Australians are good at quite a few things. In 2019 alone we’ve managed to nominate our best ever candidate for Eurovision in the form of the adorably extra Kate Miller Heidke and managed to make poo bricks into an actual viable building material.
And now we can add another achievement to the list as Australia managed scored a high ranking on Bloomberg’s Healthiest Country Index for 2019 despite your chronic Uber Eats obsession.
According to Bloomberg, Australia is the seventh healthiest country in the world, beating out other supposedly healthier nations like Norway, France, Canada, the US, the UK, and New Zealand (which came in at 18th).
To come up with this ranking, Bloomberg graded nations with at least 300k population and sufficient health data on a number of variables, such as life expectancy and clean water access, while imposing penalties on things like smoking and obesity.
While I think Aussies are healthy because the searing heat causes us to sweat out all the bad stuff, it appears that we’re doing quite well in various big health areas, such as smoking less and life expectancy.
Good stuff, Australia.
As for what the healthiest country is, that honour goes to Spain followed by Italy, Iceland, Japan, Switzerland, and Sweden. While there’s no definitive answer why Spain and Italy are so damn healthy, researchers think the olive oil and nut-heavy Mediterranean diet enjoyed by those two countries is a big factor.
Compared to Australia’s love of democracy sausages, it makes some sense that the Spanish and Italians are in better health than us.
But look, good onya for this great result, Australia, so we might as well go celebrate with some snags and beer.