Here (and this seems to be more unique to the Nordic countries), instant food and eating out is extremely expensive compared to making the food yourself at home. The cheapest hamburger you can find might actually be $15. Pizzas are definitely more expensive. Even just buying a small pre-made sandwich at the grocery store is like $8. Definitely most of the time, a person who is fat or obese here actually has some serious health problem preventing them from exercise, and/or they're ex. seriously depressed and overeat as a coping mechanism.
Then I find advice saying "exercise to lower blood pressure!". Here you CAN'T do stuff like drive everywhere and park right next to the building, it's simply not possible. There aren't parking spaces everywhere. There aren't those little motorized carts that you can sit in and ride around the grocery store in. The cashiers don't pack your bags for you at the grocery store. So you can still be pretty lazy but you can't be AS lazy. Cars and gas prices are really expensive so in a lot of places you might not even own one. If even that small difference affects blood pressure...
In Europe in general, there's different laws so they can't legally put as much shit in the food as the US can, so maybe that also affects the health a bit less. For example, blue food colouring (I think it was) was banned in Finland for the longest time because they knew it caused cancer. They import American food here but it basically all comes from strange brands I've never heard of that are specially-made for export. I once read that Hershey's and all those big companies literally changed their recipe specifically for Europe to comply with European laws, and then aren't feeding the Americans the same recipe.
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Then I find advice saying "exercise to lower blood pressure!". Here you CAN'T do stuff like drive everywhere and park right next to the building, it's simply not possible. There aren't parking spaces everywhere. There aren't those little motorized carts that you can sit in and ride around the grocery store in. The cashiers don't pack your bags for you at the grocery store. So you can still be pretty lazy but you can't be AS lazy. Cars and gas prices are really expensive so in a lot of places you might not even own one. If even that small difference affects blood pressure...
In Europe in general, there's different laws so they can't legally put as much shit in the food as the US can, so maybe that also affects the health a bit less. For example, blue food colouring (I think it was) was banned in Finland for the longest time because they knew it caused cancer. They import American food here but it basically all comes from strange brands I've never heard of that are specially-made for export. I once read that Hershey's and all those big companies literally changed their recipe specifically for Europe to comply with European laws, and then aren't feeding the Americans the same recipe.