Column by Dr. Ann Hollingsworth
Recently I spent a week in Spain for a conference. The Bloomberg Healthiest Country Index recently listed Spain as the healthiest country in the world – due in large part to its lifestyle of the Mediterranean Diet. This diet focuses on natural – vegetables, some fruit, nuts, whole grains, lots of olive oil and protein primarily from fish.
I saw the truth of this in person as I ate lots of salads, did have meat choices of basically fish, and did not eat any processed food for a whole week. As public transportation is the norm, I did a lot of walking – even to get to a tram, bush or taxi to go somewhere. Interestingly, I did not see any mega-stores like Wal-Mart, but lots of Mom and Pop stores where you got what you needed weekly or even daily. I also did not see any obese people or even any fat people.
Contrast that experience to our big box store shopping and mega-hospitals here in the U.S. as we also have mega-people suffering from all kinds of mega-disease. So much of disease goes back to our lifestyles. A few generations ago, the lifestyle was to eat organic only as it was only grown at home with home grown fertilizer for the gardens. We also had plenty of built-in exercise from daily chores. Then life got convenient – and unhealthy.
We could still have the lifestyle of Spain and other healthier societies. It really depends on whether we want health bad enough and are willing to put forth the effort to get it and keep it. The lifestyle we follow is totally one’s choice.
