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Oh good so I don’t have to worry about all this ultra-processed food, non-walkability, 3+ ton commuter vehicles, guns, de-regulation, and nazis around me in the US? Sweet.
I’ve posted recently about how very different things feel in a place like scandinavia versus the US. Man, I wish all we had to do was pass universal healthcare. That is a HUGE one of course, but it is a symptom and not the cause.
The cause is something like… respect for human dignity, or lack thereof. That goes for the entire culture, not just the government. Also important to not overlook: respect for human dignity includes oneself.
In addition to a culture of walking, biking, and taking public transit to where they need to go. Maybe the extra vacation time to destress and get out and see the world helps too
There’s not enough wine in the world for what Americans have to deal with. I wish i could get the insurance company to approve my husband’s spinal reconstruction so he can go back to work before his insurance lapses…but unfortunately they keep asking for more tests, physical therapy and injections but sometimes the injections get denied by a gynecologist and then we have to get him back to the previous couple of doctors to order the same treatment that we really don’t need anyway because it’s just a stall tactic by the insurance company to obstruct his surgery a surgery that they approved last year for a double tier spinal fusion but then they decided he could only get one tier done so he never recovered and it’s been a maze of bs ever since. It would have been cheaper for them to let the doctor do both tiers but they canceled the second tier hours before the surgery. You can’t make this shit up it makes no sense
Just further proof that the entire system is designed from the ground up to deny as much coverage as possible. I’m sorry you and your husband are going through that :(
This sounds similar to something that happened to a friend recently.
I don’t know if this whole trend of “the third party insurance company told the doctor and the patient that the surgery was called off or modified at the last minute” has gotten worse recently, but it is as unsurprising as it is horrifying.
UCL demographer’s work debunking ‘Blue Zone’ regions of exceptional lifespans wins Ig Nobel prize
Turns out it was pension fraud.
This fits better because within Europe is was the “Mediterranean Diat” and southern Europe is worse of financially. Most universal healthcare is in Scandinavia and they aren’t famous for red wine and stuff.
If you zoom in on the actual municipalities in Southern Europe where people “lived the longest”, it was inevitably poor townships that were still using paper accounting systems. Also a strong correlation between “living long” and “being in a neighborhood that’s unusually mobbed up”. Sicily’s a classic example.
That’s not even to comment on health care. Italy, Spain, and France all have excellent public health care systems. And there’s plenty of evidence to suggest people with access to public care do benefit enormously relative to their peers overseas and south of the Mediterranean.
But if you want to know why certain neighborhoods had a surplus of centenarians, when the average lifespan in even the most developed countries caps out at around 80? That’s just fraud.
In Italy the health care system is good until you go further south of rome
Not just the health care system. South Italy might as well be a different country.
Well yeah, all the governments since the country union neglected south Italy that it’s basically it’s own thing aside from law
Uh, we have universal healthcare in Spain, my experience with hospitals in Germany, Finland and Norway was that you had to pay for going to emergencies.
Not so sure if most universal healthcare is in Scandinavia…
Lol…
“For example, despite vegetables and sweet potatoes being promoted as key components of the Okinawan ‘Blue Zone’ diets, according to the Japanese government, Okinawans eat the least vegetables and sweet potatoes in Japan and have the highest body mass index.”
Yeah, we haven’t been the island of longevity for a long time. Male suicide rates are so high it affects our average lifespan. I really hate when outsiders think of island is some kind of tropical paradise even though we suffer constantly.
Extending my sympathies.
At least people are interested to learn about where you are from (although maybe the wrong lessons) - and hope the community continues to support both a good quality of life and longevity. Both are are critically important
Whenever I hear how careers and jobs are done in Japan I feel like I’m listening to a corporate horror story. I get told “oh, but that’s just how things are done over there. They value different things than us”, but people in Japan are still human and the suicide rates tell a different story.
Yeah working here seems horrible. I’ve been working for myself ever since I moved back 15 or so years ago (born Okinawan, raised in Canada), so I don’t really have first-hand experience. But looking at my local friends and workers around town, I feel like they work way too hard for what they get.
Americans eat like they have universal healthcare though.
Obviously this varies but I found myself walking far more in Europe than in the US.
Also, some of the obesity I saw in the States I didn’t see anywhere else. It was wild.
Once again, all anecdotal.
I was in Oklahoma and saw a mother and son who both were the size and shape of a door. I was dumbfounded. I’ve never seen anyone look like that.
Having recently moved to Europe I’ve dropped about 20 lbs. That’s like 9kg.
The only changes I made were my daily commute is now walking based and the food here is just better. Turns out real food fills you up so you eat less
american food is poison. nobody can afford to buy and cook fresh food so we are all slowly getting diabetes for picking up processed meals on the way home from our third job that is a 45 min drive each way. obv ymmv but this is america.
nobody can afford to buy and cook fresh food
No, you just cherry pick expensive ingredients so you can tell yourself that cooking your own food is more expensive. As an extreme example, how much would a pound of oats cost? Surely a fraction of any takeout meal you can think of
“affording” includes the energy and time to cook, and that all assumes nobody in the house struggles with food aversions or similar. you might be able to cook all your food, but not everyone can.
You can make oats in like genuinely 6 minutes. Rice in like 10. Spend 15 seconds pouring chickpeas in a bowl of water and snack on them the next day. If you have the time to sit at a drive thru, you,ve got no excuse for either of those. Don’t deny yourself your own agency. You absolutely can.
So you’re changing the goalpoasts from “nobody can afford to buy and cook fresh food” to “some people don’t have the time and energy to cook”
they are saying affordability cannot be measured only with money
yes, thank you. pedants are exhausting lol
Are those the same people that oppose switching to electric stoves because they supposedly perform so much worse?
It seems like the vast majority of US-Americans oppose this which doesn’t make sense if they never cook.
Obviously this varies but I found myself walking far more in Europe than in the US.
Whenever I have to visit family in the [US] suburbs, it’s a nightmare of driving everywhere. Walking a mile or two every day just living life has health benefits.
Came here to say that. Europeans don’t eat the shit that Americans shovel in their mouth. If they did, their whole healthcare system would bankrupt within days. It’s part of the reason why Americans can’t have universal healthcare. We are all terminal
Cost is not why we don’t have universal healthcare. Even with how bad American food is, it would still be cheaper to institute universal healthcare.
There’s a sub called stupidfood on reddit. The content there is mostly ads for studpidly over proportions of food and sometimes mixed with junk.
What it says it there’s a huge market for this stuff there.
Recent example: https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/StupidFood/comments/1po98en/how_to_ruin_steak_in_30_minutes_or_less_in_an_age/
There are big differences between European countries and Mediterranean diet is still considered healthier then most. Also lots of sun helps. But yes, wine was just a coincidence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YCOT5LasKc
“and we never get fat because of olive oil.”
