Is your country one of health-consciousness and fitness? Why?

Haha, here in the Netherlands, we talking about the people “Americanizing”, i.e. obesity getting more common. (Though, Americanizing is often also used for other negative influences from the US, e.g. hardening political campaigns…)

What does help is that it is more common to cycle from A to B, due to the general absense of mountains and natural slopes.

Unfortunately Britain is going the same way as you described America. It seems that I see far more people on a daily basis that are obviously overweight and the sad thing is, a huge number of these people are still very young. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that less and less children are encouraged to go outside and play. Instead they are sat in front of the TV or games console for hours on end, not excercising and probably eating unhealthy foods. When I was a child which wasn’t that long ago, if we weren’t at school and we were out playing, riding our bikes and exploring. We (my brother and I) were also encouraged to eat healthy foods and proper meals rather than just snacking. Both my parents are very sporty and, whilst I didn’t follow in their footsteps by becoming obsessed with sport, I did learn from an early an early age what was healthy to eat and what wasn’t. We weren’t denied snack foods but it was a treat rather than a regular habit.

I’d think that the United States is obviously aware of “health and fitness”. Isn’t the diet pill market outstanding here? (Not saying thats healthy. But its on our minds.)

NYC is one of the more fitness-oriented places in the USA, because we have major industries here that people cannot enter unless they are attractive and fit. I imagine LA is much the same.

The British government pretends it is, then ignores the issue. The NHS pump you full of drugs and have Burger Kings in hospitals.

It’s not looking good.

I look at the Norwegian results in the winter Olympics and it’s pretty interesting for a country with the population of the city of Detroit. I think it’s a pretty active population all year ‘round. They have a saying here that rhymes in Norwegian, .. Ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær. which means, Not bad Weather.. just bad clothing. It’s a pretty tuff, outdoorsy culture here. Saunas and snow baths. Get hard or go home, sort of attitude. They say the children are born with skis on their feet. I’m surprised every time I go out to the local ski area and am in awe of the kids. Yeah… we eat to live not live to eat.