Portuguese people, in 2018, ranked as among Europe’s least satisfied citizens with their lives, and the OECD’s ‘most obese’.
Neither are particularly positive rankings, but Expresso tried to inject the best spin by explaining that ‘compared to 2013’ (at the tail-end of the crisis years), nationals are now less gloomy about their lives – 0.5 points less gloomy.
Put another way, the average European’s perception of satisfaction is given as 7.3 on a scale that goes up to 10.
Portugal’s average has its citizens on 6.7 points, compared to the ‘happiest’, Finns, on 8.1 points and the truly dissatisfied Bulgarians on 5.4 points.
When it comes to ‘financial satisfaction’, the situation is much the same: Portuguese citizens are among the least satisfied (5.4 points), with Bulgarians truly dissatisfied (4.3).
The happiest financially are the Danes (on 7.6 points), with a European average on the 6.5 point mark.
One thing is clear, satisfaction or otherwise has no bearing on obesity.
An OECD ‘Health at a Glance’ study for 2018 has shown Portugal to be among the four countries with the ‘most obese’ people, sharing its ranking with Finland (which ostensibly lays claim to the people who are most satisfied with their lives in Europe).
In percentage terms this means 67.6% of Portuguese (and Finns) over the age of 15 are either overweight or obese. Worse on this scale are Chile (74.2%), Mexico (72.5%) and the United States of America (71%).
The slimmest race appears to be that of Japan (only 25.9% of Japanese are overweight or obese) followed by South Korea (33.7%) and Switzerland (41.8%).
One very positive aspect about the Health at a Glance study is that Portugal ranks as one of the countries boasting the best cancer survival rates.
