Taking some health cues from Europe: Hikes, bikes and the likes

This past week I attended the annual meeting of the Academy of Eating Disorders, in part to present BodiMojo.com in the technology portion of the conference. I may have been the odd one out talking about health promotion rather than clinical intervention. Yet, the location could not have been better: Salzburg, Austria.  I brought my 12-year-old daughter along on her first trip to Europe.

I asked her several times what she noticed about the people or places we visited. At the stop over in Dublin she noticed that passengers waiting to get on a flight to Eastern Europe “weren’t as fat as Americans.”  It was true.  Of about 100 people waiting to board that flight, maybe three appeared overweight.  I, on the other hand, noticed that the boys sported spiky or cropped hair vs. the floppy mop trend of the Justin Biebers types. From that point on we tried to predict which teens were from the US or not.

She also noticed how neatly dressed the Germans and Austrians are.  No oversized sweatshirts, sports tees, or baseball caps. (You only see baseball caps in the souvenir shops intended for Americans). Her observation was true for the European adults – they were smartly dressed.  The teens looked like most teens, but you did not see girls with belly shirts even on scorching hot days; no pajama pants; no Uggs, either (for some reason we see girls wearing those hot fluffy booties all year long in New England).  We saw lots of tattoos, though.

During a few days in Munich, Germany, we could not get over the number of people on bicycles. Granted it was a Sunday and the apparent first beautiful day of the summer season.  My daughter observed the interesting paradox of an active people, either on bike or on foot, as well as many more people who smoked – a now uncool trend in America thanks to successful legal action against the tobacco companies and tons of health promotion initiatives paid for by tobacco funds over more than a decade.

A friend of ours, working in Germany, told us that her diet is much better now (with the one exception of beer). In her previous environs of corporate New York, she’d have a bag of chips with every sandwich.  No chips here.  Stopping for food was an almost daily errand, with fresh fruit and vegetables available or fresh baked breads – no special trips to a Whole Foods or conveniently calling for take out. One has to think through and plan most meals – but access is fairly easy. And walking goes without saying.

As travelers we found it a challenge, though.  Without a kitchen, we got stuck with eating lots of pizza, würst with pomme frits, or croissants. Hardly a healthy, balanced diet.  Again, we had to remember to grab some fruit at a local corner market on our way to one city or the next, or be fluent enough in German to wind our way to a food store. (I can get by with broken German).

Maybe the most striking observation my tween made, was just – like its citizens – how cultivated and clean the cities and towns were.  Even the farmlands were stunningly picturesque – neat roadways and pastures and well-kept tractors that looked like toys from afar.  How different from the sites we often see, with junk and rusted old equipment lying in fields, or miles of strips malls and convenience stops at so many intersections.  One is never more than a few minutes away from coffee and donuts in the US.

I do think now of how apt is the slogan: “America runs on Dunkin.”

Did you know: Just being an American puts one at risk for obesity? Maybe we should take some cues from our EU friends.