Dinner party in Europe: Americans look older, more tired, are more unhealthy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My father outlived all his German cousins. He moved to the US in his 20s. It was American healthcare that saved him from heart failure in his 80s and his living moderately that allowed him to live into his 90s when the cousins all died from heart disease by their early 80s.

You are speaking about a man who was likely born 100 years ago and who was alive through WWII. You are talking about history, not current reality.

[Anonymous]

I’m sure your European friends would buckle under the American system just as easily. They’re not better; but I do agree their system is better.

Plop them here and they would be just as fat & stressed!! I hate our car dependent culture, and how capitalism/shareholders rule everything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cheerios in the states contain chemicals not permitted in Cheerios in Europe.

Here is a crazy idea. Stop eating processed “food” for breakfast. Maybe that’s the problem here.

You can have a healthy lifestyle in the US if you try to and stop buying shelf stable garbage in the middle of the grocery store.

Can I eat muesli?

Sure, we have muesli.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cheerios in the states contain chemicals not permitted in Cheerios in Europe.

Here is a crazy idea. Stop eating processed “food” for breakfast. Maybe that’s the problem here.

You can have a healthy lifestyle in the US if you try to and stop buying shelf stable garbage in the middle of the grocery store.

The point is that Europeans can buy garbage but not worry about the deleterious health impacts because their junk food isn’t poisoned.

I am aware of the “point” you are trying to make. It’s a dumb point. Their junk food is junk, but less poison. OK.

What next? It’s a wide conspiracy?

It’s possible and relatively easy to be healthy the US. 6 bananas is about $2. Chicken and rice also cheap. Vegetables also cheap. All of that is accessible. Nobody wants to do that. So it’s a conspiracy against them like everything that is actually a big mountain of poor choices.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These were friends of friends who live in Europe. They were French, German, Portuguese, and Swedish. Most people were 55+. They were decently well-off but not rich. Many were already retired.

Throughout the whole night, nobody compulsively looked at their phones. The only phone use was to take pictures and play music.
Not a single person was overweight.
Everyone looked 10-20 years younger. And yes one of them smoked, they all drank, they all spent time in the sun.
Everyone was vibrant and happy.
Everyone had so much energy and positivity, much more than 30-40something Americans. Nobody was tired.
Nobody complained of ailments or back problems or excessive medications.

I asked how everyone lived so well and looked so great. They said it was because they had universal healthcare, less stress, great food, and didnt feel beaten down by work throughout their lives.

America is doing it wrong.

"Retired" is the key, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cheerios in the states contain chemicals not permitted in Cheerios in Europe.

Here is a crazy idea. Stop eating processed “food” for breakfast. Maybe that’s the problem here.

You can have a healthy lifestyle in the US if you try to and stop buying shelf stable garbage in the middle of the grocery store.

The point is that Europeans can buy garbage but not worry about the deleterious health impacts because their junk food isn’t poisoned.

You have healthy choices here. Don't blame other people for your inability to choose wisely.

[Anonymous]

Voluntary retirement tends to produce happier, healthier and more well-rested people, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m sure your European friends would buckle under the American system just as easily. They’re not better; but I do agree their system is better.

Plop them here and they would be just as fat & stressed!! I hate our car dependent culture, and how capitalism/shareholders rule everything.

I have a gigantic SUV I use to do epic stuff outdoors with my friends and my kids. I get there on our elaborate and mostly well maintained highway system. I am neither fat nor stressed in part because of these activities. You should try it some time.

It’s all about choices. Ask any Brit into cycling about how terrible their roads are. Or people that live in the city that want to get out on unpaved gravel roads in mainland Europe.

Meanwhile, car culture has allowed me to drive to Loudon to ride on unpaved roads and actually avoid cars at the same time. Amazing!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These were friends of friends who live in Europe. They were French, German, Portuguese, and Swedish. Most people were 55+. They were decently well-off but not rich. Many were already retired.

Throughout the whole night, nobody compulsively looked at their phones. The only phone use was to take pictures and play music.
Not a single person was overweight.
Everyone looked 10-20 years younger. And yes one of them smoked, they all drank, they all spent time in the sun.
Everyone was vibrant and happy.
Everyone had so much energy and positivity, much more than 30-40something Americans. Nobody was tired.
Nobody complained of ailments or back problems or excessive medications.

I asked how everyone lived so well and looked so great. They said it was because they had universal healthcare, less stress, great food, and didnt feel beaten down by work throughout their lives.

America is doing it wrong.

You were in an upper class/educated group if everyone was thin. Even Europeans are fat these days and their obesity rates aren’t that much lower than in the US. All western countries have a large percentage of overweight people.

If I went to a dinner party in a white UMC neighborhood here I also would like not be dining with anyone overweight. I don’t have any overweight friends or family members.

I find these posts strange because friends in Europe seem just as stressed as they do here. Issues with finding childcare, paying the bills, work, etc. Salaries are much lower in Western Europe, but housing costs are typically much higher. They also don’t have 30 year fixed rate mortgages and a few families I know are stressed about their mortgage rates increasing over the next few years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do we really need yet another “Europe is perfect, America sucks” post on a message board dominated by people living at the top of the US pyramid?

Exactly. Another reason we don’t need one is that we can always count on a European living in the USA to jump in and tell us how great Europe is as well. Oh, the irony.

Someone needs to read the Atlantic article about how Great Britain is now as poor as Mississippi.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These were friends of friends who live in Europe. They were French, German, Portuguese, and Swedish. Most people were 55+. They were decently well-off but not rich. Many were already retired.

Throughout the whole night, nobody compulsively looked at their phones. The only phone use was to take pictures and play music.
Not a single person was overweight.
Everyone looked 10-20 years younger. And yes one of them smoked, they all drank, they all spent time in the sun.
Everyone was vibrant and happy.
Everyone had so much energy and positivity, much more than 30-40something Americans. Nobody was tired.
Nobody complained of ailments or back problems or excessive medications.

I asked how everyone lived so well and looked so great. They said it was because they had universal healthcare, less stress, great food, and didnt feel beaten down by work throughout their lives.

America is doing it wrong.

Did these Europeans live in the US at some point? I don’t know any European that would mention universal healthcare as a reason for their wellbeing UNLESS they live or lived in a place where that isn’t the case.

Visited, but not lived. The mutual American friends had left the US because of the healthcare system.

Also worth mentioning: they ate sweets, but not excessively. Nobody even mentioned anything about weight or dieting.
Also absent from any dinnertime discussion was work. I couldn’t tell you what everyone did or used to do for a living. Nobody talked about Covid, money, or other people’s expectations.
They also minimally discussed politics, only to make fun of Trump and the idea that Americans could elect him to serve office from jail or something like that, and they mentioned that their own governments weren’t perfect but nobody wanted a U.S.-type system.

There are things with their lifestyle that would appeal to the political left and right. As I said, the emphasis on health and well-being over work was the main reason why everyone was so energetic and healthy and happy. Healthcare, vacation time, and fewer work hours contribute to this. But the other thing was more family-oriented culture and less obsession with identity and gender. Women were happily feminine in their own way and men were happily masculine in their own way. Nobody was complaining about The Patriarchy or sexism, they also weren’t bigoted either, just normal and not in a bind about everything.

It’s a small representative size and yes I have traveled in Europe many times before, mostly before the pandemic. But this was an interesting case where multiple people, older people, from different countries shared their experiences “in the wild” not in a tourism setting. My takeaway is that American-style capitalism, private healthcare, high fructose corn syrup and processed foods, and stress are more detrimental to our health than anything else. This is a sick country and we are doing so much wrong that it’s a complete farce to say we’re the best.
That, and there’s this overall trend in raising age of retirement, especially the actual age where retirement is feasible for most people, and lowering life expectancy, it’s like the nest egg and golden years are all a scam to make you work harder and enjoy life less.

Sound like your typical Europeans. They just repeat what they hear on the news and think they are extremely enlightened.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These were friends of friends who live in Europe. They were French, German, Portuguese, and Swedish. Most people were 55+. They were decently well-off but not rich. Many were already retired.

Throughout the whole night, nobody compulsively looked at their phones. The only phone use was to take pictures and play music.
Not a single person was overweight.
Everyone looked 10-20 years younger. And yes one of them smoked, they all drank, they all spent time in the sun.
Everyone was vibrant and happy.
Everyone had so much energy and positivity, much more than 30-40something Americans. Nobody was tired.
Nobody complained of ailments or back problems or excessive medications.

I asked how everyone lived so well and looked so great. They said it was because they had universal healthcare, less stress, great food, and didnt feel beaten down by work throughout their lives.

America is doing it wrong.

Did these Europeans live in the US at some point? I don’t know any European that would mention universal healthcare as a reason for their wellbeing UNLESS they live or lived in a place where that isn’t the case.

I think most "europeans" know that the US is backward this way and it's hard to not think about how weird we are if you are trying to understand differences between the two places in terms of quality of life.
Also, Europeans think most Americans are weir in terms of our striving at work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: So, after one dinner party, you decided ALL Europeans are healthy and ALL Americans are tired out?

I had the same thought, kind of snickered. I mean, she's not wrong, but...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pretty sure if you have a dinner party of 55+ aged Americans they would be similar. Relaxed, looking forward to retirement, focused on family, talking about travel, etc.

If you speak to, especially French, people in their late 20s-early 30s they are they have the same burdens as Americans. Work, pension age keeps rising (did you see Paris burning this summer?), access to good health care, complaining about politics.

It is more generational than anything else. In fact it is pretty amazing how similar the generations are even though their nationality is completely different.

Uh, emphatically no. At least not 55+ Americans on the East Coast. We’re still working so hard to pay insane college tuition, to fund our pension-less retirement. We’re sandwiched between college-bound kids and managing declining parents who need a high quality assisted living they cant afford and need meds they also cant afford and Medicare doesn’t cover.

Maybe we just got right- sized out of our pension-free job and still need to work but know we won’t get hired at the same salary because of rampant legal age discrimination.

We might be estranged from a sibling or two because of their illness that we euphemistically call a “mental health issue” One of our young adult kids likely suffers from this, too, and that continually gnaws at us. Their treatment has been spotty under our abysmal mental healthcare framework that has no available beds or providers — just pills

Notice that my hypothetical 55 year old isn’t herself sick or facing the consequences of a lifetime of bad lifestyle decisions. She’s buffeted on all sides by features of the American experience and it’s stress-inducing and unhealthy

Then send your kid to in-state school or community college. That’s pretty much the equivalent of what you’d be doing in a Western European country unless you were wealthy. It’s common for college kids to continue living at home and college campuses are not anything like we have here in the US. You could easily limit your college costs and have your kids live a European lifestyle if you really wanted to do so.

Your average American is NOT spending that much to spend their kids to college. You’re just in a bubble and aren’t aware of this. University of Florida college tuition is only $7k per year.

[Anonymous]

[twitter]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These were friends of friends who live in Europe. They were French, German, Portuguese, and Swedish. Most people were 55+. They were decently well-off but not rich. Many were already retired.

Throughout the whole night, nobody compulsively looked at their phones. The only phone use was to take pictures and play music.
Not a single person was overweight.
Everyone looked 10-20 years younger. And yes one of them smoked, they all drank, they all spent time in the sun.
Everyone was vibrant and happy.
Everyone had so much energy and positivity, much more than 30-40something Americans. Nobody was tired.
Nobody complained of ailments or back problems or excessive medications.

I asked how everyone lived so well and looked so great. They said it was because they had universal healthcare, less stress, great food, and didnt feel beaten down by work throughout their lives.

America is doing it wrong.

Did these Europeans live in the US at some point? I don’t know any European that would mention universal healthcare as a reason for their wellbeing UNLESS they live or lived in a place where that isn’t the case.

I think most "europeans" know that the US is backward this way and it's hard to not think about how weird we are if you are trying to understand differences between the two places in terms of quality of life.
Also, Europeans think most Americans are weir in terms of our striving at work.

They hear about it in the media and on the news. My European friends had a difficult time believing that I’m not drowning in healthcare bills and that I have 5 weeks of vacation a year as does my spouse. They seem incredibly influenced by the media.