 billion / £2,048)—still more than Japan’s.

The US and UK both have greater longevity than a good number of the countries on Magical Nepal’s list, but because the researchers considered many factors besides longevity in their rankings, neither country made the top 40 fittest list.

What made the difference were the residents’ health habits. Medicine can serve as a Band-Aid on symptoms of chronic illness, but it probably won’t help you live longer—and that’s the real skinny on longevity.

The World’s 15 Longest-Living Nations

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15
	Japan	Australia	Switzer- land	South Korea	Norway	Sweden	Italy	Singapore	Iceland	Canada	France	Finland	Belgium	Nether- lands	Austria	UK	US
Life expectancy (years)	84.8	84.5	84	83.7	83.2	83	82.9	82.8	82.7	82.7	82.5	82	81.9	81.7	81.6	80.7	77.2
Obesity rates in adults (%)	5.6	31	12.4	7.2	19.5	15.5	17.8	13.8	21.7	26.7	10	21.9	20.5	14.9	15.7	28	41.9
Obesity-related deaths (%)	3.92	10.72	8.31	5.85	6.6	9.2	9.7	7.1	9.5	10.02	7.5	9.6	7.41	7.34	10.44	9	13
Insufficient exercise (%)	35.5	30.4	23.7	35.4	31.7	23.1	41.4	36.5	28.5	28.6	29.3	16.6	35.7	27.2	30.1	36	40
Respiratory disease deaths (per 100,000 people)	11.41	24.18	14.94	19.16	25.85	17.85	16.76	10.58	17.5	24.22	12.76	14.6	27.63	28.62	16.92	36.54	37.72
Cardiovascular disease deaths (per 100,000 people)	77.01	108.13	107.06	95.41	111.48	138.59	126.09	93.68	109.13	107.92	91.41	173.81	118.65	113.01	150.56	132.38	157.01