Country With Stagnant Economy Has The Healthiest People

The Global Health Index Bloomberg announced that Italians are the world's healthiest people. This is regardless of its stagnant economy and increasing rate of unemployment particularly in the youth.

Bloomberg stated that Italy is one of the countries having highest debt loads in the world. On the other hand, its stagnant economy does not interfere and affect its people's health. They were even healthier than some affluent people such as Americans, Brits and Canadians, who are reportedly having high cholesterol, high blood pressure and poor mental health.

Meanwhile, Italians who include in their diets plenty of pasta, cheese, bread, meat, fish, extra virgin oil and wine could live into their octogenarian years, which refers to 80 and 90 years of age. Their approach in preparing for food including consuming and digesting them is slow, yet has great benefits. They also eat for pleasure, rather than energizing their bodies.

The Global Health Index examined about 163 countries in the world. The "health score" of people were gauged based on the life expectancy at different ages, the likeliness of mortality by disease or injury and a possibility of survival at key times. Meanwhile, the "health risk penalties" is detracted from the health score. These health risk penalties include obesity, smoking and childhood malnutrition, pollution and lack of clean drinking water. The resulting score from these calculations is the "health grade," according to Treehugger.

Among the countries that have the highest "health grades" are Italy (93.11), Iceland (91.21), Switzerland (90.75), Singapore (90.23) and Australia (89.24). Meanwhile, the lowest in the top 50 are Slovakia (65.10), Barbados (64.14), Oman (62.89), Panama (62.39) and Albania (62.01).

The United States ranks number 34 on the list with a health grade of 73.05. Its score is affected with the increase of maternal mortality rate and overweight people, with a score of 67.3 that is on the scale of one of the world's heaviest nations.