It is a fate which has been creeping up on Britain for years, but that doesn’t make it any the harder to bear when it becomes official. According to the OECD, we now have the lowest life expectancy in Western Europe. At 80.9, the average Brit now keels over more than three years earlier than the average Swiss (84.2), Spaniard (84.0) or Italian (83.8) – which are the top three countries in Europe. We have lower life expectancy than many significantly poorer countries such as Greece and Slovenia. We also live shorter lives than countries where assisted suicide is commonplace, like Belgium and the Netherlands.
We also come out pretty badly on the use of illicit drugs, with the highest cocaine use in Europe
Why? On some health measures Britain comes out ahead in Europe. We smoke less than most countries (12.7 per cent smoke daily, compared with 19.8 per cent in Spain and 19.1 per cent in Italy). We drink more than some, but a lot less than others – we consume and average of 10.0 litres of alcohol per capita per year (or at least that is what we tell our doctors) compared with 10.5 litres in Spain and 25.3 litres in France.
Is it the NHS? Britain seems to spend more per head on healthcare than do Europe’s leaders in life expectancy: equivalent to $5,493 per capita on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis in 2022, compared with $4,291 in Italy and $4,432 in Spain. We also have more doctors per head: 11.3 per 1,000 population compared with 9.0 in Italy and 10.4 in Spain. Those two metrics don’t tell us the quality of healthcare, of course, but then as we saw during the pandemic, the health systems of Italy and Spain hardly excelled themselves, with hospitals more overloaded than they became in Britain.
But on one measure Britain really does come out worse than its European neighbours: obesity. There are 25.9 per cent of us with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of more than 30. No other Western European country comes close to us on that metric. In Spain it is 14.9 per cent, Italy 12.0 per cent, France 14.4 per cent and Germany 16.7 per cent. We also come out pretty badly on the use of illicit drugs, with the highest cocaine use in Europe. On opioid deaths we come behind Norway, Sweden and Finland.
Britain has long under-performed on life expectancy – even back in 1970 we were among the lowest in Western Europe. There are other countries which under-perform, too: Germany is only just ahead of us on life expectancy, in spite of having what many regard as a far superior public health system with endless scans and health checks. But if you are going to pick out one reason why Britons have shorter lives than others in Western Europe it does seem that diet is the place to start. We are stuffing ourselves to death.
Funny enough, I don’t think this is going to resolve itself for as long as we have a public health establishment that seeks to blame everything on the food industry and tries to absolve individuals of all blame by preposterously claiming that obesity is a ‘disease’ rather than the consequence of individual decisions that we make every day.
If it is all to do with our genes or the food industry, then how come virtually every other country in Europe has far lower rates of obesity? Are French, Germans, Italian or Spanish really so very much different from us genetically? They certainly don’t seem to be lacking access to fast food, to judge by their towns and cities. But they evidently are taking more personal responsibility over what they eat – unfashionable though it may be to make that point.
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